Having an effective way to manage an advertising budget has long been an important yet often difficult task when managing a Google Ads campaign. When running promotions that need immediate attention to ensure maximum impact, such as product launches, sales events, or short-lived seasonal campaigns, there is a constant need for nearly daily monitoring of the daily-paced budgets associated with each campaign budget.
However, that is about to change as Google has introduced a new budget option for Google Ads called Campaign Total Budgets (CTB) that takes the guesswork out of when to spend your ad dollars while still providing you with budget control and predictability.
Traditionally, Google Ads utilizes the average daily budget method, where advertisers set a daily spend amount, and Google will spread the advertising budget across the month. This method works well for most regular campaigns but not so well for campaigns that have fixed beginning and ending dates or are not always on during a specified time frame.
The campaign total budget option was created to provide advertisers with the ability to set one total budget for their campaign rather than a daily limit for their campaign duration. For example, if an advertiser has a flash sale for only three days and wants to spend $3000 during that time period, they can set their campaign total budget to $3000 rather than a $1000 daily budget.
How Campaign Total Budgets Work
Campaign total budgets automatically distribute advertising expenditures by utilizing campaign data from historical performance, along with projected ad placement opportunities over the duration of the campaign.
Spending is not controlled through daily limits; however, there is rapid pacing across all days of the campaign in order to ensure that the full funding amount is utilized before the end of the campaign date without exceeding any spending limit.
Automatic pacing will vary the allocation of daily spend based upon where market conditions dictate higher dollar amounts spent for each high-value day and lesser dollar amounts spent for each lower-value day.
For instance, during a ten-day sale, Google’s automated algorithms will monitor the number of potential customers looking to purchase and conversion probability rates of sales through conversion data analytics.
If you need to exceed your projected daily expenditure limits on some days during your sale but not on others, Google’s automated systems will calculate an adjusted daily budget so that you will achieve your total budget goal without requiring any manual adjustments to your budgets.
It is also important to know that an advertiser will never pay more than the total budget established for a particular campaign, regardless of the allocation of daily expenditure changes throughout the entire life of the campaign. The campaign budget-setting process enables advertisers to budget their total spend within an acceptable range of expectations so as not to exceed their budget or incur a financial loss due to loss of flexibility regarding future ad spend allocations.
Why Campaign Total Budgets Matter
Marketers running campaigns that have a limited duration and have a specific objective benefit from this development in many ways. It eliminates one of the most significant pain points in advertising: manual budget management.
Campaign Total Budget was created to find an ideal balance for managing spending for the duration of the campaign across all ad units in all geographies using smart spending by pacing the campaign against the total spend on the campaign for the duration.
Examples of when advertisers may be able to take advantage of campaign total budgets include:
- Launching a product
- Limited time offers
- Seasonal promotions
By implementing a campaign total budget for advertisers, they can eliminate daily manual budget adjustments, instead allowing Google’s machine learning technology to automate the pace at which their spending runs over the entire period. Coming to an end, for businesses that frequently run time-bound or promotional advertising campaigns, this feature can deliver better budget utilization, less manual tinkering, and more strategic focus, a combination many advertisers have been waiting for.
