Pacing, budgets and frequency caps
What actually limits spend and repeat views on a line item, what the Pacing setting does, and what the pacing and flight alerts mean.
Four things limit how fast a line item delivers and how often a household sees it: its own budgets, its campaign's total budget, its frequency caps, and your wallet. This article says what each one does and does not do.
Budgets
Set a Total Budget ($) and a Daily Budget ($) on the line item, on the Basic tab.
- The line item stops serving when its spend reaches either number. It resumes the next day if only the daily budget was reached.
- The campaign's Total Budget ($) is a cap on all its line items together. Once their combined spend reaches it, every line item in the campaign stops, including ones with budget of their own left. Paused line items' past spend counts too. It does not reset, so raise it or end the campaign.
- Leave a line item's budgets empty and only the campaign's total budget and your wallet limit it.
- Spend is checked as impressions are billed, so a line item or campaign can finish slightly over a limit.
- The campaign's daily budget and an order's budgets do not stop spend. They are records.
The Pacing setting
The Pacing (for alerts) choice on the Frequency & Pacing tab (even, front load or as fast as possible) does not slow or speed delivery. A line item with budget left bids on every request it qualifies for, until a budget is reached. The setting only changes what LtvAdx compares your spend against when it decides whether to send you a pacing alert.
To spread spend across the flight, set a Daily Budget ($) of roughly your total divided by the number of days.
Frequency caps
Open the Frequency & Pacing tab. A cap of 0 means no cap.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Max Impressions and Per Window (hours) | Stop showing this line item to a household after this many impressions inside the window. |
| Daily Cap | Most impressions of this line item to one household per day. |
| Weekly Cap | Most impressions of this line item to one household per week. |
How caps behave:
- A cap counts impressions of that one line item. Two line items for the same brand do not share a count.
- A window opens at the household's first counted impression and closes when it ends. A daily cap is 24 hours from that impression, not a calendar day. The longest window is 30 days.
- Caps apply to households LtvAdx can identify. A viewer the publisher could not identify, or one served contextually after opting out, has nothing to count against and is not capped.
- Impressions are counted when they are recorded, so a household can occasionally go one or two over a cap if requests arrive close together.
- If a cap cannot be read, the ad is allowed rather than blocked.
For planning how many times to reach a household, see Reach and frequency.
Pacing and flight alerts
Alerts go to the owners, admins, managers and analysts on your account. They appear in the bell and in Alerts. See Alerts.
| Alert | When it appears | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Over-pacing | Spend is above 120% of where your plan says it should be. | The budget will run out early. Lower the Daily Budget, or raise the Total Budget if you want to keep going. |
| Under-pacing | Spend is below 80% of plan, from the second day of the flight. | Check the delivery path. Common causes are a bid below channel prices, tight targeting, or a low wallet. |
| Flight ending | The flight ends in 2 days or fewer and less than 90% of the budget is spent. | Extend the end date, or raise the bid if you want the rest of the budget used. |
| Zero delivery | The line item has been active more than a day with no impressions at all. | Follow Why a campaign is not delivering. |
Pacing alerts compare spend with the line item's Total Budget ($). A line item with no Total Budget has nothing to measure against, so it gets no over-pacing or under-pacing alerts. A zero delivery alert still appears if it delivers nothing. A line item set to as fast as possible gets no pacing alerts either.
For agencies
Set budgets and caps in the client's account: select Open account on the client's row in Managed Advertisers. Compare delivery and spend for all clients in Client Reports.