Let’s quickly refresh on what spend on Google Ads looked like prior to this new tool.
Since this is set at the account level, you’ll find that setting up your monthly account spend limit is actually in a different spot than where you’d set your daily budgets. Here’s where to go and what to do:
As mentioned above, this is groundbreaking for advertisers managing multiple campaigns while trying to keep to a monthly budget.
The drawbacks
Before monthly budget limits, every campaign in Google Ads was required to have a set daily budget. That daily budget guided Google on how much it should spend per day to average out to a projected monthly spend. However, depending on the temperament of the ads auction, daily budgets would ebb and flow—even spending higher than anticipated.
For years, advertisers have been looking for a way to keep their Google Ads spend under control aside from daily budgets and bid caps.
How Google Ads spend worked before monthly budget limits
Google recently announced that as of June 1, advertisers will be able to set monthly spend limits at the account level. This is groundbreaking for advertisers managing multiple campaigns while trying to keep to a monthly budget.
However, if cost of bids goes up due to external factors like competition, then you can easily go over that daily budget consistently resulting in an overall higher spend for a 30-day period than expected.
Well finally, it’s here!
While the monthly spend cap and daily budget work hand in hand together to optimize, at the end of the day your monthly spend limit will override and stop your campaign from running if you hit your limit. This means that:
By definition from Google, a monthly spend limit is the “maximum amount you can pay for a campaign over a month.” How it works is it will override your campaign’s daily budget to stop at a certain threshold.
Because this will be set at the account level, if you’re running multiple campaigns, you’ll want to account for all of them when setting your limit. This means that, while monthly spend limits will be a stellar money-saving tool, you won’t want to take advantage of it to the point where you restrict your performance by setting that monthly limit too low.
- If your spend limit is so low that your campaign hits it halfway through the month, then your ads will stop running for the remainder of the month.
- It may be difficult to manage for larger accounts juggling multiple daily budgets on top of the monthly spend limit.
- You’ll need to set aside time to stay on top of your monthly spend limit as it’s not just a “set it and forget it” type of feature. You’ll want to check on it in relation to your historical spend to ensure it’s not too high or too low.
How to set up a monthly spend limit in Google Ads
Since this feature is a new tool to help folks maintain control of their overall advertising costs, then it’s an obvious green light for those who are tight on budget. However, if you’re squeamish about trying this out, keep in mind that you can always adjust it or toggle it back off. So, it’s worth a try for any account regardless of your business needs, but be sure to keep an eye on your performance to see if it works well for your account. If so, happy spending! And, if not, then continue business as usual!
- In Google Ads, in the top right-hand side of the toolbar, click into Billing
- On the left-hand menu, click into Settings
- Once there, you can select the option to create a Monthly Spend Limit
Are you going to use the Google Ads monthly spend limit?
This is because Google is programmed to dynamically adjust your spend for the day based on what’s needed in order for you to perform. For example, if you set a daily budget of , you may end up spending one day and the next to average out to a rough 0 for the month.
