The end of the Australian financial year falls on 30 June, and for Google Ads accounts it is one of the most consequential periods of the calendar. CPCs rise, buyer intent spikes in some industries and collapses in others, and the businesses that plan ahead consistently outperform those that react.
This article covers exactly how to approach your EOFY Google Ads strategy: which industries should accelerate spend, which should pull back, what tactical moves to make in the final six weeks, and the mistakes that waste budget every year.
Why EOFY matters more than you think for Google Ads
The end of financial year drives two distinct buyer behaviours that interact with Google Ads in different ways.
The first is tax-motivated purchasing. Businesses and sole traders rushing to claim deductions before 30 June generate a surge in commercial intent searches. “Office equipment”, “business software”, “company vehicles”, “work tools” — these queries spike in June because the decision to buy is not driven by need alone, but by a tax deadline. For advertisers in these categories, June is effectively a second Black Friday.
The second is the clearance effect. Businesses trying to move stock before the new financial year drop prices aggressively, which trains buyers to expect deals and pulls forward purchasing intent. This particularly affects e-commerce and retail, where EOFY sale searches reliably spike from late May through the final week of June.
There is a third factor that is less visible but equally important: competitor spend increases. When every business in your industry ramps up budget to capture EOFY demand, CPCs rise. Across most Australian verticals, average CPCs in June are 15–25% higher than in April or May. If you are not actively managing this, you will find your campaigns becoming progressively less efficient through the month without changing anything in your account.
The two strategic paths: accelerate vs protect margin
The key decision before EOFY is which of two strategies applies to your business.
Accelerate: Increase spend aggressively to capture EOFY demand while it exists. This makes sense when your product or service has genuine EOFY relevance (tax deduction angle, clearance pricing, business purchasing cycle) and your current campaigns are profitable at existing spend levels. The logic is that EOFY is a time-limited window — volume will return to normal in July regardless of what you spend, so capturing it now is worth a temporary margin compression.
Protect margin: Hold or reduce spend because EOFY is not a meaningful trigger for your customers. This applies to businesses where June is seasonally soft (most B2C consumer services, high-consideration purchases unrelated to tax timing, hospitality, tourism). In these categories, CPC increases of 15–25% are not matched by corresponding increases in buyer intent — you pay more and convert at the same or lower rate. Staying at current spend levels or reducing them is the rational choice.
The mistake most businesses make is assuming EOFY is automatically good for their category because it feels like a busy period. Check your own Google Ads data from June 2025: if conversion rates held up or improved, accelerate. If CPCs rose but conversion rates stayed flat or dropped, protect margin.
Industries that should accelerate EOFY spend
E-commerce (especially technology, home office, tools, business supplies): June is consistently the strongest month outside Q4 for business-facing product categories. The tax deduction angle is real and buyers know it. Run EOFY-specific copy (“Claim before 30 June”, “Tax deductible until 30 June”) and increase budgets by 20–40% from the last week of May through June 28–29.
Tradies and trade services (electricians, plumbers, builders, HVAC): Business customers accelerate maintenance and capital expenditure decisions before EOFY. For a full breakdown of how Google Ads works in this vertical, see Google Ads for tradies in Australia. Residential demand also picks up as homeowners use end-of-year bonus payments. Higher competition in this vertical means holding your current bid strategy is not enough — proactive bid increases of 10–15% on your top-performing campaigns are warranted.
B2B services (accounting, IT services, consulting, software): The business purchasing cycle aligns directly with EOFY. Decision-makers who have unspent budget want to deploy it before the year closes. If your service qualifies as a business deduction, make that explicit in ad copy and landing pages. Search terms like “accounting software australia eofy”, “business IT support june” see real volume spikes in this window.
Automotive (new vehicles, utes, vans, commercial vehicles): The $20,000 instant asset write-off scheme has made commercial vehicle purchases a consistent EOFY driver. CPCs in this vertical are high year-round, but June conversion rates justify the spend if you are targeting business buyers. Consumer vehicle intent does not follow the same pattern.
Education and training (professional development, certifications, business courses): Employees and business owners claiming professional development costs before 30 June creates a real demand spike. Online courses and certifications particularly benefit from this, as the decision and purchase cycle is short enough to convert within the EOFY window.
