The short answer
In Suggest only, every change waits for your approval. In Autonomous, Oppy can pause a keyword that kept spending with no conversion, past what your account's own numbers allow. It needs the monthly budget set first, and you can also cap what one change may move. Budget changes, negative keywords, structural changes, brand campaigns and tracking changes always wait for you.
Suggest only
Every finding waits for you to confirm it. Nothing reaches Google Ads until you do, and every applied change is written to the action log with who confirmed it. This is where every account starts.
Autonomous
Oppy applies a small set of changes on its own, inside your money limits, where the account has enough conversions to judge the change afterwards:
- Keyword pauses, on keywords that kept spending with no conversion, past what your account's own numbers allow. A paused keyword keeps its history and can come back.
Always waits for you
Budget raises and cuts, negative keywords, structural changes, new campaigns, brand campaigns and anything touching conversion tracking wait for a person in both modes. A negative blocks searches nobody has seen yet, so no one can measure afterwards whether it was right.
The money limits
The money limits of Autonomous mode Limit What it does Monthly budget agreed with the client What the account may spend in a month. Autonomous needs it: without it, nothing runs on its own. Every budget change is proposed against it, and none is made alone. Most one change can move Optional. The size above which any change needs your approval, whatever the mode. Amounts are in the account's own currency. Both are set per ad account, in Settings, Operator. They bound the changes Oppy makes, not Google's own pacing, which can spend up to twice a daily budget on a given day, nor changes made outside Optizads. Switching, and stopping
Change the mode any time in Settings, Operator. Switching back to Suggest only stops Oppy acting alone from that moment. Changes already applied stay in History, with who made them and when. To put one back, change it in Google Ads, or ask Oppy for a task that does.
Each ad account has its own mode and limits. An agency can keep a careful client in Suggest only while another runs in Autonomous.