Scale Budgets Up and Down
Move daily budgets in both directions as demand and performance change.
This automation moves daily budgets both ways. It raises the budget of campaigns that are spending everything you give them and performing, and lowers the budget of campaigns that are not spending what they have.
If you only want budgets to go up, use Raise Budgets on Limited Campaigns instead. The two are not meant to run together on the same campaigns.
How it decides
Like its counterpart, this automation works from budget utilisation: what a campaign spent over the last 7 days, divided by what its daily budget allowed across those 7 days. Only the 7 day window is used here, because a budget that follows demand has to react faster than a monthly view allows.
There are two thresholds, one at each end:
- Above the increase threshold, the campaign is spending its budget and is a candidate for more.
- Below the decrease threshold, it is not using what it has and is a candidate for less.
Between the two, nothing happens. That gap is deliberate: without it, a campaign sitting near one number would be adjusted every single run.
Either direction can be switched off independently, so you can run it as increase only or decrease only while you build confidence.
Performance gates
Minimum conversions applies in both directions. Below it, the campaign is left alone.
Performance method then decides which quality signals are consulted, and this is where the automation is cleverer than it first looks. The gates are read in the direction of the change:
- Increasing asks whether performance is good enough to deserve more budget.
- Decreasing asks whether performance is poor enough to justify less.
So a ROAS threshold of 4 means "raise only campaigns at or above 4" and "lower only campaigns below 4". The same number, read from both sides.
Set the method to match how you judge the account:
- None applies no quality gate. Utilisation alone decides.
- ROAS uses the ROAS threshold.
- CPA uses the CPA threshold.
- Both requires both signals to agree before increasing, but only one to agree before decreasing. Raising budget is the riskier move, so it is held to the stricter test.
A threshold of 0 turns off its comparison. A campaign with spend and no conversions has no ROAS and no CPA, and fails a gate rather than passing it.
Conversion lag
Conversions arrive after the click, sometimes days after. Judging the last 7 days including yesterday makes recent performance look worse than it is, and would have the automation cutting budget on campaigns that are actually fine.
Conversion lag shifts the window back by that many days, so the automation reads a period whose conversions have mostly landed. Set it to roughly how long your conversions typically take.
How much it moves
Each adjustment is a percentage of the current daily budget, clamped between a minimum and a maximum amount in the account currency. The maximum always wins, so the automation cannot move a budget further than you allowed even if the minimum is set higher than the maximum by mistake.
A campaign is never left on a zero or negative budget, since that would pause it. If an adjustment would do that, it is skipped.
Settings
Filters restricts the automation to campaigns carrying a campaign label.
Date range holds the conversion lag.
Thresholds holds the increase and decrease thresholds, minimum conversions, the performance method and its ROAS and CPA thresholds.
Execution holds the two direction switches, the adjustment percentage, its minimum and maximum amounts, and Apply automatically.
Suggested approach
Start with decreases switched off. Increases are easier to judge, since you can see whether the campaigns being raised are ones you would have raised.
Widen the gap between the two thresholds if you see the same campaigns being adjusted every run. A narrow gap makes the automation restless.
Read the reason column on a few runs before turning on Apply automatically. It names the utilisation figure and the threshold it crossed, which is the quickest way to tell whether your thresholds are set where you think they are.