At a glance
Pacing card: how much of the planned LinkedIn budget you’ve used vs how far through the budget period you are. spend_to_date ÷ planned_budget plotted against the equivalent calendar fraction. Triggers when you’ve spent >90% of the budget before 80% of the period has elapsed (i.e. you’re going to overrun). The hardest-to-detect issue is the inverse: spend tracking flat on plan when conversions have collapsed, you’re on plan in dollars but burning money in poor-quality inventory.
| What it counts | Cumulative spend in the budget period (typically calendar month or quarter) divided by the configured budget for the same period. Both numbers in account currency. |
| Budget source | The “Budget” value attached to the LinkedIn ad account or campaign group, OR a Vortex IQ-side override budget if the merchant configured one. The card prefers the override when both exist. |
| Period source | Account-level budget periods are typically calendar month; campaign-group periods can be custom flights (e.g. 14 Apr to 28 May for a webinar burst). The card respects whichever is configured. |
| Pacing math | pacing_index = (spend_to_date / planned_budget) ÷ (days_elapsed / total_days). >1.0 = ahead of pace; <1.0 = behind pace; 1.0 = perfectly even. |
| Daily over-delivery handling | LinkedIn over-delivers up to ~25% on any given day’s daily-budget cap. The card reads cumulative actuals, not daily caps, so over-delivery shows naturally in the curve. |
| Make-good credits | If LinkedIn issues retroactive spend credit, this card recomputes pacing on the corrected number. Both budget-progress and pacing-index update. |
| Currency | Account currency. Multi-region brands need per-account cards. |
| Time window | T/30D, current period plus the trailing 30D. Shows the in-period progress curve and provides the prior-period comparison curve to detect non-linear pacing issues. |
| Alert trigger | >90% used before 80% of period. Catches runaway pacing early, gives you 2 to 3 days to react before budget exhaustion forces ads off. Companion alert: <70% used after 90% of period elapsed = under-pacing, common cause is a paused campaign you forgot to resume. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your LinkedIn Ads 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 B2B fintech running a £50,000/month LinkedIn budget across always-on demand-gen and ABM. Today is 22 Apr 26 (day 22 of a 30-day budget period; period started 01 Apr 26). Account currency GBP.| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Planned monthly budget | £50,000 |
| Spend to date (01 Apr to 22 Apr) | £41,200 |
| % of budget used | 82.4% |
| % of period elapsed | 73.3% (22 / 30 days) |
| Pacing index | 1.124 (12.4% ahead of plan) |
| Days remaining | 8 |
| Budget remaining | £8,800 |
| Implied daily budget for remaining days | £1,100 |
| Trailing 7D average daily spend | £2,050 |
- Pacing index 1.124 is past the typical “easy ride” zone (0.95 to 1.05) but inside the “moderate concern” zone (1.05 to 1.20). The alert hasn’t yet fired (>90% used before 80% of period would mean £45k by day 24); current trajectory hits that threshold by Friday morning if nothing changes.
- The remaining-days implied budget (£1,100/day) is half of what the trailing 7D actually averaged (£2,050/day). Which means: continuing at current pace will exhaust the budget on day 27, forcing ads to pause for the last 3 days. This is a worse outcome than throttling now, you’d lose 3 days of presence in front of the right audience right at month-end (when B2B demos are getting urgency-pushed by AEs).
- The over-pacing came from week 2. The webinar-promotion burst campaign launched 09 Apr with a 14-day flight at £4,500 lifetime budget. Actual delivery: £4,800 over 11 days because LinkedIn’s auction over-delivered most days during Cannes-week competitive softness. Lifetime cap held; pacing-against-monthly-budget bled.
- Recommended action: lower the daily caps on always-on demand-gen by 25% for the remaining 8 days (£330/day → £250/day on the broad-ICP campaign). Keep ABM at full pace; that’s the best-fit money. Webinar burst already ended.
- If the alert had fired on day 18 instead of being caught manually, the operator would have had 4 more days of runway. This is why the >90% before 80% threshold matters, it’s set conservatively enough that there’s still time to course-correct without hard-pause mid-campaign.
| Day of period | % budget used | Pacing index |
|---|---|---|
| Day 7 (23%) | 23 to 27% | 1.00 to 1.15 |
| Day 15 (50%) | 48 to 53% | 0.96 to 1.06 |
| Day 22 (73%) | 71 to 76% | 0.97 to 1.04 |
| Day 30 (100%) | 96 to 102% | 0.96 to 1.02 |
- Pacing index 1.05 to 1.15 mid-period = mild over-pace, throttle daily caps slightly.
- Pacing index >1.20 mid-period = strong over-pace, consider pausing one campaign or cutting daily caps 30%.
- Pacing index <0.85 by day 25 = under-pace, check for paused campaigns or rejected creatives that haven’t been re-approved.
- Pacing flat throughout but conversions dropping = on-plan in dollars, off-plan in outcomes. Open Wasted Spend and Worst Campaigns immediately.
