Smart Bidding has become a reliable backbone for many Google Ads accounts, but only when it has enough data to learn from.

In small or brand-new markets, advertisers often face the same challenge:

Low conversion volume → slow learning → unstable bidding → inconsistent performance.

This is especially painful when each market has its own small budget, its own limited data, and its own “learning phase” that never quite comes to an end.

However, there’s an elegant MCC-level solution that can significantly accelerate Smart Bidding.

Let’s break it down.

Why Smart Bidding struggles in small markets

The main issue with Smart Bidding in small markets is volume.

Low conversion numbers make it difficult for the algorithm to learn effectively, and even when you want to move away from manual bidding, Smart Bidding often can’t perform well enough on a per-account basis.

This challenge becomes even clearer when several new markets all face the same problem: individually, none of them produces enough data.

The fix: Use a single currency across accounts

The solution is simple: use one consistent currency for all your Google Ads accounts.

When every account shares the same currency, you can include campaigns from multiple countries in an MCC-level portfolio bid strategy. This lets Smart Bidding operate across accounts instead of being confined to each small market individually.

With one currency in place, you can:

• Group lower-volume campaigns into a shared bidding strategy
• Apply Smart Bidding much sooner than you could in each market alone
• Move away from manual bidding without waiting for every country to “mature”

This structural decision solves the low-volume issue more effectively than trying to force Smart Bidding to work in isolation for each market.

A real example: three small countries, one shared strategy

Last week, I worked with a fashion brand trying to increase visibility for non-brand search in three smaller markets.

Each market had:

• limited conversion volume, and
• not enough data to make Smart Bidding viable on its own.

Because all three accounts were set up in the same currency, we were able to place their non-brand campaigns into one MCC-level portfolio strategy.

Smart Bidding could then function effectively across the combined activity, even though none of the individual markets had enough data on their own.

Why this approach helps

There are two main reasons this works:

1. Smart Bidding evaluates far more signals than we can manage manually.
   When campaigns sit inside a shared portfolio, they benefit from a broader performance base than any one small market can provide.
2. It reduces the time spent on manual bid adjustments.
   With Smart Bidding taking over, you can focus your time on analyzing performance and making meaningful improvements elsewhere.

This setup doesn’t remove the need for monitoring, but it does make Smart Bidding usable much sooner.

Watch for outliers in the first few weeks

Whenever you combine campaigns across countries, it’s important to keep a close eye on early performance.

If one campaign consistently performs very differently, for example, a ROAS of 500% when others are around 150%, it’s usually best to move that campaign into its own bidding strategy.

This keeps the shared portfolio stable and ensures that one outlier doesn’t influence the others.

What I recommend

If you’re planning to expand into several new markets, here’s my advice:

• Choose one currency (e.g., DKK) for all new Google Ads accounts
• Set up an MCC-level portfolio bid strategy for the smaller markets
• Monitor the shared strategy closely early on
• Move significant outliers into their own strategy when needed

This simple structural choice can make Smart Bidding usable much earlier in your international expansion and help you avoid long periods of manual bidding in low-volume markets.

Make portfolio bidding smarter with Optmyzr

This is where Optmyzr can enhance everything you’re doing at the MCC level.

Portfolio bidding gives Google the flexibility to optimize. Optmyzr gives you the visibility and control to guide it.

Here’s how:

Spot outliers instantly with deviation-based alerts

Smart Bidding works best when all campaigns contribute positively to the shared goal.

But if one market consistently hits a lower ROAS or higher CPA, it can compromise the entire portfolio.

Optmyzr alerts automatically flag:

• Campaigns underperforming relative to the portfolio
• Markets overspending without conversions
• Sudden spikes or dips in ROAS/CPA
• Unusual pacing shifts during the learning phase

This makes it easy to decide when a campaign should stay in the shared strategy, or be moved to its own.

Get a clear cross-market view with the All Accounts Dashboard

When multiple countries are combined under one MCC-level strategy, performance becomes spread across accounts and platforms.

Optmyzr’s All Accounts Dashboard brings everything together:

• Google + Microsoft + Amazon + (optionally) Facebook in one view
• Conversion and ROAS comparisons across markets
• Spend distribution at portfolio and account levels
• Custom metrics including custom conversions

This allows you to monitor whether Smart Bidding is shifting budget to the right places, and whether each country is pulling its weight.

Diagnose performance differences with PPC Investigator

If one market drags down your portfolio, the challenge isn’t just identifying it — it’s understanding why.

PPC Investigator helps you analyze:

• Whether CPC increases caused the issue
• Whether conversion rate dropped in a specific country
• Whether search term mix changed
• Whether a specific device, location, or audience is causing inefficiency

This helps you make data-driven decisions about whether to keep campaigns grouped or break them out.

Automate guardrails with Rule Engine

Even in a shared Smart Bidding strategy, you may want automated controls to prevent unexpected swings.

With Rule Engine, you can set up:

• Bid caps/floors based on performance
• Automatic budget increases for high-ROAS campaigns
• Pausing campaigns when CPA rises too fast
• Resuming campaigns at the start of a new budget cycle
• Custom “if-this-then-that” logic for safety controls

These guardrails help stabilize performance while Smart Bidding optimizes across markets.

Keep spending on track with Portfolio-Level budget monitors

Low-volume markets often suffer from unpredictable pacing. Optmyzr’s portfolio budget tools help you track and manage spend across multiple countries:

• Set monthly or campaign-group budgets
• Monitor pacing across the entire portfolio
• Get alerted at 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% of budget
• Automatically pause campaigns when budget is hit
• Auto-resume them next cycle
• Receive alerts via email, Slack, or Teams

This is especially powerful when smaller countries share a budget envelope within a portfolio strategy.

Analyze cross-market search terms with Portfolio N-grams

When three or four small countries share one portfolio, the search term landscape becomes blended.

Optmyzr’s portfolio-wide Search Term N-grams let you analyze:

• Which phrases drive profitable conversions across markets
• High-spend but low-ROAS queries to eliminate
• Differences between Google and Microsoft performance
• How search intent varies by country

That way, you get more informed signals to feed back into your Smart Bidding strategy.

Make every optimization count with Optmyzr

When expanding into new markets, Smart Bidding becomes far more powerful when campaigns work together instead of in isolation. Using one currency and combining low-volume markets into an MCC-level portfolio can accelerate optimization, but only if you have the visibility to spot issues early and the guardrails to stay in control.

If you want to get more consistency (and more conversions) from Smart Bidding, especially in smaller markets, pairing Google’s automation with Optmyzr’s control is the most effective path.

Start your 14-day free trial today and see how portfolio-level monitoring, alerts, and automations can help your international campaigns scale smarter.

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This article is a reflection of the author’s experiences and opinions. Optmyzr believes that there are many ways to win in digital advertising, and is committed to presenting a diverse range of ideas and approaches.