Google Ads: How to Plan For PPC Spending

Google Ads Campaign Budgets

Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, allows you to set an average daily budget for your campaigns, with the flexibility to change your Google Ads campaign budget at any time. Your average daily budget is the average amount you’d like to spend each day over the course of the month.

Your spending may vary each day, but you will never pay more than your monthly spending limit. This is the average daily budget you set, multiplied by the average number of days in a month. On days when your ads are likely to produce more traffic, you may spend up to 2 times your average daily budget. Those days are balanced by days when your spending is below your average daily budget.

If you’re creating a campaign with a specific start and end date, you can also set a total budget for the entire duration of the campaign. Currently, campaign total budgets are only available for video campaigns.

How to Determine Your Average Daily Budget

With Google Ads, you choose an average daily budget for each campaign based on your advertising goals and the general amount you're comfortable spending each day.

Example

Let's say you normally spend $304 per month on advertising. To figure out your average daily budget, you'd divide $304 by 30.4 and would get an average daily budget of $10.

Using this example, here's how you'd figure out your average daily budget:
304 / 30.4 = $10 per day (Monthly budget / Average number of days per month = average daily budget)

You can also create shared budgets, which allow you to allocate budget across multiple campaigns.

When to Use a Campaign Total Budget

When you already know how much you’d like to spend on your entire campaign, you can set a campaign total budget. Currently, campaign total budgets are only available for video campaigns with a specific start and end date. You’ll have the option to select “Campaign Total Budget” when you create a new video campaign. Keep in mind that you cannot change the budget type once a campaign is created. 

Google Ads will spend your total budget evenly over the duration of your campaign while taking into account higher and lower traffic days to optimize your campaign’s performance. 

Example: your video campaign gets fewer views on Mondays and Tuesdays, and more views on weekends. Google Ads will optimize performance by spending more on days when your video is likely to get more views while keeping your overall budget goals on track.

With a campaign total budget, you will only be billed up to the amount you enter for a campaign, even if Google Ads serves more views or impressions than your budget allows.

Need Support? We’ve Got You

Blue Sky Marketing is a highly-experienced team that knows the ins and outs of Google Ads and we hold Google’s top-tier of Partnership status, Google Premier Partner. If you need help building and executing your Google Ads strategy, reach out. Let’s talk about you.

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