About overdelivery and your average daily budget

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Internet traffic fluctuates. When fewer people are online and your ads show less, the system will automatically adjust by showing them more during peak traffic times to maximize visibility. This way your ads are served to a larger audience when more users are active.

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This section explains your average daily budget, monthly spending, and overdelivery.

Average daily budget

You might see that your advertising costs each day are a little higher or lower than what you set for your average daily budget. This happens because over a month-long billing cycle, you won't be charged more than your average daily budget would've allowed for over 30.4 days. These charges are due to clicks and impressions your ads receive as they run.

Basically, 30.4 is the average number of days in a month (365 days in a year / 12 months = 30.417). Google multiplies your average daily budget by this number so we know what your budget should be over the course of a month.

Overdelivery

For campaigns not focused on conversions, we may allow up to 2 times the daily clicks in a day than your average daily budget allows. This is called overdelivery. If this results in costs exceeding your expected monthly budget, we'll automatically credit you for those extra costs.

For more information, check out our FAQ.

Example

Let's say you set your budget at $5 USD a day and your billing cycle is 30 days. Over the course of the month, you notice that your charges vary. Some days you're charged $2 USD, on others you're charged $10 USD. At the end of the month, your charges won't exceed $152 USD (that's 30.4 multiplied by your $5 USD budget).

So even though your campaign costs tipped above and fell below your $5 USD budget from day to day, at the end of the month, you're still charged no more than what you budgeted.

How it works

Our system optimizes your ad delivery throughout the month, taking into account daily fluctuations in internet traffic and the likelihood of clicks and conversions. On days when traffic is higher and there's a greater potential for engagement, your daily spend might exceed your average daily budget. This "overdelivery" is designed to help you take advantage of high-potential moments and is offset by lower spending on other days, ensuring your total monthly charges won’t exceed your average daily budget multiplied by the number of days in the month.

While you can’t opt-out of this overdelivery or set a specific daily spending cap using your average daily budget, your overall monthly charging limit remains unchanged. This approach allows us to maximize your ad visibility and potential results during peak times. Currently, setting a fixed monthly budget within Google Ads isn't available, however, you can effectively manage your monthly spend by calculating it based on your average daily budget. Learn more about campaign budgets.

Check for overdelivery

Sometimes we deliver over your monthly budget. In those cases, we'll credit the overdelivery cost back.

To check your overdelivery credits, follow these steps:

In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
Click the Insights and reports drop down in the section menu.
Click Report editor.
In the "Billing" section of the "Template gallery" card, select the Billed cost report.

You’ll see a report that lists served and billed costs for each campaign. To calculate overdelivery, subtract “Billed cost” from “Served cost.” To perform these calculations in bulk, select the download icon in the top right of the report and save as a .csv file.

By default, the data is displayed daily and sorted by served cost. If you wish to see for a certain date range, remove the “Day” filter and set a date range in the upper right section above the table.

Frequently asked questions about overdelivery

If my campaigns aren’t limited by budget, will overdelivery affect my spend?

If your campaign isn’t limited by budget, your monthly spend will remain the same. There are no changes to how campaigns that aren’t limited by budget work.

If your campaigns are limited by budget for one or more days in the month, then you’ll see some variation in your daily spend. However, you’ll never be charged more than the monthly charging limit. Flexibility in your budget helps balance days with low traffic by increasing spend on days that are likely to drive more clicks and conversions.

Learn more about what it means to be limited by budget.

What happens if I adjust my average daily budget during the month?

There’s no change to how adjusting your budget impacts what you’ll be charged for the rest of the month. As before, when you change your budget, your spend for the rest of the month won’t exceed your new average daily budget multiplied by the remaining days in the month.

For example, let’s say you set an average daily budget of $10 USD on the first day of September, and you change it to $20 USD on day 16. For the first 15 days of the month, your spend will be capped by your monthly charging limit of $10 USD * 30 (number of days in September). After changing your average daily budget to $20 USD, your spend for the rest of the month will be $20 USD multiplied by the remaining 15 days.

For the first 15 days of the month, your spend may be more than half your monthly charging limit. This is because spend may exceed your average daily budget on some of those days. However, as soon as you change your budget, you won’t be charged more than $20 USD multiplied by the remaining days in the month. If you already had ad spend on September 16 before you changed your budget, your total spend from September 16-30 could be slightly higher than $300 USD.

Learn more about Why daily costs might exceed your average daily budget.

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About overdelivery and your average daily budget

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