Setting up strategy budget

• Long period: the media plan built specifically for the April.

• Short period: Flight campaigns for a 4-day promo, holiday campaigns, “warm-up” for events with a set date, campaigns with a capped budget for testing strategies and creatives.

The strategy will aim to maintain the budget for the period, spreading the funds over the specified time. The strategy can't exceed the set budget, but it can spend less. The budget can be underspent, which is usually a sign of a low CTR of the selected keywords, insufficient funds in the account, low maximum bid, or low CPA chosen.

Expenditures can vary day by day. For example, the strategy may initially spend below the daily average in the first few days, then increase expenditure in the subsequent days to meet the overall budget, or vice versa. This happens because the user online activity isn't uniform over time, so the strategy needs some time to refine forecasts. If you're using a period budget with a limit on CPA, cost revenue ratio, or CPC, the strategy first aims to achieve the set target, and your target bids might cap your budget expenditure.

Budget distribution depends on your time targeting settings. For instance, if you've limited ad impressions to five out of eight days in the period, the budget will be distributed only over the five days.

The minimum and maximum period range from 1 to 90 full days. This means you cannot set up a campaign to start and end today, but you can schedule it from tomorrow to tomorrow.

The strategy period sets the start and end dates of the campaign, including in campaigns that are part of a portfolio strategy.

When you want to spend the entire budget amount, enable the option “If you have unused budget — Continue impressions”. In this case, the campaign will continue to run until the budget expires, even if the period has already ended.

When the period has ended, you can update the dates and budget to reuse the same campaign. It's important that these adjustments are made in a timely manner so that the campaign doesn't stop for more than a day, and the strategy doesn't start losing the accumulated statistics it learns on.

The daily expenditure is calculated every day: the system estimates the remaining budget and multiplies it by the share of the current day in the remaining period. The daily expenditure in a pay-per-click strategy can't exceed the daily limit by more than 30%.

Let's say you have a campaign that you've set up to run for ten days. After three days, you've spent RUB 3000 out of RUB 10,000. The amount you have left for the next seven days is RUB 7000. The share of the current day in the remaining period is 1/7. The daily expenditure is RUB 1000. It can't be exceeded by more than 30%, meaning the system won't spend more than RUB 1300 in the current day.

The maximum possible budget expenditure per day in a pay-per-conversion strategy is 100% of the budget for the period. Payment for a conversion can be charged retroactively if the conversion occurred within 21 days of the ad click it was attributed to.

Minimum budget for a period is RUB 50 per day (values for other currencies).

In the "Maximum conversions" strategy, we recommend that the budget for a period be at least 10 ×  CPA . If you specify a period longer than a week, your budget should be enough for at least ten conversions each week.

The budget expenditure is reset if you change the strategy, limit type, or payment model on the first day of the period.

For example, you set a budget of RUB 10,000 from December 1 to 10. By midday on December 1, you had spent ₽500, and then changed the payment model. The budget will be reset. For the remaining period from midday on December 1 to the end of December 10, the campaign may spend up to ₽10,000. That is, in total from December 1 to 10, the expenditure can amount to up to ₽10,500.

If you want to change the strategy, limit type, or payment model within the active period (but not on the first day of the budget period), set up a new period.

For example, you set a budget of 10,000 rubles from December 1 to 10. By midday on December 5, you had spent ₽4500, and then decided to switch to the pay-per-conversion model.

Change to this model, set a new period from December 5 to 10, and define the budget:

• If you keep ₽10,000, then this amount will be set for the new period, and from midday on December 5 to December 10, the campaign will spend no more than ₽10,000.

  The maximum possible expenditure from December 1 to 10 will then be ₽14,500.

• If you leave the remaining amount (₽5500), then, from midday on December 5 to December 10, the campaign will spend no more than ₽5500. And in the entire period — from December 1 to 10 — it'll spend no more than ₽10,000.

Note that there may be a delay before the new budget settings replace the old ones. This means that the expenditure of the original budget might become higher than ₽4500 by the time the new settings take effect.

Other changes to the strategy don't result in the expenditure reset or a need to set a new period. For example, you can change the budget or reschedule the campaign end date.

In the "Maximum conversions" pay-per-click strategy with a limit on CPA or cost revenue ratio, you can set a minimum budget for a period. The algorithm will calculate the recommended value based on the specified parameters (for example, the number of days in the period), or you can set a custom value.