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.
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.
What this tells the merchant:
- 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
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:
Cross-connector reconciliation:
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).