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The Spend Projection, Optimize Budgets, and Budget Pacing features in the All Accounts Dashboard are three very different ways of viewing how your budget is performing. They each calculate projected budget spending in 3 different ways, which are useful for different focuses, depending on what you are aiming at. 

This article explains how each of them works.

The Budget Pacing feature shows what percentage have you spent relative to what you should have spent as a share of the month (linear spending). 

At the beginning of the month, the system considers the appropriate spend's pacing to be between 75% to 125%, and towards the end of the month, the system finds the appropriate spend's pacing to be between 95% to 105%. 

This means that if at the beginning of the month, the account spends less than 75%, then the system shows the budget pacing as underspending. Similarly, if at the end of the month, the account is pacing at a percentage greater than 105%, it will be shown as overspending. 

For the rest of the month, the algorithm performs a linear interpolation depending on the number of days passed and the spend already achieved. 

For the suggestions and data shown in the Spend Projection tool, the system uses machine learning to predict the likely spend for each of the remaining days during the selected date range. 

It analyzes actual spend over the past few days to predict the cost the Google Ads account will accrue at the end of the selected time period. Since actual spend levels fluctuate the system recommends a range for the spend.

While we predict the spend in the Spend Projection, we take into consideration the following two factors: 

The Optimize Budgets tool lets you optimize budgets for Google Ads by translating them from monthly to daily budgets. This can be done to achieve a target or allocate more budget to campaigns that are driving more leads/sales. 

This tool analyses the spend on campaigns and shared budgets in your accounts and helps you re-arrange your target budget based on the spending capability of the individual and shared budgets. It also suggests balancing budgets by taking a part of the budget amount that won't end up being spent.