October 24, 2017
In the midst of all of the AdWords updates—you know, the new AdWords experience and the expanding impact of Google Brain—Google made a sudden announcement at the beginning of October 2017. Campaigns can now potentially spend up to twice the set daily budget. Yes, you read that right.
What’s going on?
Google has always modeled delivery based on a calendar monthly budget. This allowed campaigns to spend slightly over budget on higher-traffic days. However, AdWords previously did not allow the system to go anywhere near as high as 100% over the daily budget.
Until now.
Google has updated their daily budget support article to reflect this major update. Check out the article to see their explanation of how the system manages advertisers’ budgets.
Here’s a brief example of how this update will actually look like for an account.
Is this a big deal?
Yes. This is an important change for advertisers--especially as we enter the busy holiday season.
Any daily budgets that are supposed to cap on certain days could start spending more. Also, if you have several daily budgets that are set higher than the actual monthly goal—this can happen if you expect to not hit budgets every day—you can overspend.
That’s why it’s so important to monitor budgets closely and ensure that your daily and monthly spend is on pace to hit goals. The folks over at Search Engine Land have a great breakdown of several campaign and budget scenarios and how advertisers can handle them.
Now what?
This is still a very new feature, so it’s too early to tell if this update will have a big impact on KPIs. Still, this is a feature that AdWords users cannot opt out of.
Make sure that you keep an eye on your budgets and make adjustments accordingly. Keep tabs on performance before and after this update to see if it made a notable impact on your campaigns.
P.S.: Don’t stress over this update. AdWords promises that they will credit any excess spend back to your account if campaigns spend more than the set monthly budget.
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Still have lingering questions about the AdWords daily budget update? Never fear. Tweet us @Perfect_Search.
Director, Search & Social Advertising
Eric Yarnik is a Northwestern University Alum who considers writing the Perfect Search Ping Pong Power Rankings Column to be one of his favorite tasks at work. If he had to pick one fictional character to be friends with, it’d have to be the one who lives in a pineapple under the sea.