At a glance
Pacing dial. Compares cumulative Outbrain spend against the period’s allotted budget, surfaces over-pacing (about to exhaust the budget early) or under-pacing (spending too slowly to hit the period target). The alert is a time-aware check: spend at 90 percent of budget is fine on day 27 of a 30-day month, but unhealthy on day 18.
| The formula | cumulative_spend ÷ budget_allotted_for_period, displayed as a percent, with a parallel time_elapsed_in_period percent for context. The alert fires on the gap between these two: (spend_pct − time_pct) > 10pp triggers warn. |
| Budget source | The budget figure comes from Outbrain’s campaign/marketer-level configured budget. If the merchant uses Outbrain’s monthly_budget setting, the card reads that. If the merchant uses lifetime budgets only, the card falls back to a manifest-defined monthly cap configured in config/vortex_mind/manifests/outbrain.yaml. |
| Currency | Account currency. Multi-account merchants get aggregated FX-converted display. |
| What “over-pacing” means | Spending faster than the period would absorb at flat-pace. Cause: bid algorithm scaled into a cheap inventory window, daily cap missing, or competitor pull-back on inventory dropped CPCs and Outbrain bought more clicks. Risk: budget exhausts mid-period; campaign halts; recovery tail loses attribution-window value. |
| What “under-pacing” means | Spending slower than the period would absorb. Cause: bid too low to win inventory, audience saturation, daily cap too restrictive, creative-disapproval froze a campaign. Risk: budget under-utilised; the prospecting investment didn’t happen; the next period’s lift study has nothing to measure. |
| Refresh cadence | Hourly. Spend ingestion lag is 1 to 4 hours; the card’s pacing read is roughly that stale. |
| Time window | T/30D (today within current calendar period, plus 30-day rolling for trend). |
| Alert trigger | >90% used before 80% of period. The 10pp gap is the conservative threshold; tune to 5pp for tighter pacing or 15pp for looser. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Outbrain 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 UK lifestyle brand. Monthly Outbrain budget £14k, period is March 26 (31 days). Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 22 Mar 26.| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Budget allotted (March 26) | £14,000 |
| Spend so far (1 to 22 Mar) | £11,420 |
| Spend % of budget | 81.6% |
| Time elapsed % of period | 70.0% (22 of 31 days, 09:00 GMT) |
| Pacing gap (spend pct minus time pct) | +11.6pp |
| Card status | WARN (>10pp over) |
- Over-pacing by 11.6 percentage points. At current run-rate, monthly spend will hit £16,150 (115 percent of budget). Either the bid algorithm scaled, daily caps slipped, or a recently launched campaign has no spend ceiling. Action required this week to avoid mid-period exhaustion.
- The diagnostic checks. (1) Open Spend by Campaign, look for a campaign that’s spending 30 percent more than the prior week. (2) Open Outbrain → Campaigns → check daily-budget caps, the most common cause is a campaign launched without a daily cap. (3) Check CPC Trend, bid auction may have inflated CPCs after a competitor entered the auction.
- The fix. Set a daily cap of £450/day (target: £14k ÷ 31 days). The bid algorithm will throttle within 24 hours. Re-check the card on 23 Mar 26 morning, the pacing gap should narrow.
- Compare against last month. Pacing gap on 22 Feb 26 was -2pp (slightly under-pacing). The shape of this card flipping from -2pp to +11.6pp month-over-month is what makes it a useful signal: the team didn’t change anything materially, the bid algorithm just found an inventory window. The card surfaces algorithm-driven spend drift before it becomes a budget-exhaustion incident.
- The under-pacing cousin scenario. If the same merchant on 22 Mar showed spend 55 percent / time 70 percent (under-pacing -15pp), the card would also alert. Cause: bid too low or campaigns disapproved. Action: raise bids by 10 to 15 percent, or check Outbrain → Notifications for creative-disapproval messages. Under-pacing is not free money saved; it’s prospecting reach the merchant paid for via opportunity cost.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Spend vs Budget | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Total Spend | The numerator. | Spend rising while budget held flat is the over-pacing root. |
| Spend by Campaign | Per-campaign breakdown. | Identifies which campaign is the over-pacer. |
| Spend Anomaly | 24-hour spike alert. | Anomaly fires before pacing tips into warn; treat as upstream signal. |
| Budget Utilisation | Standalone utilisation gauge. | Same data, different framing; useful for non-time-aware monitoring. |
| Overspending Campaigns | Campaigns over their individual cap. | Headline pacing fine but per-campaign overspending hidden, this is the leak. |
| Underspending Campaigns | Campaigns under their cap. | Under-pacing root cause when headline shows under-pacing. |
| ROAS | Pacing context. | Over-pacing with rising ROAS is healthy; over-pacing with falling ROAS is the warning shape. |
| Cross-connector: Google Ads Spend vs Budget, Meta Ads Pacing | Multi-channel pacing portfolio. | Most merchants set channel-level monthly budgets; cross-channel pacing comparison helps spot which channel is the over-pacer. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Outbrain’s own dashboard:Outbrain Amplify → Campaigns → Budget column for per-campaign budget vs spend, or Reports → Performance filtered to the current calendar month.Outbrain’s UI does not show a single account-level pacing dial; the merchant must derive pacing manually from the daily-spend column vs the days-elapsed-in-month. This card automates that derivation. Why our number may legitimately differ from a manual derivation:
