Manage budgets

Set a daily budget to control your spend each month

During campaign creation, you’ll set a daily budget to indicate the average amount you want to spend on your campaign each day over the course of a month. On days with opportunities to get more downloads, your spend may exceed your daily budget. But your monthly spend won’t be more than your daily budget times the average number of days in a calendar month — which is calculated as 30.4 days.

If, for example, you were to set a daily budget of $100.00 (U.S.), your total spend over the course of a month would be no more than $3040.00 (U.S.).

Your campaign will run continuously and will spend every month based on your daily budget, unless you pause it, remove it, or set an end date. If you set an end date, you won’t spend more than the total number of days in the campaign times your daily budget. If you don’t set an end date, your campaign spend will automatically extend to each new month based on your daily budget amount.

Learn how to further control costs with a budget order

If you have campaigns that were created using lifetime budget

Existing campaigns that used lifetime budget prior to June 2022 can switch to daily budget anytime from the Campaign Settings page. These campaigns can also continue to use lifetime budget, if preferred.

If you keep lifetime budget for a campaign

Your campaign will spend until your lifetime budget is exhausted or the campaign is paused, removed, or reaches its end date. Keep in mind that lifetime budgets can only be increased — not decreased. Daily budgets can be increased or decreased anytime.

If you use lifetime and daily budget together for
a campaign

Your campaign will spend each day based on your daily budget until your lifetime budget is exhausted. On the Recommendations page, you may see suggestions for how to optimize your daily budget.

If you switch from lifetime to daily budget

You won’t be able to use lifetime budget again for the same campaign. Daily budget will allow your campaign to run continuously and optimize spending on high-opportunity days.

If you duplicate a campaign that uses
lifetime budget

The new campaign will use daily budget regardless of whether it used lifetime budget before. All new campaigns, including those you’ve duplicated will only use daily budget.

If you increase a campaign’s lifetime budget

In the Lifetime Budget column on the Campaigns dashboard, you’ll see the cumulative total for the campaign since it was created.

How to switch a previously created campaign’s budget from lifetime
to daily

  1. From the Campaigns dashboard, click the name of the campaign with the budget you want to change.
  2. From the Ad Groups dashboard, click the Edit Campaign Settings link.
  3. Within the Budget section of your settings, select the radio button next to Daily.
  4. Enter the amount you’d like your campaign to spend each day.
  5. Click the Save button.

How to adjust your daily budget

  1. From the Campaigns dashboard, click the budget amount you want to edit in the Daily Budget column.
  2. Enter the new amount in the field.
  3. Click the checkmark to save your new amount.

You can also adjust your budget by clicking the Edit Campaign Settings link on the Ad Groups dashboard, editing the budget amount, and resaving your campaign.

Recalculate your monthly spend after adjusting your daily budget

Your monthly spend is based on the average number of days in a month (30.4) times your daily budget. If you change your daily budget mid-month, you’ll need to take that average into consideration when recalculating your spend.

For example, let’s say you increase your daily budget to $200.00 (U.S.) midway through September, leaving 15 additional spend days out of 30 in that month. Your spend calculation for the remaining days would be:

30.4 x (15/30) x 200 = $3,040.00

It’s also important to keep in mind that if you increase your budget, the adjustment will take effect the same day. But if you decrease it, the adjustment can only take effect beginning the next day.