> ## 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, Taboola > Spend vs Budget for Taboola 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 check: how much of the configured monthly budget Taboola has spent vs how far through the period we are. **Taboola's smartBid auto-bid is unusually fast at exiting learning phase**; once it does, daily spend can double overnight. This card is the early-warning that auto-bid is outpacing plan. | | | | -------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **What it counts** | `spent_to_date ÷ budget_for_period`, expressed as a percentage. Budget is taken from the campaign-level monthly budget caps configured in Taboola Backstage; spend is real-time `spent` from `campaign-summary`. The card also tracks period progress (% of days elapsed) so you can compare "spend pacing" to "time pacing". | | **Cost basis** | Same as Total Spend; CPC, CPM, or smartBid CPA depending on the campaign. The pacing math is unit-agnostic. | | **Currency** | Account currency, single-currency per Taboola account. | | **Conversion attribution** | Not applicable; this is a budget-pacing card, no attribution involved. | | **Attribution window** | Not applicable. | | **Bot / invalid traffic** | IVT-credited spend reduces the spent figure on the 7, 14 day correction cadence; pacing temporarily reads slightly high before IVT credits post. | | **Time window** | `T/30D`. Today's pacing as a snapshot, plus 30-day rolling for the broader pacing shape. | | **Alert trigger** | `>90% used before 80% of period`. The classic "pacing ahead of plan" pattern; on Taboola this most often signals (a) smartBid exited learning phase and ramped, (b) an auto-bid campaign found cheap inventory and is buying aggressively, or (c) a manual budget increase that nobody flagged. | | **Roles** | owner, marketing, finance | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your Taboola 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 supplements brand. Period: 01 Apr 26 to 30 Apr 26 (30-day month). Today is 18 Apr 26. | Campaign | Monthly budget (£) | Spent to date (£) | % of budget | % of period elapsed | Pacing status | | --------------------------------- | ------------------ | ----------------- | ----------- | ------------------- | ---------------------------------- | | Article Distribution | 5,000 | 2,800 | 56% | 60% | On pace | | Product Promotion (smartBid) | 8,000 | 7,400 | **93%** | 60% | **OVERPACED, alert** | | Premium Publisher (paused 12 Apr) | 3,000 | 2,400 | 80% | 60% | On pace (paused, will not exhaust) | | Lookalike Retargeting | 2,000 | 1,200 | 60% | 60% | On pace | | **Account total (this card)** | **£18,000** | **£13,800** | **77%** | **60%** | **OVERPACED** | What's interesting: 1. **The Product Promotion campaign is the alert source.** It exited smartBid learning phase on 09 Apr 26 (after 92 conversions) and ramped from £180/day to £620/day overnight. By 18 Apr 26 it has used 93% of its monthly budget with 12 days still to run. **Action options**: (a) raise the budget cap if performance is good (ROAS on this campaign is 3.29×, comfortably above the account average); (b) lower the smartBid CPA target to slow delivery; (c) accept the early exhaustion and let it stop on 23 Apr 26. 2. **Account-level pacing 77% vs 60% time-elapsed = 17 percentage points overpaced.** That equates to a £3,060 overspend trajectory on the current run rate. The 18,000 monthly budget will be exhausted around 24 Apr 26 if nothing changes. 3. **The pause on Premium Publisher is helpful here.** Without that pause (logged 12 Apr 26 in change history), pacing would be at \~83% with 60% elapsed. Manual intervention saved roughly £600 of overspend trajectory. 4. **Article Distribution and Lookalike are well-paced.** They are not the issue; do not throttle them just to recover account-level pacing. The fix is to address Product Promotion specifically. Quick sanity tests: * Pacing ≈ time-elapsed ± 5pp = healthy. * Pacing > time-elapsed by 10, 20pp = mild overpacing; smartBid likely ramped, raise cap or trim target CPA. * Pacing > time-elapsed by 30+pp = something accelerated sharply (smartBid graduation, manual increase, audience surge); investigate before throttling. * Pacing \< time-elapsed by 10, 20pp = underspending; the algorithm is failing to find inventory or your bid is too low; raise CPC or expand publisher allowlist. * Pacing flat for 3, 5 days while time elapses = campaign hit a daily cap or auto-pause; investigate the campaign-level state. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together | Card | Why pair it with Spend vs Budget | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [Taboola Total Spend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/total-spend) | The numerator. Pacing is just spend ÷ budget; the spend trend tells you whether overpacing is structural (auto-bid ramping) or transient (single-campaign spike). | | [Taboola Spend by Campaign](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/spend-by-campaign) | Where the overpacing came from. One smartBid campaign exiting learning phase usually drives 80, 90% of an account-level pacing alert. | | [Taboola Overspending Campaigns](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/overspending-campaigns) | The named-and-shamed list of campaigns over their per-campaign budget. Direct counterpart at campaign level. | | [Taboola Underspending Campaigns](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/underspending-campaigns) | The other side of the pacing problem. If account is overpaced but some campaigns are underspending, reallocation rather than throttling is the answer. | | [Taboola CPC Trend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/cpc-trend) | Pacing rises with rising CPC even at constant volume; this card tells you whether the overpacing is a price problem or a volume problem. | | [Taboola ROAS](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/roas) | If overpacing comes with high ROAS, raise the cap; if it comes with falling ROAS, the auto-bid is buying garbage; throttle. | | [Outbrain Spend vs Budget](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/spend-vs-budget) | If you run both native networks, total native pacing matters more than per-network pacing. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in Taboola Backstage:** [Backstage → Campaigns → Performance](https://backstage.taboola.com/backstage/) and check the "Daily Cap" and "Monthly Cap" columns alongside "Spent". Backstage also surfaces a "Pacing" indicator on the campaign row when set. The account-level total in this card sums per-campaign budgets and per-campaign spend. **Why our number may legitimately differ from Backstage's pacing display:** | Reason | Direction | Why | | ----------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Time zone** | Pacing % off by ±5pp on day-1 / day-30 | Taboola Backstage uses account time zone for the period boundary; this card uses UTC. The boundary effect is biggest on the first and last day of the calendar month. | | **Real-time spent lag** | Card pacing slightly low for "today" | 1, 2 hour ingest lag on billable spend; pacing reads conservative until catchup. | | **Budget hierarchy** | Card uses configured budgets only | Some merchants set a portfolio-level budget on top of campaign budgets; this card aggregates campaign-level budgets, so portfolio-level spend caps will not appear here. | | **IVT credits** | Card pacing slightly high before credits post | IVT refunds post on a 7, 14 day delay; pacing reads high until the credit reduces the spent figure. | | **Mid-period budget changes** | Direction depends | If a campaign budget was raised mid-month, this card uses the *current* budget value; pacing % retroactively reflows. The Backstage history log is the source of truth for what changed when. | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | [`outbrain.out_spend_vs_budget`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/spend-vs-budget) | Independent. Aggregate native pacing = (Taboola spent + Outbrain spent) ÷ (Taboola budget + Outbrain budget). | Different network budgets, different campaign cycles. | | [`google_ads.gads_spend_vs_budget`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/spend-vs-budget) | Independent; benchmark only. Different ecosystem. | Search and Native have very different pacing patterns; don't compare directly. | | [`shopify.total_revenue`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/total-revenue) | No mathematical relationship; context only. | Pacing is an input-side metric; revenue is the outcome. | ## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **Why is my Taboola pacing 90% with 60% of the month elapsed?** The most common cause on Taboola is a smartBid campaign exiting the learning phase. Auto-bid holds delivery low for the first 50, 100 conversions while it learns; once it has signal, it ramps aggressively to maximise volume at the target CPA. If pacing jumped within the last 2, 7 days, this is almost certainly the cause. Other possibilities (in order of likelihood): (2) auto-bid found cheap inventory and is buying aggressively; (3) a manual budget increase that nobody flagged; (4) a competing campaign on the same network paused, freeing inventory. **Should I raise the budget or throttle the campaign?** Depends on ROAS. **If ROAS on the over-paced campaign is at or above account average**: raise the budget (the algorithm is working, give it room). **If ROAS is below average**: throttle by lowering the smartBid CPA target or capping daily spend. **If ROAS is unmeasurable yet** (campaign too new, fewer than 50 conversions): cap the daily spend until you have a clean ROAS read; do not let an unmeasured campaign exhaust the budget. **My pacing dropped sharply, what happened?** Common causes: (1) a campaign auto-paused (Taboola pauses campaigns that hit a daily cap, fall below CPC floor, or trip a publisher-block rule); (2) a creative was disapproved and the campaign lost serving capacity; (3) a competitor outbid you across the publisher inventory you were winning; (4) seasonal CPM rise that pushed your bids below the auction floor. Check campaign-level state in Backstage first; investigate from there. **Why does Taboola show pacing at 95% but the spend card says 77%?** Different denominators. The Backstage UI typically shows pacing against the daily budget cap (intra-day pacing); this card shows pacing against the monthly budget. Check that you're comparing like-for-like. The clearest read: look at the spent vs budget figures directly, not the percentages. **Can I trust pacing on the first day of the month?** Less than later in the month. Day-1 pacing is built from incomplete data and tiny denominators (1 day of period elapsed); the % can swing dramatically. By day 5, pacing is the actionable read. Day 1, 3 are mostly noise. **My budget renews monthly but my fiscal calendar is weekly, how does this work?** This card uses the budget-period configured in Taboola Backstage. If your campaign is set to monthly budget, pacing is calculated against the calendar month. For weekly fiscal pacing, set per-campaign weekly budgets in Backstage; the card will follow. **Why is account-level pacing different from the sum of per-campaign pacing?** Per-campaign pacing is a percentage; you cannot sum percentages. Account pacing is calculated as (sum of spend ÷ sum of budget). One small campaign at 200% pacing barely moves the account number; one large campaign at 110% is what triggers the alert. **Should I set a hard daily cap or rely on monthly cap?** Set both. The monthly cap stops you exhausting the period. The daily cap (typically monthly ÷ days remaining × 1.3) prevents auto-bid from front-loading the month and leaving you dark for the back half. **The 1.3× safety factor allows for legitimate auto-bid efficiency days without surrendering pacing control.** *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Spend vs Budget* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Taboola and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. 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