LIMITED BY BUDGET might feel like a money-grab from Google, but that’s not always the case. This is how we framework our decisions when we respond to this status on a daily basis at Lumo Digital.

It’s worth bearing in mind it’s not wise to stick too rigidly to a framework, so always apply a common sense filter to all of your decisions❓

1) Is the campaign truly saturating its daily budget? Create a custom column that uses a 7-day date range and expresses as a percentage the amount of budget spent vs. the daily budget * 7. Repeat the process using 30-day and 90-day ranges. If your % is =>100% then you are consistently exceeding your daily cap.

2) Is your campaign achieving or exceeding *it’s* campaign target? This might be target CPA, or a target ROAS. You can also create custom columns to assess this quickly in-platform, I’d always recommend to use a recent and a longer-term date range.

3) Are you losing impression share, and if so, is it lost to budget, rank or a combination of both? Apply a custom view on columns to include lost IS (rank) and lost IS (budget), again toggle between a 7-day and 30-day range – are you consistently losing impression share, and if so is it for rank, budget or both?

With all of this data compiled, we’re in a position to framework a decision.

A) IF your campaign is meeting or exceeding its daily budgets consistently, AND it’s meeting or exceeding the campaign target – such as target ROAS – AND you’re happy with that result commercially, for your business – *increase your daily budget*. To avoid any shock to the algorithm, we’d suggest making a max 20% adjustment per 2 weeks, so a £300 daily budget would become £360.

B) IF your campaign is meeting or exceeding its daily budgets consistently, AND it’s meeting or exceeding the campaign target BUT it doesn’t yet make sense commercially for your business – *increase your target ROAS/decrease your target CPA*. Again, be nuanced with your changes to smart bidding; small incremental changes over time for the win.

C) IF your campaign is meeting or exceeding its daily budgets consistently, BUT it’s NOT meeting or exceeding the campaign target. How far short are you? Has your target remained the same and Google has increased spend over a longer period of time? If so, this is often a soft signal from the Google algorithms that the machine learning believes your target is obtainable. If you’re within 20% of your target over a longer date range – 30-90 days are two good windows to observe – then it may be prudent to wait. At least 50% of the time – maybe more like 70% – we observe, analyse and consciously choose to not interfere and continue to monitor; this is often the best course of action with smart bidding.

Final thoughts: Always (always!) consider outside influences that might be impacting your campaigns, such as:

– Macroeconomics (Trump’s tariffs anyone? 📉)
– Seasonality (hello sunshine ☀️)
– Half-term 👪
– Something specific to your product

Book a call today if you want to chat with the founder Matt about scaling your Google Ads spend, or any other digital growth challenges you’re facing.