Industries that should pull back or hold
Hospitality and tourism: June is the start of winter in most of Australia, which is seasonally soft for domestic travel and dining for most markets (exception: Queensland and NT winter season). Adding budget into rising CPCs during a seasonally weak period is poor capital allocation. Hold or reduce budgets and redeploy to August when spring demand returns.
High-consideration consumer services (wedding photography, major home renovations, elective cosmetic procedures): These purchase decisions are driven by life events and personal timing, not tax calendars. The research and decision cycle is typically months long. EOFY does not compress this — buyers in the consideration phase do not suddenly convert because of June 30. Increased CPCs in this period mean worse returns without corresponding demand.
Fitness and wellness (gyms, personal training, yoga studios): January is the peak period for fitness decisions. June is a seasonal trough for most fitness categories. Competing with higher budgets from businesses spending on tax-motivated purchases means your fitness ads get outpriced without benefiting from the intent surge.
Property management and real estate rentals: Rental searches are driven by lease cycles and personal timelines, not tax calendars. Sales searches are driven by market conditions. Neither responds meaningfully to EOFY timing.
Tactical moves for the EOFY window
Update ad copy from mid-May. EOFY-specific copy needs to be live at least three to four weeks before June 30, because Google’s ad rotation and asset performance signals take 1–2 weeks to accumulate meaningful data. Copy refreshed in the final week of June will not have time to prove itself.
Effective EOFY copy angles:
- “Tax deductible until 30 June” (only use if accurate for your product/service)
- “EOFY clearance — [X]% off until 30 June”
- “Lock in [service] before the new financial year”
- Urgency through specificity: “3 weeks left to claim” rather than generic “EOFY sale”
Add EOFY-specific keywords. Depending on your industry, add terms like “[product] eofy australia”, “[service] end of financial year”, “tax deductible [product]”, “eofy [industry] deals”. These have low competition for eleven months of the year and meaningful volume in May–June. Match type: phrase or exact on the EOFY-specific terms to avoid waste.
Increase budgets incrementally, not in one jump. Smart Bidding strategies (Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximise Conversions) treat a sudden large budget increase as a signal to re-enter the learning phase. Add 15–20% per week from late May rather than doubling overnight on June 1. This preserves accumulated algorithm learning and avoids the performance dip that typically follows a large budget jump.
Check your budget limits daily in late June. As competitor spend increases and CPCs rise through June, your existing daily budgets may start throttling. A campaign that was running comfortably at $150/day in May may hit its limit by June 15 and stop showing ads in the afternoon. Review the “Budget limited” indicator daily in the final two weeks of June and increase limits where needed.
Segment by intent, not just by keyword. EOFY buyers searching with commercial intent (“buy”, “quote”, “price”, “best”) convert significantly better than those in research mode (“how to”, “what is”, “guide”). If your campaign structure does not already separate these, add negative keywords to your high-bid campaigns to exclude research queries and concentrate budget on buyers closer to a decision.
Review automated recommendations carefully. Google typically pushes more aggressive automated recommendations during high-spend periods (EOFY, Christmas) — “increase target CPA”, “expand to new keywords”, “enable auto-applied recommendations”. These are surface-level prompts, not strategic advice. Review each one against your actual account data before applying. Many of them will cost you money without improving results.
The Performance Max problem during EOFY
If you are running Performance Max campaigns, EOFY requires specific attention.
PMax is designed for automated, broad-reach acquisition. During EOFY, when buyer intent is highly concentrated around specific signals (tax language, clearance pricing, EOFY-specific queries), PMax’s tendency to spread inventory across channels and match types can work against you. It may absorb increased EOFY budget while allocating it to Display and YouTube placements where EOFY intent does not exist, rather than concentrating on the high-intent Search queries that actually drive June conversions.
The practical approach: if you have both Standard Search campaigns and PMax running, consider temporarily reducing PMax budgets during the peak EOFY window (June 15–30) and shifting that budget to your proven Standard Search campaigns. PMax is harder to steer tactically; Standard Search campaigns give you direct control over keyword-level bid and budget allocation.
For a detailed breakdown of when PMax helps versus hurts, see Performance Max in Australia: when it works and when it doesn’t.
Common EOFY Google Ads mistakes
Waiting until June to prepare. By the time you update copy, add keywords, brief creative, adjust bids and test landing pages, you have lost the first two weeks of June — which are meaningful volume weeks. EOFY preparation should start in the second half of May.
