Optimize Budgets - Single Account - FAQs

Frequently asked questions on Optimize Budgets - Single Account tool

Geetanjali Tyagi avatar
Written by Geetanjali Tyagi
Updated over a week ago

General FAQs:

Get Optimization Suggestions FAQs:

General Frequently Asked Questions

Why am I not seeing some campaigns in the tool?

Certain campaigns, such as video campaigns with a total budget are not shown, as they don’t have a daily budget. If you're using Campaign Total Budgets, the tool only supports budgets that have a daily amount assigned. However, you can use Optimize Budget Across Platforms to modify this budget type.

In addition, in order to appear, entities (budgets and campaigns) need to have performance data accrued during the selected time period, it is possible that early in the new budget cycle some entities haven’t had a chance to run quite yet.

Currently, Google Ads doesn't share Demand Gen and feed-based Discovery campaign data via it's API and, as a result, these campaign types are not considered in the budget tools.

Is Performance Max supported?

While you can see and edit Performance Max campaigns’ budgets, they are currently excluded from the reallocation suggestions. The reason is, one of the data points the budget reallocation features use is the Impression Share Lost (budget). However, impression share metrics are not available for these campaign types at the moment. To make sure the reallocation suggestions are relevant and accurate, ad spend from Performance Max campaigns is not considered in the total reallocation amount, and the system won’t suggest reallocation from or to Performance Max.

You can still manually change the daily budget amount by editing the Edit Daily Budget field and applying the changes.

Our team is working on a workaround to help you reallocate budgets across Performance Max campaigns as well. If you’d like to submit a feature request, please feel free to contact support@optmyzr.com or post your idea here https://future.optmyzr.com/.

Why does it say "Removed" next to my campaign names, even though these campaigns are still running?

When you see the words "removed" next to a campaign name, it indicates that the budget has been removed for that campaign during the date range. It does not have to do with the state of the campaign. This will also only be visible when you have checked the "show paused" option in the left-hand filters.

Note: The system only shows those entities that have had performance data during the selected date range. E.g. if you run the tool on the first day of the month, and some of the selected budgets or the associated campaigns don’t have any performance data yet, they won’t be shown. You can come back in a few days and load the tool again.

How is Actual Spend calculated in the tool?

Actual spend is calculated by aggregating the spend for all active budgets (shared and individual) in the account. By default, only active budgets are included in the calculation; to include inactive/paused budgets, you can select the “Show Paused” option.

Are ad schedules taken into account?

The 'Projected spend' and reallocation calculations take into account trends and past ad schedules. The tool factors in historical data such as seasonality and spend patterns to provide an estimate of the total spend.

However, when it comes to the 'Required daily spend to hit the target' calculation, ad schedules are not explicitly considered. Currently, this calculation follows a standard formula based on projected spend for the future and the number of remaining days. Therefore, if ad schedules are in place to pause ads on specific days, the required daily spend calculation does not account for it. It is designed to provide an idea of the average daily spend but should not be solely relied upon to adjust daily budgets when ad schedules are in effect.

Why do I see a difference between the Actual Spend of the tool and the cost in Google Ads for the same date range?

By default, the tool shows the total spend for active budgets in your account. If there are budgets that were removed during the given date range, they will not be a part of the actual spend. In Google Ads, the cost includes spend for both active and inactive/paused budgets for that period which is why you may notice a discrepancy. To include information on these budgets, you can select the “Show Paused” option in the campaign selector on the left side, and it will show the total spend, similar to Google Ads.

Is the Required Daily Spend the same as the Daily Budget?

No. The Required Daily Spend tells you how much you'd need to spend in order to hit the target, but there might be other factors than the daily budget that play a part. For example, the campaigns are underspending mostly due to lost impression share due to rank so only raising the budget alone won't fix the situation.

Why does the Projected Spend stop changing after trying a higher daily spend?

The projected spend can stop showing higher projections after the daily budget amount is the same as the Potential Daily Spend amount, as the system thinks the campaigns can't spend more no matter how much the daily budget amount is increased (e.g. because IS is lost due to rank). You can add the Potential Daily Spend column to the view from the right-hand side column picker.

Why is the Apply button not active?

The Apply button stays inactive if no rows are edited and selected. If you hover over the button and see the text ‘No changes to apply. First edit and select at least one row’, make sure you’ve marked the checkbox next to the budget name, and that the value in the Edit Daily Budget field is not the same as the current Daily Budget

Frequently Asked Questions on 'Get Optimization Suggestions'

Which Optimization Suggestion goal is the default?

If the system detects conversion value being used in the account, the Optimize Conversion Value strategy is selected by default. If no conversion value is detected, then the tool will try to optimize conversions and, finally, clicks

Why is the system projecting a decrease in conversions when giving optimization suggestions to increase clicks?

When generating optimization suggestions, the system reallocates the budget across campaigns to help achieve the selected goal. If we specify that our goal is to increase clicks, the system will allocate more budget to campaigns that have a higher click-through rate to capture the opportunity to increase clicks. This may lead to a decrease in the budget of campaigns that have a lower CTR but a higher conversion rate, which could cause a drop in conversions in these campaigns.

If the campaigns with the best CTR have a low conversion rate, even the increase in clicks may not generate a significant improvement in the conversion rate; hence the number of conversions projected for these campaigns may not compensate for the loss of conversions the system is projecting on campaigns for which the budget was reduced.

Does the Get Optimization Suggestions feature recommend increasing ad spend?

No, the tool doesn’t recommend increasing or decreasing the budget: it simply shows different reallocation scenarios and predicts how selecting one would affect the performance of each displayed metric.

Therefore, if the projected spend is significantly below your target budget and there is room to spend more, you can use the tool to find a reallocation scenario that will help you avoid underspending. On the other hand, if it looks like the selected budgets will overspend, you can see if one of the reallocation scenarios would help you reduce costs in the most sustainable way possible.

Why do I get a suggestion to reduce budgets for campaigns with a relatively low CPA?

This can happen if:

  1. There’s a significant gap between the Avg. Daily Spend and Budget amount. This means the associated campaign is not spending the full budget amount in the first place.

  2. The associated campaign doesn’t have the potential to keep getting more conversion value, conversions, or clicks (depending on which goal you’ve selected) based on historical performance.

  3. Some of the campaigns associated with the budget are not active.

  4. You’ve selected a reallocation scenario that will reduce the projected spend significantly

Should I allocate more budget to a campaign with almost no impression share lost?

If a well-performing campaign tends to start losing impression share towards the end of the month due to budget constraints, the system may allocate more budget towards it even before impression share is lost. It is possible that the campaign isn't losing any impression share yet, but to make sure the high-performing campaigns keep running at maximum capacity, you can consider increasing the budget.

Why is an information icon with the text 'A projection is available for system-recommended changes only' shown after manually editing a budget field?

After clicking 'Get Optimization Suggestions', Optmyzr projects the change in performance for the selected goal (clicks, conversions, or conversion value) for each edited budget. This projection is available only when budgets are not edited manually.

Does the tool suggest changes to recently updated budgets?

If the daily budget was changed within the last 7 days, by default, the system won’t suggest editing these budgets. This includes both, changes applied via Optmyzr, as well as outside of the tool (e.g. directly in the Google Ads UI). To change recently updated budgets, you can switch the toggle to "Yes".

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