At a glance
Pacing of AdRoll media spend against the configured budget cap for the current period:SUM(spend) / budget_capfor in-flight line items or the advertisable-level monthly budget, expressed as a percentage with a target line at100% × (days_elapsed / days_in_period). AdRoll’s auto-bid optimiser can over-pace by up to 20% on any single day on favourable auction days; the card surfaces both the daily wobble and the period trajectory so merchants can distinguish normal optimiser-front-loading from genuine runaway.
| What it counts | Period-to-date spend as a percentage of the period’s budget cap, summed across all active line items in an advertisable. Includes display, native, video, and email-amplification spend if the merchant runs the orchestrated suite. |
| Cost basis | CPM-dominant on AdRoll. The card sums billable media cost regardless of bid type. |
| Currency | Single advertisable currency. Multi-currency merchants run separate advertisables and pace each independently. |
| Conversion attribution | Not relevant for pacing. (For ROAS pairing: 30D click + 7D view default on AdRoll.) |
| Attribution window | N/A for pacing. |
| Pacing target | Linear by default: a 30-day flight should be at ~50% of cap on day 15. Auto-bid lift days can push the daily figure 20% above linear; over a 7-day average the variance smooths out. |
| Daily over-delivery rule | AdRoll auto-bid can over-deliver up to 20% above the daily cap on any single day if it identifies a high-conversion-probability auction; self-corrects within a 7-day pacing window. Daily over-pace is normal; weekly over-pace is not. |
| iOS 14.5+ ATT impact on the card | None on the pacing math. Indirectly, post-ATT CPM inflation pushes the same impression volume to higher cost, so the same campaign hits cap sooner than pre-ATT plans assumed. Plan for 15 to 30% higher unit-cost when budgeting iOS-heavy advertisables. |
| Time window | T/30D (today vs 30D plan). For weekly or quarterly budgets, the card scales the target line accordingly. |
| Alert trigger | >90% used before 80% of period. Fires when spend has consumed more than 90% of the budget before 80% of the period has elapsed, the campaign will exhaust before period-end without intervention. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your AdRoll data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US apparel DTC brand running AdRoll across site retargeting, lookalike prospecting, and email-orchestration. Monthly AdRoll budget $20,000. Period 01 Apr 26 to 30 Apr 26. Today is 22 Apr 26 (day 22 of 30, 73% elapsed). Account currency USD.| Line item | Period budget ($) | Spend MTD ($) | % of cap | Linear target | Variance from target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site retargeting (web visitors, 30d) | 9,000 | 7,800 | 87% | 73% | +14pp ahead |
| Lookalike prospecting (purchaser LAL) | 6,500 | 4,200 | 65% | 73% | -8pp behind |
| Cart-abandoner email + display orchestration | 3,000 | 2,400 | 80% | 73% | +7pp ahead |
| Brand-safe contextual prospecting | 1,500 | 700 | 47% | 73% | -26pp behind |
| Account total (this card) | $20,000 | $15,100 | 76% | 73% | +3pp ahead |
- Account-level pacing is +3pp ahead, on the edge of the alert window but not over. Not yet actionable at the rollup; the line-item picture is the real story.
- Site retargeting at 87% of cap on day 22 will exhaust ~day 25. Five days of retargeting darkness at month-end means cart-abandonment recovery loses its primary channel. Decision needed by day 24: lift the cap by $1,000 (if marginal ROAS still beats break-even, retargeting on AdRoll typically runs 6 to 10× ROAS, so the answer is usually yes), or accept the dark week.
- Lookalike prospecting at -8pp behind is the auto-bidder pulling back, often after a CPA-target threshold was reached. Check the Insights Tag conversion fires; if the prospecting funnel’s measured CPA is just above the configured target, the bidder is throttling. Loosen the target if you want the volume.
- Brand-safe contextual prospecting at -26pp behind is suspicious. Either the line item’s bid floor is too low to win the brand-safe inventory, or the audience is too narrow. Audit in AdRoll → Campaigns → Diagnostics; if the bid is the issue, lift it 15 to 25%; if the audience is too narrow, broaden the contextual category list.
- Cart-abandoner orchestration at +7pp ahead is the highest-ROAS line item working as expected; the auto-bid is rightly putting more spend behind it. Don’t intervene; this is precisely the front-loading the optimiser is supposed to do on a high-ROAS warm audience.
- Account-level on target, line items diverging: rebalance per line item; ignore the rollup.
- Account-level ahead by 5 to 10pp: monitor; usually self-corrects within 7 days.
- Account-level ahead by 15+ pp on day 15: investigate, was a cap lifted, did auto-bid front-load on a high-conversion day, did a competitor pull back from the auction?
- Account-level behind by 10+ pp: investigate, are there approval blocks on creative, is the CPA target too tight, has the audience saturated?
- Account-level pacing flat for 48 hours: campaign delivery interrupted. Check (a) account-level approval status, (b) billing payment method, (c) creative-rejection notifications.
