How do you calculate ad budget pacing?
Compare spend to date with the plan to date: the budget spread evenly over the flight and counted up to today. A campaign 10 days into a 30-day, $30,000 flight should have spent $10,000. If it has spent $11,000 it is 10% overpacing; to land on budget it needs $19,000 ÷ 20 days = $950 a day from here.
Why pace against plan to date, not the full budget
Comparing spend so far with the whole month’s budget makes every campaign look underspent until the last day. Pacing only means something against what should have been spent by now. With a daily export the run rate is the average of the last 7 days, which is what the platform is doing now; without one it’s the average since the flight started.
Pace every campaign at once from an export
Switch to Upload an export and drop in a CSV or Excel file from Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn, TikTok, DV360, The Trade Desk, Taboola, Outbrain or any other platform. Any file with a date column and a spend or cost column works. The platform is detected from the column names, and each campaign can have its own budget to see which ones are drifting.
Gross vs net: why commission matters for pacing
Agencies usually quote clients a gross budget that includes commission, but ad platforms only ever see the net amount. On a 15% commission, a perfectly paced campaign compared against gross looks 15% underspent. Choose Gross and enter your commission, and the calculator paces against the net figure. To convert budgets on their own, use the agency commission calculator.
Daily budgets overspend by design
- Google Ads can spend up to 2× the average daily budget on a given day, and charges at most 30.4× it in a month.
- Meta can spend up to 75% more than a daily budget on some days, and no more than 7× it in a calendar week.
So a campaign can look overpaced on one day and be fine across the month. Lifetime budgets and mistakes in budget type are a bigger risk: check them before launch with the campaign setup checker. More on this in daily vs lifetime budgets and overspend and setup mistakes that break campaign pacing.
How to check campaign pacing
- Enter the budget. Type the budget for the flight and choose net (media only) or gross (including commission, with the commission %).
- Set the flight dates. Enter the start and end dates of the flight, usually a calendar month.
- Add spend so far. Type the spend to date and the last day it covers, or upload a daily export from your ad platform.
- Read the result. See whether spend is on track, over or under plan to date, the daily budget needed to land on target, and the projected end spend.
Frequently asked questions
What is budget pacing in advertising?
Budget pacing is how actual ad spend compares with what should have been spent by this point in the flight. A $30,000 monthly budget ten days into a 30-day month should have spent about $10,000. Spending much more is overpacing, which runs out of budget early; spending much less is underpacing, which leaves budget and results on the table.
How do I calculate the daily budget I need for the rest of the month?
Take the budget left (total budget minus spend to date) and divide it by the days remaining in the flight. With $18,000 left and 12 days to go, the combined daily budget should be $1,500. If your budget is gross, convert it to net first.
When should I worry about pacing?
This calculator flags a campaign as overpacing at 5% or more ahead of plan to date and underpacing at more than 10% behind. Overspend is flagged sooner because money spent can’t be recovered, while a small underspend usually catches up on its own.
Why does my campaign spend more than its daily budget?
Platforms treat a daily budget as an average. Google Ads can spend up to twice the average daily budget on a single day but charges no more than 30.4 times it in a month. Meta can spend up to 75% over a daily budget on some days but no more than seven times it in a calendar week. Pace against the month, not the day.
What is the difference between a gross and net media budget?
Gross is what the client is billed, including agency commission or fees. Net is what actually reaches the ad platforms. Comparing platform spend with a gross budget makes every campaign look underspent by the commission rate, so convert gross to net first.
Is my uploaded data safe?
Yes. The file is read by your browser and the figures are calculated on your device. Nothing is uploaded to or stored on PlanPulse’s servers.