- Pacing index changed sharply day-over-day = a campaign daily-cap was changed without notice, audit Edit History.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Spend vs Budget | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Total Spend | The numerator. Pacing is meaningless without absolute spend context. | Spend up + pacing on plan = budget rose; spend up + pacing ahead = needs throttling. |
| Spend by Campaign | Where pacing is concentrated. A single ABM campaign over-pacing can swallow account-level pacing on its own. | Pinpoints which campaign caused the over-pace; usually 1 to 2 campaigns drive 80% of the variance. |
| Overspending Campaigns | Per-campaign over-pace alerts. | Catches the misconfigured campaign before account-level pacing breaches. |
| Spend Anomaly | Real-time spike detector. >2σ daily-spend alerts. | Pacing is cumulative; spend anomaly is daily. Pair them: a spend-anomaly day usually triggers the next day’s pacing concern. |
| ROAS | The efficiency check during the burn. Pacing-hot AND ROAS-up = top up budget; pacing-hot AND ROAS-down = throttle, do not top up. | Whether to scale or pull back. |
| Conversions Trend | The “pacing flat in dollars but conversions collapsed” warning. | The hardest pattern to detect in pacing-only views; pair with conversions to surface it. |
| CPC Trend | If pacing tightened because CPCs rose (auction pressure), the spend rose without proportional reach. | Pacing-hot from CPC inflation is different from pacing-hot from delivery growth; the responses differ. |
| Google Ads Spend vs Budget | Cross-platform pacing peer. | B2B brands running Google + LinkedIn should align pacing checks; portfolio-level pacing is the true read. |
| Meta Ads Spend vs Budget | Cross-platform pacing peer for retargeting amplification. | Whether Meta is helping LinkedIn-sourced traffic convert or just adding cost. |
| Shopify Total Revenue | The realised-revenue context for B2C-flavoured B2B. | Pacing-on-plan + revenue-up = scaling efficiently; pacing-on-plan + revenue-flat = on-plan in dollars, off-plan in outcomes. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in LinkedIn Campaign Manager: LinkedIn does NOT provide a single “account budget vs spend” pacing view. The closest views are:- LinkedIn Campaign Manager, Account, Performance Chart: set the date range to the budget period and compare the “Spent” footer against your planned budget.
- Campaign Manager, Campaigns, Budget column + Spent column: per-campaign pacing roll-up; sum manually across campaigns for an account-level pacing check.
- Billing, Receipts: invoiced spend. Useful for finance-side reconciliation but lags real-time pacing by a billing cycle.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Vortex IQ override budget | Card uses override, LinkedIn uses LinkedIn budget | If the merchant configured a Vortex IQ-side period budget different from LinkedIn’s account/campaign-group budget, the card’s pacing math uses the override. The denominator differs; the numerator (spend) matches. |
| Time zone | Boundary days off | LinkedIn reports in the ad-account timezone (immutable, set at account creation). The card uses UTC for period-elapsed calculation. For 30-day windows the gap averages out; for “today is day 21 of 30” the percent-elapsed can shift by 1 to 2 percentage points depending on the timezone offset. |
| Period definition | Either | LinkedIn’s account budget is typically calendar-month; campaign-group budgets can be custom flights. The card respects whichever is configured but mismatches can occur if the connector setup uses a different period from the LinkedIn-side period. |
| Make-good credits | Theirs lower (post-credit) | When LinkedIn issues retroactive credit, the historical spend is restated and the pacing recomputes on the corrected number. Cached values may briefly diverge until refresh. |
| Daily over-delivery | None | LinkedIn’s daily over-delivery rule (up to 25% above daily cap on favourable auction days) shows naturally in cumulative spend on both views. |
| Ingest lag | Lower for “today” | 4 to 8 hour ingest lag on the Insights API. Pacing percentage today reads slightly low compared to LinkedIn’s UI which may be 1 to 2 hours fresher. |
| Tax inclusion | Card excludes; some Billing views include | Performance Chart shows ex-tax media cost. Billing receipts include VAT or sales tax depending on jurisdiction. Use Billing for finance reconciliation, not this card. |
| Source | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting / GL system (Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite) | LinkedIn invoices monthly; the card’s monthly total should match the LinkedIn invoice line within 1 to 2%. | Timing differences: LinkedIn bills cycle-end (e.g. 28 Apr); calendar-month pacing uses calendar-end (30 Apr). Reconcile per LinkedIn billing cycle for clean ledger matching. |
google_ads.gads_spend_vs_budget | Independent paid channel; same operational concept. | Different platforms; run separate pacing checks. |
facebook_ads.fac_spend_vs_budget | Independent paid channel; same operational concept. | Cross-channel budget mix decision lives at portfolio level. |
