Thanks, Google! We’ve always wanted to spend up to twice our daily budget on any given day. To add something extra special to the announcement, we all got to read about it on Twitter as it rolled out across accounts. Even at the recent agency partner event in New York, they kept their lips sealed. Bravo!
Why Google, why?
According to our Google Reps:
This update is based on feedback from advertisers that they would like to improve achievement of pre-defined campaign KPIs. Due to the fluctuating nature of Search and other auction channels, a regular feature request was the need for a mechanism to capture spikes and seasonality to drive stronger results. As a result, we are relaxing overdelivery rules to allow advertisers to counteract any under delivery of KPIs, like conversions, so the campaign can more effectively get back on track to campaign target metrics.
What if you change a campaign’s budget or status?
- If you adjust daily budget amount in the middle of a billing month: the monthly charging limit (30.4 times daily budget) won’t be used, although the daily limit of 200% of average daily budget will still apply. Let’s say an advertiser has a daily budget of $10 for the first day, and then sets $15 for the second day. That advertiser could be charged $20 on the first day and $30 on the second day. However the probability of that happening is supposedly low. See HC article for more details.
- If my campaign does not run for a full month: for campaigns that are paused in the middle of the month or that otherwise don’t run for the full month, an advertiser can spend up to 2.0x their daily budget on any given day (however the 30.4 rule does not apply). The target budget amount used for the billing cycle is the number of days campaign run, times daily budget for those days.
Where do we go from here?
Keep a close eye on daily & weekly spend, leaving budgets as is until more data is available. If some campaigns start overspending too quickly, take a look at the lead volume and quality before making drastic adjustments.
We would love to just opt out, but it’s unfortunately not an option (we checked). Lucky for us, we are very diligent at daily and weekly budget checks to ensure our pacing and budget allocations are on point for our clients.