Taming Google Budgets (+ Helpful Optimization Tips)

Managing budgets inside of Google Ads can be super confusing.

Here’s the breakdown of how average daily budgets work — plus some helpful optimization tips to make the most of your ad spend budget.

The term “average daily budget” speaks to the way this number is used. You’re setting a budget amount for each ad campaign on a per-day basis, but it’s really defining the amount of money you’re comfortable spending each month (hence the “average”).

Google will optimize your spend for days of the month when you’re more likely to see performance.

Search traffic can experience extreme ebbs and flows, so this approach puts your campaigns in a position to be able to contend with those swings in traffic availability.

Some days you’ll fall below and other days you’ll go over, but…

You should never pay more than your daily spending limit (2X avg. daily budget) or your monthly spending limit (30.4X avg. daily budget).

Google provides you with a budget report that allows you to see your budget pacing as well as previous changes to your budget and how those changes may have impacted performance.

When you’re updating your average daily budget, you’ll see the following link: View budget report.

In my experience, most people (especially newbies) spend just enough money to piss themselves off but never enough to really see whether or not Google can work for them.

Google allows you to create shared budgets that you can spread across multiple campaigns. This allows Google to allocate spend based on performance (or perceived performance).

Be careful about relying on this too much.

Google massively over reports the bottom of the funnel due to attribution and visibility issues.

While you can set and edit your average daily budget at any time, be careful about making budget changes too often.

Even small changes can reset the learning algorithm significantly. You’re changing a major variable in terms, and this can impact AI-driven campaigns dramatically.

Share your budget optimization tips in the comments!