- Daily spend exceeded daily cap by >20%: the auto-bidder over-delivered on an opportunistic auction. Self-corrects across the flight; only escalate if the over-deliver pattern recurs daily.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with AdRoll Spend vs Budget | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Total Spend | The numerator in absolute terms. | Whether absolute spend rose or pacing target is unusually low. |
| ROAS | Pacing-decision context. | Pacing ahead at high ROAS = green light to expand cap; pacing ahead at low ROAS = stop signal. |
| Spend by Campaign | Per-line-item pacing. | Account-level on-target masks per-line-item variance. Always read both. |
| Wasted Spend | Drag on pacing. | Zero-conversion line items still count toward cap; pause them to free pacing capacity. |
| Conversion Lag | Lag between spend pacing and revenue settling. | Avoids pacing cuts that ignore late-arriving view-through revenue. |
| Total Revenue | The “is the spend working” check. | Spend ahead but revenue flat = pacing into ineffective inventory. |
| Shopify / BC / Adobe Total Revenue | Commerce-platform truth-side check on AdRoll-attributed revenue. | Reality check before requesting a cap lift. |
| Criteo Spend vs Budget | Cross-retargeting pacing peer. | If AdRoll is on cap-pace and Criteo is behind, redirect new budget to AdRoll for the rest of the period. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in AdRoll’s own dashboard:AdRoll Dashboard → Campaigns → Budget Pacing (filter to the same advertisable, line item, and budget period used in this card).The Budget Pacing view shows period-to-date consumption with a target line, mirrors what this card surfaces. The header summary on the Home tile shows account-level pacing. Reconciles within sub-percent rounding once the API’s 2 to 4 hour ingest lag has caught up. Why our number may legitimately differ from AdRoll:
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Time zone | Boundary days off | AdRoll uses the advertisable’s configured time zone (set at account creation, mutable via support request); this card uses UTC. For most accounts the gap is sub-percent; for US Pacific advertisables on calendar-month periods the boundary can shift the figure 2 to 5%. |
| Mid-period cap changes | Either direction | If the merchant lifted or cut the budget cap mid-period, the card’s percentage recalculates against the latest cap. Historical AdRoll screenshots may show pre-change percentages. |
| Auto-bid over-delivery | Same in both | Daily over-delivery up to 20% is normal; both views show it. |
| Ingest lag | Ours lower for “today” | 2 to 4 hour API lag means today’s percentage is incomplete until catchup. |
| Currency | None expected | Both use advertisable currency. |
| Multi-line-item rollups | Card defaults to advertisable-total | If line items have separate budgets and the merchant wants per-line-item pacing, configure separate budget IDs. The default rollup view sums them. |
| Source | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
criteo.cri_spend_vs_budget | Cross-retargeting pacing peer. | Use to rebalance retargeting allocation in mid-period if one platform is on track and the other lagging. |
facebook_ads.fac_spend_vs_budget | Independent platform pacing. | Cross-channel allocation: if AdRoll is on-target and Meta is exhausted, redirect new budget to AdRoll. |
google_ads.gads_spend_vs_budget | Independent platform pacing. | Same as Meta. |
| Accounting / GL system (Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite) | Period budget here should match the GL planning module’s allocation. | If the GL says 17k cap, the cap was set incorrectly in AdRoll. Fix at source. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My AdRoll budget says I’m at 92% on day 22 of 30; will I exhaust early? Likely yes. At 92% on day 22, daily run-rate of (92% / 22) × 30 projects to ~125% of cap by day 30, exhaustion around day 24. The decision tree: (a) is marginal ROAS still beating break-even? Retargeting on AdRoll typically runs 6 to 10× ROAS, so usually yes. Lift the cap by 25%. (b) If you’re capital-constrained, accept early exhaustion; the channel goes dark for the last week. (c) Reallocate from a behind-pacing line item like brand-safe contextual prospecting if it’s running below 50% pace. Why is my AdRoll pacing 18% ahead of linear today? AdRoll’s auto-bid optimiser front-loads spend on auctions it identifies as high-conversion-probability. On a Friday or Sunday-evening for apparel, on a holiday-week morning for travel, the optimiser will deliberately spend ahead of pacing. Daily wobble of 15 to 20% is the optimiser doing its job; weekly wobble of 15+% is the runaway signal. Look at the 7-day rolling pace in Spend by Hour before treating it as a runaway. Why is my AdRoll pacing 25% behind linear? Three usual causes:- Creative-rejection block, a creative was rejected in the past few days and a line item that depended on it has nothing live. Check Account Notifications.
- Inventory-partner change, AdRoll occasionally changes which SSP partners are on the allow-list; a tightening can collapse fillable inventory. Check Settings → Inventory.
- CPA target too tight, the auto-bidder hit your configured CPA threshold and pulled back delivery. Loosen the target if you want volume.
>90% used before 80% of period projects exhaustion before period-end based on current trajectory. The campaign hasn’t physically exhausted yet, but it will if you don’t intervene. The alert is the early warning, not the failure event.
My AdRoll budget rolled over because the campaign didn’t fully spend; how does that look here?
AdRoll doesn’t roll over unspent budget; each period’s cap is fresh. If your March cap was 17k, the unspent 20k regardless. For roll-over discipline, manage at your finance / GL layer, not in AdRoll.
Can I forecast next period’s required budget from this card?
Yes, with adjustments: (1) take this period’s actual spend as a baseline; (2) overlay any planned bursts (sale events, product launches); (3) add 10 to 25% for CPC and CPM inflation if your account is iOS-heavy (post-ATT drift). Forecasts further than one period out are unreliable; AdRoll’s auction dynamics shift quarterly with broader programmatic market trends.
Why does the pacing percentage sometimes go down day-over-day?
Almost always because the budget cap was lifted by the merchant or by an AdRoll account manager mid-period. The numerator (spend) keeps rising but the denominator (cap) rose more, so the percentage dropped. Check Settings → Activity Log for cap changes.
Should I worry about AdRoll’s ATT-driven CPM inflation when planning next quarter’s pacing?
Yes. CPM on iOS-heavy AdRoll line items has drifted up 15 to 30% since ATT. Plan for 15 to 25% higher unit-cost when budgeting for the same impression volume; equivalently, expect 15 to 20% less reach for the same dollar. Re-baseline against ROAS and conversion volume, not against impression count.