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How to Stop Google Ads from Overspending Your Budget

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Google Ads Budget: How to Stop Google Ads from Overspending Your Budget!

Have you noticed that Google Ads is overspending your budget? If so, you’re not alone. This has happened to most digital marketers at some point because of how the system operates.

Have you ever wondered: How much should my PPC budget be? If you’re not sure how Google budgets work, worry not, as this article will cover the basics and explore the best ways to stop Google from overspending your budget.

How Do Google Ads Budgets Work?

To start running ads on Google, you’ll be required to set a budget and bidding options for your campaigns. To check your average daily budgets, head to the ‘Budget’ column under the ‘Campaigns’ tab.

Your budget for each campaign is the amount that you’d be comfortable spending each day of the month. This will determine a charging limit for the campaign. The costs may end up being lower, but this depends on how your bids are managed.

One of the most important factors to be aware of is that Google sees a daily budget as an average rather than a limit. This means campaigns are allowed to spend more than your daily budget.

Choosing Your Bid

You’ll also need to decide how much you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. This is your maximum cost-per-click bid (max. CPC bid).

The more you can spend, the more traffic your campaign is likely to get, which can lead to a good Return on Investment (ROI).

However, if you’re working to a tight budget, you may want to be more mindful when it comes to choosing your bids.

Your Google Ads Budgets Can Overspend

It’s important to remember that due to fluctuations in traffic, Google Ads can overspend up to 2 times more than your daily budget specifies. The term Google uses for this is over-delivery.

Tip: we recommend working to a monthly budget where possible, as day to day spend can vary so significantly.

Over-delivery factors to consider:

  • Google ensures that you’ll never be charged more than 30.4 multiplied by your daily budget. For example, if you decide to spend £12 per day, you would never pay more than £364.80.
  • If your costs for the month end up higher than they should be, you’ll receive an over-delivery credit in your account.

 

How to Stop Google Ads from Overspending Your Budget

1) Use Rules and Scripts (to stop google from overspending)

One way to stop Google from overspending your budget is to start using rules and scripts to pause all of your ads once your maximum daily spend has been reached.

Scripts can check your campaigns every hour to see if they need to be paused. At midnight, the campaign will be reactivated to start again the following day.

2) Monitor How Ads Perform

Monitoring how your ads are performing is one of the most effective ways to save money in the long-term. Keep on top of checking your ads every so often.

This way, you’ll know which ads are doing well and which ones are getting clicks but not conversions.

Once you’ve identified underperforming ads, you can pause them. This should boost your Quality Score, decrease your bids and reduce your spend.

3) Set a Lower Daily Bid Cap

If you’re not in the position to risk overspending, it’s a good idea to set a lower daily bid cap to be on the safe side.

For example, if you can spend up to £40 a day, you might want to set your daily budget to £20. This way, you’ll avoid overspending your ideal monthly budget.

We hope you have gained a better understanding of how Google Ads budgets work and how to prevent Google from overspending.

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Author

Dan

Has worked on hundreds of Google Ads accounts over 15+ years in the industry. There is possibly no vertical that he hasn't helped his clients achieve success in.

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