Budget and pacing

this article provides an overview of line item budget and pacing settings budget and pacing are two of the most critical elements of a successful campaign they work together to ensure you spend your money effectively and achieve your goals think of it like a road trip your budget is the total amount of gas you have, and pacing is how you manage your speed to make sure you reach your destination without running out of fuel too soon budget the line item budget lets you to control how much is spent on this specific part of your campaign for example, a campaign might have a total budget of $100,000, but a specific line item that targets a niche audience with video ads might only have $10,000 of that total budget pacing towards spend or impressions you can set your line item to pace towards spend docid 0etw4mjkwqra4j jfzxnb or impressions docid 0etw4mjkwqra4j jfzxnb here's a high level overview of both \<font color="#f3f4f6">type\</font> \<font color="#f3f4f6">focus\</font> pacing toward spend deliver a specific dollar amount pacing toward impressions deliver a specific impression amount pacing towards spend pacing towards spend means the system watches how much money has been spent so far vs how much time has passed, and then automatically speeds up or slows down delivery to stay on track this ensures your line item uses its full budget smoothly and efficiently over the course of the flight dates example budget $30,000 flight length 30 days daily target = $1,000 per day if the campaign spends $950 on day 1 → the line item underspent (this can happen if targeting is too restrictive for a given spend goal $1050 on day 2 → the system recalculates the spend goal to catch up from the prior day's under delivery affect on flights when you select pacing towards spend, the flight section displays a spend cap column (see screenshot below) if you configure one flight, the spend cap defaults to the entire budget amount if you have more than one flight, the spend cap divides the budget based on the count of days in each flight (see screenshot below) you can adjust a flight's spend cap, but the total across flights must equal the budget amount a note about impression caps an impression cap lets you safeguard against exceeding a specific number of impressions for example, you want a flight to spend a thousand dollars, but you also don't want to exceed a certain number of impressions pacing towards impressions pacing towards impressions means the campaign is being managed to hit an impression goal based on the cpm you enter (see screenshot below) and the impression cap multiplier lets you set the impression cap higher than the goal (e g 110%), to allow for a discrepancy between the dsp impression data and ad server impression data example impression goal amount 1,000,000 flight length 10 days daily target 100,000 impressions if the line item delivers 140,000 on day 1 → delivering too quickly 60,000 on day 1 → delivering too slowly the system will automatically slow or increase delivery to align with the impression goal affect on flights the system populates the impression goal and impression cap based on the cpm you entered you can adjust these values, but the impression goals for all flights must total the pacing towards impression goal amount flight pacing flight pacing refers to how a campaign’s spend or impression delivery is distributed across flights it ensures the campaign doesn’t spend too fast or too slowly there are two options for flight pacing automatic there are two options for automatic pacing even and ahead both are detailed below manual you'll enter a daily impression goal, and then the campaign manager (not the system) is responsible for actively adjusting delivery throughout the campaign’s flight to keep spend and impressions on track even pacing even pacing is the most straightforward the flight budget, or impression goal amount, is divided by the total number of flight days—for example, $60,000 budget / 60 days = $1,000 per day once daily spend reaches $1,000, it stops spending until the next day note that some days the line item might not spend the entire $1,000 in a day/daily impression delivery, which means you can end up with unspent budget underspend from one day will be rolled into the spend goals, but to avoid under pacing we recommend pacing ahead example pacing towards spend budget $30,000 flight length 30 days daily spend $1,000 example pacing towards impressions impression goal amount 3,000,000 flight length 30 days daily impressions delivery 100,000 pacing ahead pacing ahead is a good option if your priority is to prevent a flight from underspending it works by spending a little more than 100% of the daily goal each day the result is that your flight continues to spend each day, but at a slower rate towards the end take a look at the example below example your flight needs to deliver $60,000 in 60 days you set the pacing ahead to 115% here's the formula for calculating pacing ahead the total remaining budget is divided by the days left in the flight multiply that amount by 115% this gives you the total spend for that day subtract that total spend from the budget and that gives you the remaining budget for the following day here's how the platform would perform this daily calculation based on pacing ahead budget = $3,000 flight = 30 days day 1 budget for 30 days is $3,000 $3,000 ÷ 30 days = $100 $100 x 115% = $115 (day 1 spend) $3,000 $115 = $2,885 (remaining budget) day 2 remaining budget for 29 days is $2,885 $2,885 ÷ 29 days = $99 48 $99 48 x 115% = $114 41 (day 2 spend) $2,885 $114 41 = $2,770 59 (remaining budget) day 3 remaining budget for 28 days is $2,770 59 $2,770 59 ÷ 28 days = $98 95 $98 95 x 115% = $113 79 (day 3 spend) $2,770 59 $113 79 = $2,656 80 (remaining budget) day 4 and so on your flight will deliver a smaller amount on the last day this is intentional to prevent unspent budget this chart provides a visual of the daily spend across the 30 day flight