Bidding & Pacing
Part of Programmatic bidding and pacing
Managing daily pacing around changing inventory
Recalculate the remaining-flight spend requirement and decide when to hold, accelerate or preserve budget as available inventory changes.
When eligible inventory varies by day, compare today’s delivery with the remaining flight rather than forcing every day to match the original average. Recalculate the amount needed, check whether suitable opportunities are still arriving, and decide how much budget to preserve. A missed day can be recovered only if later supply, bids and other controls allow it.
Keep a remaining-flight baseline
At a consistent reporting cut-off, record spend to date, budget remaining, serving days left and the daily amount needed to finish. Use the agreed currency, cost definition and time zone.
As a planning calculation, divide the remaining budget by the remaining serving days. This is a benchmark, not a forecast of tomorrow’s spend.
For example, a hypothetical campaign with A$2,400 left over six serving days needs an average of A$400 a day. If it spends nothing on the next day, it needs A$480 a day across the remaining five days. These figures are arithmetic, not Australian inventory or price data.
For desk planning, recalculate the daily amount as the remaining budget and serving days change. A fixed daily budget, by contrast, holds to its specified daily amount.
Account for any dayparting that affects the available serving time. A higher required amount cannot make a narrow audience or placement produce more eligible requests.
Fixed Daily Budget vs. Dynamic Pacing
- Fixed Daily Budget
- Holds to a set daily amount regardless of inventory changes
- Dynamic Pacing (Remaining Flight Baseline)
- Adjusts daily spend based on remaining budget and days left; recalculated daily
Decide what changed
| Observation | Check before acting | Possible response |
|---|---|---|
| One quiet day, suitable supply still expected | Remaining flight and current eligibility | Hold the plan and review the next comparable period. |
| Valuable inventory arrives in short windows | Approved dates and budget needed later | Allocate deliberately for those windows. |
| Supply shifts away from intended placements | Publisher or inventory-source evidence | Check whether alternatives still fit the brief. |
| Spend rises sharply | Budgets, bids, targeting and recent changes | Check the cost and outcome of the extra delivery. |
Treat faster delivery as a choice to use available budget sooner, not a guarantee of full spend. Monitor actual spend against the selected settings.
Actions When Inventory Changes
- One quiet day with expected supplyHold plan, review next comparable period
- Valuable inventory in short windowsAllocate budget deliberately for those periods
- Supply shifts from intended placementsVerify publisher or inventory-source evidence; assess alternatives
- Spend rises sharplyReview bids, targeting, budgets, and recent changes
Preserve later opportunities
If an important publisher window or campaign event is still ahead, record the budget it needs. Conversely, holding strictly to an even pattern may leave money unused if later supply becomes smaller or more competitive. Choose that trade-off before changing the pacing mode.
Check the budget hierarchy: determine whether a parent allocation limits the combined budgets of its line items and how the available budget is distributed. Changing one line item’s target may affect the room available to others. Review the saved settings and later delivery rather than assuming the change affected only that item.
At day’s end, record spend, the new remaining-flight requirement, available requests where reported, the outcome measure and any setting change. If spend falls while requests remain plentiful, investigate eligibility and auction losses before calling it an inventory dip. Where reporting is incomplete, record the uncertainty and the next review point.
Trade-offs in Preserving Later Opportunities
- ProsEnsures budget is available for high-value later windows (e.g., major campaign events, key publishers)
- ConsRisk of unused budget if later supply decreases or becomes more competitive
