Blog
Notes on budget pacing, access scopes, and client reporting for agencies running Google Ads and Meta.
Most writing about budget pacing assumes the tool can change your campaigns. Adswave cannot, and that changes the advice.
Adswave reads your Google Ads and Meta accounts. It never writes to them. So the posts here deal with what you can see, what it means, and what you do next inside the platforms yourself.
Expect three kinds of post. Explainers on how pacing math actually works, including the parts a dashboard rounds off. Walkthroughs of ad-account permissions, because read-only means something different on Google than it does on Meta. And notes on reporting to clients who never log in to anything.
Every claim here is written against the product as it is built. If it cannot be traced to the code or to a source carrying a date, it does not go on the page.
Agency overspent a client's ad budget: what now
Google can spend 30.4x a daily budget in a month and 2x in a day. Find the real cause, check who pays under your contract, and tell the client.
Budget pacing formula, with the 30.4 rule
Expected spend = monthly budget / 30.4 × days. Variance = (actual - expected) / expected. A worked euro example, plus the 31-day and February skew.
How to catch a Google Ads or Meta overspend before your client does
Google can spend 30.4 times your daily budget in a month and 2 times it in a day. Meta will not say its ceiling. Neither has a monthly budget field.
Google Ads budget pacing template for Sheets
A free CSV for Google Sheets with every pacing formula shown: daily budget (budget / 30.4), expected to date, variance, month-end projection and catch-up.
Why Google Ads spent more than your daily budget
Google Ads can spend up to 2x your average daily budget on a day and 30.4x it in a month. A €50 budget allows €100 a day and €1,520 a month.