Budget pacing
Budget pacing compares how fast an account is spending with how fast it should spend to land on the monthly plan, so you can adjust before month-end.
In the platformBudget
Budget report
Budget pacing compares how fast an account is spending with how fast it should spend to land on the monthly plan, so you can adjust before month-end.
If you plan to spend $3,000 this month, by day 15 you'd expect about half of it gone. Spend faster and the money may run out before month-end, often on your best days. Spend slower and planned reach goes unused. The platforms manage their own daily and monthly limits, so pacing against your plan, across campaigns and platforms, is your job.
Where you'll see it
Google Ads has no pacing dashboard, but the Budget report shows a campaign's daily spend against its budget, with a month-to-date view: in the Campaigns table, click the budget value and open "View report". Account-level budgets and spend limits are under Billing. Meta shows amount spent per campaign and, for lifetime budgets, the schedule end. TikTok shows spend against budget at the campaign and ad group levels.
Example
- Planned by day 12 of 30 ($3,000 a month)
- $1,200
- Actually spent: a 130% pace
- $1,560
- Month-end if the pace holds: $900 over
- $3,900
To land on $3,000, the last 18 days need to average ($3,000 − $1,560) ÷ 18 = $80 a day.
Do
- Check pace mid-month, while you can still act
- Add up all platforms against one plan
- Correct overspend in small steps
Don't
- Wait for month-end
- Forget that Google can spend up to 2x the daily budget in one day
- Make one sharp budget cut that disrupts Smart Bidding