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Period boundary | Either | The card uses calendar-month boundaries by default (1st to last-day-of-month). If the merchant’s budget cycle is fiscal (e.g. 28th-to-27th), override in the manifest. |
| Time zone | Either | Outbrain UI uses marketer-account TZ; card uses UTC. Period boundaries can shift by a day at TZ borders. |
| Spend ingestion lag | Card under-states pacing | 1-to-4-hour API lag means the card reads slightly less spend than is actually committed; pacing reads slightly under-paced versus reality. |
| Multi-account aggregation | Either | Card sums across all configured marketer accounts; per-account pacing in Outbrain’s UI may show different shape per region. |
| Manifest-defined budget mismatch | Card overstates pacing | If the merchant changed the monthly budget in Outbrain but didn’t update the Vortex IQ manifest, the card uses the stale lower budget figure, making pacing look worse than it is. |
| Card | Expected relationship | Causes of legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
google_ads.gads_spend_pacing | Same pacing pattern, different channel. | Different budgets, different month-over-month seasonality. |
facebook.fb_pacing | Same as Google. | Meta tends to over-pace early in month; Outbrain tends to under-pace early; channel-specific shapes are normal. |
shopify.total_revenue and platform peers | Pacing context for ROAS interpretation. | Over-pacing with revenue tracking equals healthy scaling; over-pacing with revenue flat equals scaling beyond efficient frontier. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My pacing is +12pp over. Will Outbrain auto-throttle? Only if you have daily caps set per campaign. Outbrain’s monthly budget at the account level is advisory, not a hard ceiling, the spend can blow past it if daily caps are missing. Set a daily cap ofmonthly_budget ÷ days_in_month on every campaign as the simple defence. Outbrain’s bid algorithm respects daily caps; it does not respect monthly budgets unconditionally.
My pacing is -15pp under. Should I worry?
Yes, but with nuance. Under-pacing means prospecting reach the merchant intended to buy didn’t happen. Three diagnostics: (1) Bid too low. Open Outbrain → Campaign → Bid; if the bid is below the auction’s clearing price, you’ll under-pace. Raise by 10 to 15 percent. (2) Creative-disapproval. Outbrain occasionally rejects ads for content compliance; check Notifications. (3) Audience saturation. If your prospecting audience is small (e.g. UK-only, narrow interest targeting), you may have hit reach ceiling. Broaden targeting or accept the under-pacing.
What’s a healthy pacing gap?
±5pp is healthy normal variation. ±5 to ±10pp is worth a glance but rarely action-worthy. >±10pp is the alert threshold; >±15pp is intervene-now. The card’s >90% used before 80% of period corresponds roughly to the 10pp threshold.
The card says I’m over-pacing but I haven’t changed anything.
The bid algorithm changed something. Outbrain’s bid auction is dynamic, when competing advertisers pull back (end-of-month, post-BFCM, holiday breaks), inventory becomes cheaper and your bids win more clicks at lower CPCs but higher volume. Net effect: same bids, more spend. Solution is daily caps; the algorithm cannot over-pace if a hard daily ceiling is in place.
My budget cycle is fiscal (28th-to-27th), not calendar. Can I configure that?
Yes, in config/vortex_mind/manifests/outbrain.yaml under pacing.period_boundary: fiscal_28. The card’s pacing read aligns to the fiscal cycle; alerts fire on fiscal-day-of-cycle, not calendar-day-of-month.
Why does pacing read at 12pm and not real-time?
Outbrain’s spend-data API has a 1-to-4-hour ingestion lag. The card refreshes hourly. For real-time monitoring during a heavy-spend day, watch the Outbrain UI directly; the card is for trend-monitoring and end-of-week reviews.
Can I have separate budget caps per campaign?
Yes, set them in Outbrain → Campaign → Budget. The card’s headline pacing aggregates across all campaigns, but the per-campaign view (Spend by Campaign) shows individual-campaign pacing. Most merchants set both account-level monthly and per-campaign daily.
Multi-currency setup, how does pacing work?
Pacing is computed per marketer account in native currency, then displayed in a single converted currency. If GBP account is over-pacing while EUR is under-pacing, the headline figure shows the FX-blended pacing; per-account drill-down shows individual shapes. Most merchants find per-region pacing more actionable than the blended view.
Why does the card alert at >10pp gap rather than >5pp?
Calibrated against typical Outbrain volatility. Outbrain’s intra-month spend pacing naturally swings ±5 to ±8pp because the bid auction is dynamic and publisher inventory is uneven. A 10pp gap statistically distinguishes “algorithm-driven drift” from “normal noise”. Tune in Settings → Alerts → Outbrain Pacing if your team prefers tighter or looser thresholds.
The pacing was fine yesterday and over-pacing today. Did something break?
Two common causes. (1) A new campaign launched without a daily cap. Confirm via Spend by Campaign. (2) Existing campaign’s daily cap was raised. Outbrain’s audit trail shows budget changes; check Account → Activity Log. Less commonly, a competitor exit can drop CPCs and let you buy more clicks at the same bid (this is “free win” if ROAS holds; cost-control issue if ROAS doesn’t).