Budget & Schedule

Feature Deep Dive: Budget & Bidding

Budget Configurations & Locks

While you can typically choose between a Lifetime or Daily budget via the dropdown menu, your configuration options may be locked based on your initial campaign-level settings:

• Ad Group Budget: If your overarching campaign was built with the initial selection set to "Ad Group Budget," the Lifetime budget option will be permanently locked. In this setup, your lifetime budget automatically equals your designated ad group budget.
• Multi-Period Budgets (Time Periods): If you wish to allocate specific budget amounts to different dates within a single ad group, select “Add more” below the first timeframe row. This allows you to define distinct date ranges and unique budget amounts for each period.

Bidding Mechanics & CPM Minimums

Enter a manual bid price that meets or exceeds the platform's baseline floor for your chosen media channel and creative asset type. The mandatory minimum bid prices are structured as follows:

Feature Deep Dive: Budget Deliverability

To guide your planning, the right side of your screen displays a persistent, real-time data estimation engine and deliverability health sidebar. This tool monitors your configuration across multiple builder steps (Location & Audience, Placements, and Budget & Schedule) against live marketplace inventory to predict delivery success before your campaign launches.

Map Interface

As you input targeted location parameters, the mapping interface generates a visual overlay of your active reach:

• The Blue Coverage Zone: The map applies a blue shade over the targeted geographic areas.
• Signal Projections vs. Rigid Borders: The platform does not draw fixed, rigid boundary lines. Instead, the blue coverage visualizes real-time signals where GroundTruth is actively receiving ad requests, illustrating a general footprint of your target zone.

Daily Impressions Meter

This meter compares the total Available marketplace inventory against the estimated impressions your current budget can secure (Budgeted):

• Available Impressions (Blue): The estimated daily impression capacity based on your selected targeting tactics. This updates fluidly based on open marketplace volume.
• Budgeted Impressions (Green): The number of impressions required each day to fully spend your budget. (For multi-period budgets, this value is automatically calculated based on the active timeframe period.)

💡 How Pricing Shifts Scale: If your total budget remains fixed and you increase your manual Bid Price (e.g., raising a mobile display bid from $3.50 to $5.00), your daily budgeted impression target will drop accordingly. While a higher bid secures fewer total impressions for the same dollar amount, it makes your individual bids significantly more competitive in live programmatic auctions.

Budget Deliverability Scores

This metric gauges how likely your budget is to spend fully based on your current targeting restrictions and bid price. It acts as an automated, pre-launch health check categorized into three scores:

• Excellent: Your parameters are fully optimized. Your chosen targeting footprint is broad enough, and your bid price is competitive enough, to easily secure programmatic auction wins and fully utilize your budget.
• Good: Your setup is healthy, though minor marketplace constraints exist. The campaign is highly likely to fulfill its budget, but it has less room to absorb sudden competitive auction spikes.

• Poor: The system detects a severe delivery bottleneck. Your campaign faces a high risk of under-pacing due to overly restrictive targeting or uncompetitive bidding.

  

Best Practices for Budgeting & Scheduling

• Never Bid Below the Floor: Always ensure your manual bid accounts for your creative type (such as raising your bid to $8.00 if you switch from a mobile display banner to an in-app video asset). Bidding too close to the absolute minimum can cause your campaign to lose highly competitive live auctions.
• Review the Deliverability Health Early: Check the sidebar health meter before clicking save. If your targeting layers are highly restrictive, raising your bid slightly above the minimum floor is the fastest way to stabilize delivery.

Troubleshooting & FAQs

1. How do I know which Budget Type to select? The budget setting acts as a cost control tool, limiting the amount spent on showing your ads. You'll need to select between Ad Group Budgets, Campaign Budget, or Daily Budget:
   • Ad group budgets allow you to set a separate, specific budget for each ad group within a campaign, offering the most granular control over spend for individual targeting tactics. You have the option to later convert these individual ad group budgets into a single Campaign Budget.
   • Campaign budget is a single budget set once at the campaign level, applied to the entire lifetime of the campaign and shared across all associated ad groups. Note: Once saved, you cannot revert to Ad Group or Daily Budget settings.
   • Daily budget option is available as a secondary setting under Ad Group Budgets setup, allowing you to set a maximum amount to spend each day, at the ad group level. Note: Once enabled, this setting cannot be disabled.
2. Can I change a campaign from a Daily Budget to a Lifetime Budget after it launches? Budget pacing models are structurally locked once saved to prevent pacing imbalances or rapid over-spending. If your campaign settings have permanently locked your budget type due to a "Campaign Budget" configuration, you will need to create a new ad group from scratch to apply a different budgeting structure.
3. What happens to my pacing if I set a Lifetime Budget for a very short flight duration? If your flight duration spans only a few days, the system will aggressively pace your spending to ensure your full lifetime budget is utilized before the end date. Keep a close eye on the Daily Impressions Meter to ensure there is enough available marketplace volume to absorb that compressed delivery window safely.
4. Why is my Budget Deliverability meter blank or unpopulated? The deliverability forecasting engine requires active data inputs to calculate market constraints. The meter will automatically populate as soon as your Budget, Flight Dates, and Bid Price fields are completely filled out with valid amounts.
5. If I raise my bid price, will my ad group spend more money than my set budget? No. Your budget cap is an absolute financial guardrail. Raising your bid price simply means you are telling the system you are willing to pay more for individual premium impressions. While a higher bid price might reduce the total number of impressions you purchase for that budget, it ensures you win more competitive auctions and helps your campaign spend its budget fully.
6. My deliverability meter shows “Poor.” How can I improve its health?
   • Raise Your Bid Price: If your bid is sitting too close to the channel's minimum floor, you may be losing live auctions to higher-bidding competitors. Increasing your bid makes your ad group significantly more competitive.
   • Remove Compounded Filters: Look back at Step 4 (Placements) and Step 3 (Location & Audience). If you have layered restrictive demographics and tight publisher app categories on top of a small geographic area, remove a few filters to broaden your eligible pool.
   • Expand Your Location Targeting: If you are using real-time Target On-Premise or tight ZIP code boundaries, consider widening your radius or switching to Target by Audience to catch qualified devices over a wider geographic footprint.