shopify.total_revenue | No mathematical relationship. | Pacing is about cost discipline; revenue is about outcomes. Pair with ROAS to bridge them. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My pacing index is 1.20 mid-period. Should I panic? Not panic, but act today. A pacing index of 1.20 at day 15 of a 30-day period means you will exhaust the budget by day 25 unless you throttle. Throttle now (cut daily caps 20%) rather than hard-pause at month-end; sustained presence matters more than absolute parity with the planned budget. If the over-pace is producing better-than-baseline ROAS, top up the budget instead of throttling; on B2B accounts a top-up is often the right call because LinkedIn’s audience is hard to re-engage after a multi-day pause. Pacing is exactly on plan but conversions are down. What is happening? The hardest pattern to detect, and the most expensive. Three usual causes. (1) Auction inflation: CPCs rose, you paid more for the same volume; check CPC Trend. (2) Audience exhaustion: frequency over the period is high, the same people are seeing the same ads. (3) Creative fatigue: CTR has been falling for 14+ days. The pacing-on-plan signal is hiding a quality problem. Open Wasted Spend and Worst Campaigns immediately. LinkedIn over-delivered my daily cap by 22%. Is that a problem for pacing? Daily over-delivery (up to 25%) is built into LinkedIn’s auction logic and is normal. Pacing accumulates the actuals, so a single over-delivery day shows in the curve but rarely breaches alert on its own. Two over-delivery days in a row plus a mid-period start can push pacing past the threshold; this is the most common single cause of pacing alerts firing in week 2. The card uses my Vortex IQ override budget but my CFO uses the LinkedIn-set budget. Which is right? Both, for different audiences. The Vortex IQ override is what your team should manage to (it reflects current planning, including mid-period adjustments). The LinkedIn-set budget is what your finance team reconciles against (it locks once set in LinkedIn). Keep them within 5% of each other; bigger gaps create pacing-alert noise. The card prefers the override because it is the operational truth; the LinkedIn-set budget is the contract. Why does the card use UTC and LinkedIn use account timezone? UTC is the only timezone consistent across multi-region brands running multiple LinkedIn ad accounts. The card uses UTC so the pacing math is comparable across accounts. For 30-day windows the gap averages out; for daily reads (e.g. “today is day 21 of 30 = 70%”) the timezone offset can shift the percent-elapsed by 1 to 2 percentage points. Override the timezone in connector settings if your team prefers account timezone for daily reading. Pacing dropped suddenly mid-period. What changed? Three usual causes. (1) A campaign was paused (intentionally or by accident), check the LinkedIn Edit History under each campaign. (2) Daily caps were cut, ditto. (3) A creative was rejected by LinkedIn’s review and the campaign delivered less than planned; check Campaign Manager Notifications. The under-pace alert (<70% used after 90% of period elapsed) catches the worst version of this; the directional drop in pacing index catches it earlier.
Does this card include Sponsored Messaging cost-per-send?
Yes. CPS spend rolls into the same Insights API spend total. Sponsored Messaging is a small share of most B2B accounts (typically <15% of monthly spend) but can spike during ABM campaign launches. The card aggregates regardless.
My pacing alert fires every month for the same reason. How do I tune it?
Two practical options. (1) Adjust the threshold: in connector settings, change >90% used before 80% of period to >95% used before 85% of period for a less sensitive alert. (2) Adjust the budget: if your team consistently spends more than the configured budget and the spend is profitable, raise the budget rather than fighting the alert. Pacing alerts that fire “for known reasons” every month indicate a planning gap, not a configuration issue.
Multi-currency: how does pacing work across accounts?
LinkedIn ad accounts are single-currency by design. Each account has its own pacing card. To roll up pacing across currencies for a single business view, you would need to FX-convert spend and budget at month-end rates externally; LinkedIn does not surface a unified-currency total. Use a Stacked Panel in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre with one panel per account for the multi-currency view.
Make-good credits arrived after period close. Does pacing recompute retroactively?
Yes. If LinkedIn issues retroactive credit, the historical spend is restated and the pacing index recomputes on the corrected number. The pacing reading for past periods updates on the next refresh; this can make a previously-tripped alert “un-trip” retroactively. The card history reflects current state, not the state at the moment of alert.
Should I top up the budget or throttle the daily caps when the alert fires?
Depends on ROAS. If ROAS is at or above plan, top up the budget; LinkedIn-audience-warmth is hard to rebuild after a pause and the over-pace is usually producing real value. If ROAS is below plan or trending down, throttle daily caps; the over-pace is likely scaling into less-efficient inventory. The decision rule: top up when efficiency holds, throttle when efficiency drops.
Why is the under-pace threshold <70% used after 90% of period?
Because by day 27 of a 30-day period the pacing should be >90% on a healthy campaign; <70% means roughly £15k unspent on a £50k monthly budget, which is significant under-spend. Common cause: a paused campaign no-one re-enabled (check Edit History first). Less common: a high-cap campaign that lost auction competitiveness mid-period. Tune the threshold for your context; agency-managed accounts with disciplined daily monitoring can use a tighter <80% threshold.