Budgets can be specified in both your insertion orders' IO Settings and your line items' Settings, and can be set in terms of an amount of "revenue" to spend or a number of impressions to purchase. Please note, both your insertion order and the line items contained within must use the same type of budget. (For example, if your insertion order's budget is set in terms of an amount of money, the line items in that insertion order can't have budgets set in terms of impressions.)
What's pacing?
Pacing is the rate at which a budget is spent. Display & Video 360 has several pacing options which you can use to control how quickly your line items and insertion orders spend their budgets over different periods of time, such as a day, a budget segment, or a flight.
Which pacing setting should I use?
Use "ASAP" pacing to spend quicklyASAP pacing is best if your priority is to spend all of your budget quickly and aren't worried about saving money for later. ASAP pacing can also be effective for line items that are targeted to more limited inventory, since there isn't much of a risk of spending too quickly.
ASAP pacing at the insertion order-level may result in spending your entire flight budget immediately.
Even pacing is best if your priority is to spend a consistent amount of money every day and your inventory availability is consistent day to day. Keep in mind that if there is less inventory or more competition toward the end of your campaign, you might not spend your full budget.
Ahead pacing is best if your priority is to spend your entire budget over an entire flight, without risking potentially underspending. This pacing attempts to spend slightly faster than evenly, up to 120% of your prorated spending target. This is done to make sure you've spent your entire budget by the end of your flight, and is updated in real time.
Effects of various settings
Both insertion orders and line items have a variety of pacing settings that can be combined to have the following effects:
| Pacing setting | Daily target | Hourly pacing behavior |
|---|---|---|
|
Daily ASAP |
Daily amount specified by the advertiser |
ASAP (10× the "even" pacing behavior) |
|
Daily Even |
Daily amount specified by the advertiser |
Even (scaled to inventory availability) |
|
Flight ASAP |
Entire remaining flight budget |
ASAP (10× the "even" pacing behavior) |
| Flight ASAP + "unlimited" budget (line item) |
Budget and pacing setting are driven by the insertion order's settings |
ASAP (10× the "even" pacing behavior) |
|
Flight Even |
Remaining flight budget / Days remaining |
Even (scaled to inventory availability) |
|
Flight Even |
(Remaining flight budget / Hours remaining) * Hours serving per day |
Even (scaled to inventory availability) |
|
Flight Ahead |
1.2 × "Flight Even" daily target |
Even (scaled to inventory availability) |
"Daily target" is the distribution of a budget across each day in a flight. "Hourly pacing" is the rate at which money is spent within each hour a line item is active.
Considerations
- Budget factors impacting "even" line item pacing: While an insertion order can be set to use "even" pacing, the actual pacing of line items can be impacted by your budget. For instance, an insertion order’s line items may not pace evenly if they are competing with other line items for the same budget.
- "ASAP" line item pacing: To use "Daily ASAP" or "Flight ASAP" line item pacing, make sure the insertion order containing the line item uses "Daily ASAP" or "Flight ASAP" pacing as well.
- "ASAP" insertion order pacing: If an insertion order uses "ASAP" pacing, you may exhaust your entire flight budget very quickly. Use this setting with caution unless your targeting is relatively narrow.
- Rapid spending on the first day of "Even" line items: On the first day an "even" line item is active, Display & Video 360 may spend your daily budget in large bursts while it's learning how to evenly distribute spend over the entire flight of your line item.
- Rapid spending/overpacing at campaign launch: In general, the smaller the budget and the greater the inventory available to spend on, the higher the chance of overpacing and rapidly overspending, as bidding may happen faster than the budget system can recognize the amount that has been spent.
- Overspending: Display & Video 360 may overspend in cases where a line item's bid is very high and/or targeting is very broad. In this circumstance, a line item may win many impressions in the same second, and the bidding may happen faster than the budget system can account for the money being spent.
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Insertion order budget cap: Similar to insertion order-level frequency caps, an insertion order's budget will have the effect of capping the combined spending of the individual line items contained within the IO.
For instance, say you have an insertion order with 3 line items. The insertion order's budget is $500, but each line item has a budget of $200.
In this example, the aggregate spending of all of the line items in the insertion order will be capped by the insertion order's budget of $500, regardless of the budgets set for each individual line item.
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Insertion order budget allocation: If an insertion order's daily budget is lower than the sum of the daily budgets of the line items in the insertion order, Display & Video 360 will allocate the insertion order's budget across the line items so that each line item receives a budget that's proportional to its daily target (relative to the daily targets of the other line items).
For example, if an insertion order has a daily budget of $15, and contains 3 line items, each with the same daily budget, each line item will be allocated a daily budget of $5.
Example 1 Daily budget Weight Effective daily budget Insertion order $15 n/a $15 Line item 1 $10 .33 $5 Line item 2 $10 .33 $5 Line item 3 $10 .33 $5 As a second example, if an insertion order has a daily budget of $20, and contains 3 line items with different daily budgets, each line item will be allocated budgets proportionally.
Example 2 Daily budget Weight Effective daily budget Insertion order $20 n/a $20 Line item 1 $5 .17 $3.40 Line item 2 $10 .33 $6.60 Line item 3 $15 .5 $10 -
Unlimited line item budgets: As an alternative to specifying a target amount to spend, you can give line items an "unlimited" budget, which will let the line item attempt to spend as much as it can before exhausting the insertion order's budget for the day or flight.
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Actual spend: You are responsible for the actual cost of your campaign, even if the actual cost surpasses the budget cap(s) that you set. Sometimes, your campaign may spend a larger portion of your budget on days with higher traffic, and the actual cost of your campaign can exceed your daily budget cap. Impression volume can fluctuate for many reasons: seasonality, holidays or other targeting criteria. When there is a high volume of bid requests, it may take additional time for the actual spend to be recorded and reconciled with your budget cap(s), and the budget cap(s) may be exceeded during this reconciliation time.
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Budget segments: If a line item or insertion order uses budget segments, your pacing setting will control how quickly each segment's budget is spent.
Frequently asked questions
How is the daily spend target calculated?Display & Video 360 calculates a line item or insertion order's daily spent target by first dividing the total remaining budget by the number of days remaining in the flight (or days remaining in the budget segment, if you're using scheduled budgets). Then, Display & Video 360 will try to spend 120% of the average daily spend target, as described in the previous sentence, each day. This is calculated as:
For example, for a 10-day flight with a budget of $10,000, Display & Video 360 will try to spend $1000 on the first day:
If Display & Video 360 was able to spend this $1000, $9000 will be left in the budget. On the second day, Display & Video 360 will try to spend $1000, based on the following formula:
However, if Display & Video 360 wasn't able to spend any of its budget on the first day, the second day's daily spend target will be $1111, based on the following formula:
Since Display & Video 360 calculates daily spend targets by dividing your budget remaining by the days remaining, your daily spend targets are recalculated considering your historical ability to spend your daily spend targets.
This means that pacing will adjust its daily spend target based on the day-to-day fluctuations in the supply of inventory.
Yes. Evenly-paced line items which are affected by daypart targeting (either at the line item or insertion order-level) will pace their spend by taking into account any daypart targeting.
Line items that pace "ASAP" don't have daily spend targets, but are constrained by the overall daily spend target of their insertion order.