At a glance
Pacing check on MediaMath budgets. Important MediaMath caveat (May 26): post-restructure platform billing has occasionally produced delayed-batch artefacts that distort intra-period pacing. If pacing reads materially different from what T1 UI shows, suspect a billing-batch event before assuming campaign-level overspend.
| What it counts | spent_to_date ÷ budget_for_period, expressed as percentage. Budget from campaign-level monthly caps in T1; spend from real-time T1 reporting. |
| Cost basis | Mostly CPM (display, video, CTV, audio); CPC for some display. |
| Currency | Account currency. |
| Conversion attribution | Not applicable. |
| Attribution window | Not applicable. |
| Bot / invalid traffic | IVT-credited spend reduces spent figure on 7, 14 day correction cadence. |
| Time window | T/30D. |
| Alert trigger | >90% used before 80% of period. On MediaMath, alerts most often signal (a) Brain exiting learning, (b) PMP deal kicking in, (c) seasonal CPM rise, (d) post-restructure billing batch, watch for jumps that don’t reconcile to T1 spent figures. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your MediaMath data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
The same enterprise homeware brand. Period 01 Apr 26 to 30 Apr 26. Today 18 Apr 26 (60% elapsed).| Campaign | Channel | Monthly budget ($) | Spent ($) | % budget | Pacing status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Display Prospecting (Brain) | Display | 36,000 | 24,800 | 69% | On pace |
| CTV Premium PMP, NBC | CTV | 40,000 | 28,400 | 71% | Mild over (NBA playoffs) |
| Video Pre-roll | Video | 18,000 | 12,200 | 68% | On pace |
| Retargeting | Display | 10,000 | 6,800 | 68% | On pace |
| Account total (this card) | $104,000 | $72,200 | 69% | On pace (mild over 9pp) |
- Account at 69% pacing vs 60% elapsed = mild overpacing (9pp ahead). Within healthy band. The CTV NBA playoffs effect is the main driver.
- CTV at 71% pacing is the campaign-level alert. Same NBA-driven CPM rise we’d expect on TTD or DV360; not MediaMath-specific. Action: monitor through end of playoffs (~21 Apr 26) and either accept the seasonal premium or cap the daily spend if budget needs to last.
- Reconciliation check: the $72,200 here should match T1 UI’s spend figure. If it does not, do not assume the card is wrong; on MediaMath specifically, billing-batch artefacts can cause the T1 UI itself to misreport intermittently. Reconcile both against your own monthly invoice for the canonical figure.
- The 30D prior had pacing 64% at 60% elapsed, slightly tighter. This window’s 69% pacing is the alert but at the low end of “investigate”; not the kind of alert that demands immediate action.
- If you’re running TTD in parallel during migration evaluation, compare cross-DSP pacing. If TTD is well-paced and MediaMath is overpaced on similar inventory, the MediaMath Brain bidding may be ramping more aggressively than Koa; a campaign-config issue rather than a market issue.
- Pacing ≈ time-elapsed ± 5pp = healthy.
- Pacing > time-elapsed by 10, 20pp = mild overpacing; usually Brain ramping or seasonal CPM.
- Pacing > time-elapsed by 30+pp = something accelerated sharply OR a billing-batch artefact; reconcile to T1 UI before throttling.
- Pacing < time-elapsed by 15+pp = underspending; Brain failing to find inventory at your bid; raise CPM or expand audience.
- Account-level pacing reads different from sum of T1 campaign pacing = post-restructure batch issue; investigate before acting.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Spend vs Budget |
|---|---|
| MediaMath Total Spend | Numerator. |
| MediaMath Spend by Campaign | Where the overpacing originated. |
| MediaMath Overspending Campaigns | Campaign-level pacing list. |
| MediaMath Underspending Campaigns | Reallocation candidates. |
| MediaMath ROAS | Pacing alert with high ROAS = raise cap; with low ROAS = throttle. |
| The Trade Desk Spend vs Budget | Peer pacing comparison during migration evaluation. If both DSPs simultaneously overpace, suspect cross-DSP CPM pressure (not platform-specific). |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in MediaMath T1: T1 → Campaigns → per-campaign budget and pacing column. T1 also surfaces a campaign-level pacing indicator. The account-level total in this card sums per-campaign budgets and per-campaign spend. Why our number may legitimately differ from T1:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Time zone | Pacing % off ±5pp on day-1/day-30 | Org TZ vs UTC. |
| Real-time spent lag | Card pacing slightly low for “today” | Up to 4-hour ingest lag (longer than peer DSPs). |
| Post-restructure billing artefact | Direction varies | Occasional batch-processing delays on the post-restructure platform; reconcile to T1 UI plus monthly invoice for the canonical figure. |
| Budget hierarchy | Card uses configured budgets only | Some accounts set portfolio-level budgets; this card aggregates campaign-level only. |
| Mid-period budget changes | Direction depends | Card uses current budget; pacing reflows. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
the_trade_desk.the_spend_vs_budget | Independent. Compare during migration evaluation. | Different inventory pools, different bidder ramp profiles. |
stackadapt.sta_spend_vs_budget | Independent; different segment. | Mid-market vs enterprise. |
google_ads.gads_spend_vs_budget | Independent; benchmark only. | Search vs programmatic pacing patterns. |