> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Spend vs Budget, AdRoll > Spend vs Budget for AdRoll stores. Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Key Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Ad Platform](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) ## At a glance > Pacing of AdRoll media spend against the configured budget cap for the current period: **`SUM(spend) / budget_cap`** for in-flight line items or the advertisable-level monthly budget, expressed as a percentage with a target line at `100% × (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** | Reading this: 1. **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. 2. **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. 3. **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. 4. **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. 5. **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. Pacing decision tree: * **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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adroll/total-spend) | The numerator in absolute terms. | Whether absolute spend rose or pacing target is unusually low. | | [ROAS](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adroll/roas) | Pacing-decision context. | Pacing ahead at high ROAS = green light to expand cap; pacing ahead at low ROAS = stop signal. | | [Spend by Campaign](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adroll/spend-by-campaign) | Per-line-item pacing. | Account-level on-target masks per-line-item variance. Always read both. | | [Wasted Spend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adroll/wasted-spend) | Drag on pacing. | Zero-conversion line items still count toward cap; pause them to free pacing capacity. | | [Conversion Lag](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adroll/conversion-lag) | Lag between spend pacing and revenue settling. | Avoids pacing cuts that ignore late-arriving view-through revenue. | | [Total Revenue](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adroll/total-revenue) | The "is the spend working" check. | Spend ahead but revenue flat = pacing into ineffective inventory. | | [Shopify / BC / Adobe Total Revenue](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/total-revenue) | Commerce-platform truth-side check on AdRoll-attributed revenue. | Reality check before requesting a cap lift. | | [Criteo Spend vs Budget](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/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](https://app.adroll.com/campaigns) (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. | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Source | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [`criteo.cri_spend_vs_budget`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/criteo/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`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/facebook-ads/spend-vs-budget) | Independent platform pacing. | Cross-platform allocation: if AdRoll is on-target and Meta is exhausted, redirect new budget to AdRoll. | | [`google_ads.gads_spend_vs_budget`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/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 $20k allocated to AdRoll but the card shows a $17k cap, the cap was set incorrectly in AdRoll. Fix at source. | ***
Documentation cross-reference (post-ATT pacing planning) AdRoll budgets set in 2020 to 2021 (pre-ATT) often pace the same nominal dollars but reach materially less audience. The auto-bidder, faced with a smaller match-rate iOS audience, shifts spend toward broader Android and desktop inventory, which can be cheaper-CPM but also lower-conversion. **Pre-ATT-set budget caps may pace identically while delivering 30 to 50% less revenue impact**. Two practical adjustments for post-ATT planning: 1. **Re-baseline the budget against ROAS, not impression volume.** A $20k AdRoll budget that produced $80k in 2021 may produce \$48k in 2026 against the same nominal ROAS expectation; reset the goal to reflect today's economy of the channel. 2. **Pace alerts should compare to a rolling 90-day average, not last-year-same-month.** Year-over-year comparisons on AdRoll pacing are unreliable; the underlying audience is materially different. The [`adr_total_revenue`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adroll/total-revenue) and [`adr_roas`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adroll/roas) cards are the right pair to read alongside this one when planning future periods; pacing alone gives a false sense of stability if the underlying channel economics have shifted.
## 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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adroll/spend-by-hour) before treating it as a runaway. **Why is my AdRoll pacing 25% behind linear?** Three usual causes: 1. **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. 2. **Inventory-partner change**, AdRoll occasionally changes which SSP partners are on the allow-list; a tightening can collapse fillable inventory. Check Settings → Inventory. 3. **CPA target too tight**, the auto-bidder hit your configured CPA threshold and pulled back delivery. Loosen the target if you want volume. **Should I cap budgets at the line-item level or advertisable level?** Both. Advertisable-level cap as the hard ceiling (finance discipline). Line-item caps as soft floors that let the auto-bidder reallocate within the advertisable but prevent any single line item from absorbing more than its allocation. **Without line-item caps, AdRoll's optimiser silently shifts spend toward retargeting and away from prospecting**, this is the bidder doing its job for ROAS, but it undermines strategic allocation. **Why does AdRoll's auto-bidder over-deliver on the daily cap?** By design. AdRoll's pacing engine over-delivers up to 20% on any single day if it identifies a high-value auction; self-corrects across the flight (typically a 7-day pacing window). Daily over-pace is normal; weekly over-pace is not. **If you need strict daily caps for finance reasons**, set a hard daily cap (Settings → Budget → Daily Cap), accepting some optimisation efficiency loss for predictability. **My pacing alert fired but the campaign hasn't actually exhausted; why?** The alert is forward-looking. `>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 $20k and you spent $17k, the unspent $3k is forfeit; April starts at $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. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Spend vs Budget* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across AdRoll and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.