You can turn on automatic budget allocation (ABA) in an insertion order by selecting the “Automatically optimize your budget allocation” checkbox. Display & Video 360 will optimize how your insertion order's budget is spent by dynamically shifting money between the insertion order's line items. Automatic budget allocation will increase the budgets for high-performing line items by taking money away from lower-performing line items.
On this page
- Best practices
- Turn on automatic budget allocation
- Frequently asked questions
- How does auto budget allocation work?
- What happens after you turn on auto budget allocation?
- What happens when you turn on auto budget allocation, and some of your line items are underpacing?
- Review the budget changes made by auto budget allocation
- Can line items be excluded when setting up auto budget allocation?
- Can you use auto budget allocation with YouTube campaigns?
- How does ABA work with ahead pacing
Best practices
You should consider using automatic budget allocation if:
- Your insertion orders have CPC, CPA, or custom bidding goals
- Your line items require regular rebalancing of their budgets to make sure spend is allocated according to performance
You should consider not using automatic budget allocation if your insertion order:
- Has a flight of less than 2 weeks
- Is for "brand" purposes, and isn't aiming to drive clicks or conversions
- Contains line items with a mixture of bid strategies
- Contains only one line item
- Don't use automatic budget allocation when you need line items in your insertion order to spend evenly, or to spend a set amount per line item
- Automatic budget allocation isn't supported while running audio line items
Turn on automatic budget allocation
- To turn on auto budget allocation, open an insertion order, navigate to the Optimization section, and select either:
- Automate bid and budget at insertion order level: This will give full control to Google AI to automatically adjust bids and shift budgets to better performing line items within the insertion order.
- Control bid and budget at the line item level: When you select the “Automatically optimize your budget allocation” checkbox, you can set a fixed budget for some line items while allowing others to be automatically adjusted according to performance. Once set within each line item you are able to select to either fix the budget or automatically adjust the budget.
Performance of line items
Display & Video 360 judges the performance of line items by comparing the goals you set for your insertion order. The following insertion order goals are supported:
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Cost per action (CPA)
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Cost per completed (video) View (CPCV)
- Cost per impression audible and visible on complete (CPIAVC)
- Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
- Cost per thousand Viewable impressions (VCPM)
- Cost per view (CPV)
- Video completion rate
- Viewability
- View-through Rate (VTR)
If your line items don't track conversions, Display & Video 360 will compare line items based on their CPCs. Similarly to CPAs, lower CPCs indicate "better performance."
When a line item is performing well, Display & Video 360 can increase its daily budget. In certain situations, such as in the event you've increased your insertion order's budget, Display & Video 360 can increase a well-performing line item's budget much more than 20% day-over-day. However, in the end, your line item's spend will be capped by the insertion order's budget.
In contrast to well-performing line items, Display & Video 360 can decrease the daily budget of lower-performing line items by up to 20% each day.
Budget considerations
Automatic budget allocation uses the insertion order's budget to determine the total amount of budget that's divided among the line items in the insertion order.
Example
For instance, say you have an insertion order with 3 line items. The insertion order's budget is $500, but each line item has a budget of $200.
In this example, the insertion order's budget of $500, and not the line items' combined total budget of $600, will be divided among all line items in the insertion order.
Pacing
Ultimately, automatic budget allocation will aim to fulfill the pacing setting of the insertion order. Because of this, make sure your insertion order is set up with the appropriate pacing option for your advertiser's needs.
Frequently asked questions
How does auto budget allocation work?When automatic budget allocation is turned on, Display & Video 360 looks at recent performance data to infer how your insertion order's budget can best be allocated across its line items. This is done by first considering your line items' ability to spend your insertion order's budget, and then by allocating your insertion order's budget according to the performance of individual line items.
In the absence of inventory limitations, the best performing line items will be prioritized over less well-performing line items. If you aren't tracking conversions, Display & Video 360 will optimize based on each line item's CPC.
If your line items are relatively new, Display & Video 360 will require a few days of data collection before auto budget allocation can start to rebalance your line items' budgets.
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Your line items' budgets will be changed.
Display & Video 360 can start to change the budgets for the line items in your insertion order as soon as you turn on automatic budget allocation. Additionally, Display & Video 360 will automatically set finite budgets for any line items that previously had an "unlimited" budget.
As soon as Display & Video 360 starts to change your line items' budgets, the changes can't be undone. Moreover, if you later turn off auto budget allocation, your line items' budgets won't be restored to their original budgets, so make sure you only turn on auto budget allocation in insertion orders where you're comfortable with your line item budgets being changed.
As with any time auto budget allocation is turned on, budgets will be moved from any under-pacing or under-performing line items to other, better pacing and better performing line items, depending the available line items' performance and ability to spend their budgets.
If all line items in your insertion order are underpacing, budget allocations may seem unusual as budgets are shifted from one under-pacing line item to another. In some cases where the performance is best on a few line items, budgets of under-pacing and under-performing line items can be almost entirely re-allocated to the better performing line items.
Yes. To view the changes made to individual line item budgets by auto budget allocation, review your line items' event history.
Yes, line items can be excluded from auto budget allocation by setting a fixed budget. First, turn on auto budget allocation at the insertion order level, by selecting Control bid and budget at the line item level in the Optimization section. Next, check the Automatically optimize your budget allocation box. You can now exclude some line items when a budget needs to be controlled, but still have insertion orders that make use of auto budget allocation.
YouTube is supported. To use auto budget allocation with YouTube inventory, the insertion order must contain either YouTube & partners line items exclusively, or Demand Gen line items exclusively. Insertion orders that have both Demand Gen and YouTube & partner line items aren't compatible with automatic budget allocation, or those that have Demand Gen or YouTube & partner line items alongside other line item types.
The final line item budget is determined by applying an additional 1.2 * ABA multiplier on top of the standard ahead pacing daily target.
Example:
- When the line item was activated on November 21, the initial insertion order budget segment was $45,909. The insertion order was set with pacing ahead.
- So, the daily target is 1.2 * Remaining flight budget / Days remaining, in this case 1.2 * $45,909 / (November 21 - December 15 = 24 days) = $2,295.45
- That said, in this case the ABA multiplier of 1.2 goes on top of the ahead pacing multiplication of 1.2, which results in the following calculation of the line item auto allocated budget:
- First, calculate the daily target based on pacing and remaining flight days: 1.2 * $45,909 / (November 21 - December 15 = 24 days) = $2,295.45
- Next, calculate the line item budget by using the daily target, multiplying it by the remaining flight days and the ABA multiplier: $2,295.45 * 24 days * 1.2 = $66,108.96, which is then rounded to $66,109. Refer to the change log for more information.
Learn how to Set budgets and control your pacing.