Ad schedule
An ad schedule sets the days and hours when a campaign's ads can run, in the account's time zone, so you stop paying for clicks you can't serve.
In the platformBudget
Ad schedule
An ad schedule sets the days and hours when a campaign's ads can run, in the account's time zone, so you stop paying for clicks you can't serve.
A schedule (often called dayparting) helps when results depend on time: no one answers the phone at night, the store is closed on Saturday, or the team can't handle leads over a holiday. Outside the schedule, ads stop. A budget-limited campaign then spends its daily budget within the open hours.
Where you'll see it
In Google Ads, open a campaign and go to Ad schedule to add day and time ranges. Times follow the account's time zone, set when the account was created. With manual bidding you can add bid adjustments per time slot; Smart Bidding ignores those adjustments but still respects the schedule. On Meta, "Run ads on a schedule" works only with a lifetime budget. TikTok offers dayparting in the ad group settings.
Worked exampleA clinic's night hours, $1,500 a month
| Hours | Spend | Leads | CPA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Night, 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. | $300 | 2 | $150 |
| Day | $1,200 | 40 | $30 |
Running ads only from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. would likely move most of that $300 into daytime, where leads cost about a fifth as much. That is an estimate until the new schedule has run for a few weeks.