Ignoring conversion lag. For service businesses with a multi-day consultation-to-sale cycle, a lead generated on June 29 may not convert until July 3. If your conversion window is set to 7 or 30 days, those conversions will be attributed to the EOFY campaign period in reporting. Do not confuse “conversions counted in June” with “conversions that completed in June” when evaluating campaign performance.
No June 30 cutoff in time-sensitive campaigns. If your EOFY campaigns are promoting a deadline-specific offer, add a campaign end date of June 30. Without this, the campaign continues running EOFY copy in July, when the offer is expired and the messaging is irrelevant. Google Ads allows campaign end dates at the campaign level — set them before the campaign goes live.
Dumping budget into underperforming campaigns. EOFY urgency sometimes leads to decisions like “let’s put more money in and see what happens”. Budget increases amplify what is already happening in a campaign. Before increasing spend, confirm your conversion tracking is set up correctly — additional budget fed into a misconfigured account will produce unreliable data and wasted spend. If a campaign has structural problems (poor landing page, wrong keywords, weak conversion tracking), increasing budget amplifies those problems and burns through the additional spend faster. Fix first, scale second.
Not updating landing pages. EOFY copy on the ad that lands on a generic homepage destroys the message match. If your ads reference EOFY pricing or tax deductibility, the landing page should confirm and extend that message immediately. This is not just a conversion issue — it is a Quality Score issue, which feeds back into CPC efficiency.
Post-EOFY: the first two weeks of July
July 1–14 is a period most advertisers mismanage. There are two things to do.
First, reset copy and keywords. EOFY-specific ad copy should be paused or swapped out on July 1. Buyers from this point are in the new financial year, and EOFY messaging is not just irrelevant — it signals that the business did not update its campaigns, which undermines credibility.
Second, expect a performance dip. The demand spike that fuelled June does not carry into July. Conversion volumes will drop, often sharply, in the first two weeks. This is normal and not a signal that something is broken. The mistake is reacting to the July dip by making structural changes to campaigns that were working well in May and June. Wait until mid-July when volume normalises before drawing conclusions from the data.
Budget adjustments should return to May levels (or below, for low-demand July categories) from July 1. There is no reason to maintain EOFY-level spend when EOFY demand no longer exists.
Frequently asked questions about EOFY Google Ads
When should I start my EOFY Google Ads campaigns?
Start preparing in the second half of May. Update ad copy, add EOFY-specific keywords and increase budgets incrementally from late May. By the time you get to June, the algorithm needs 1–2 weeks of data to optimise the new copy and bids. Campaigns launched in the final week of June will not have enough time to perform meaningfully.
Do CPCs really increase during EOFY?
Yes. Across most Australian verticals, CPCs in June are 15–25% higher than in April or May, driven by increased advertiser competition for the same searches. This does not mean EOFY is not worth advertising in — it means the return needs to justify the higher cost per click, which it does for industries with genuine EOFY demand but not for those without it.
Is Google Ads spend tax deductible for Australian businesses?
Yes, Google Ads spend is a deductible business expense in Australia for businesses and sole traders, provided the advertising is directly related to the business’s income-generating activities. This is one of the reasons EOFY drives a genuine demand spike: business owners actively look to deploy deductible spend before 30 June. Consult your accountant to confirm how it applies to your specific structure.
Should I use Performance Max for my EOFY campaigns?
With caution. PMax works best for e-commerce with strong product feeds and clear ROAS targets. For service businesses or lead generation, the lack of granular control over where EOFY budget is spent (Search vs Display vs YouTube) is a real risk during a time-limited window. If you have both PMax and Standard Search running, consider temporarily shifting more budget toward Standard Search for the peak June fortnight.
What should I do with Google Ads on 1 July?
Pause or update all EOFY-specific ad copy on July 1. Return budgets to May levels (or lower if July is seasonally soft for your industry). Expect a volume dip in the first two weeks of July — this is normal and not a signal to make structural changes. Wait until mid-July before evaluating post-EOFY performance.
For a deeper look at what the right monthly budget looks like in your specific industry, see how much you should spend on Google Ads in Australia.
Thinking about your EOFY budget or want a second opinion on your current campaign structure before June? Book a 30-minute call — no commitment, no generic advice.