What is a pacing strategy?
Pacing strategies set a spending plan based on your advertising strategy. Fluency sets a daily target according to the plan and adjusts the target as needed. For example, if a budget is underspending, the plan adjusts to make up for the underspend so you can still reach your budget at the end of the month.
💡 Impression share, targeting, and quality scores are a few reasons why an account's may underspend.
Pacing strategies
Even: Roughly sets the same amount of daily spend throughout the month. The daily spend target is recalculated throughout the day. Note: This is the most commonly used pacing strategy.
Traffic Tracker: Prioritizes spending based on a rolling 28-day budget history.
Strong Start: Prioritizes spending more at the beginning of the month.
Strong Finish: Emphasizes spending more toward the end of the month.
Weekdays: Allocates the majority of the budget to weekdays.
Metric Based: Paces to user engagement. This option allows you to select a metric and a goal.
No Daily Pacing: Fluency does not manage the budget and will not make daily adjustments throughout the month (see more details below).
Weekends: Allocates the majority of the budget to weekends.
Front Loaded Business Week: Prioritizes spending at the start of the business week.
Recurring Lifetime (Meta only): Duplicates Facebook Lifetime Campaigns that expired in the prior month.
Segmented (Recurring): Breaks down the full monthly budget into dedicated allocations during specific time periods.
Segmented (One-Time): Starts and stops spend based on the exact dates you specify. This strategy can span multiple months as long as no individual specified period spans multiple months.
Custom: Click and drag the graph for personalized spending. Tip: Consider using a segmented budget.
Fixed Daily: Sets a fixed daily spending value.
“No Daily Pacing” pacing strategy vs. Read-Only mode
Fluency does not optimize daily budgets for the No Daily Pacing pacing strategy or for Read-Only mode. However, Read-Only takes it a step further in that Fluency prevents any budget amount updates from happening from our system, including monthly updates.
For Read-Only, Fluency does not pause campaigns at the partner if the monthly budget amount is set to $0, whereas we do for the No Daily Pacing pacing strategy and all other budgets.
Fluency will pause campaigns if the spend is greater than the monthly budget for both No Daily Pacing and Read-Only, so long as the Default setting to Pause Campaigns when Individual Budgets Exhaust toggle is enabled in Budget Management.
Which pacing strategy is the right one?
Most budgets use an "Even" pacing strategy, spending about the same amount every day of the month. If you have different needs, discuss with your Advertising Engineer which is the right pacing strategy.
Pacing strategies in action
In a budget’s settings, you can view a performance graph to visualize the month’s daily spend. The graph shows current spend vs. target spend (the pacing plan). When a budget is underspending, Fluency makes every effort to adjust the daily target spend to reach the pacing plan.
Example: The budget above has an Even pacing strategy. Spend fell below the pacing plan around the 3rd day of the month. Fluency increased the daily spend target so the spend caught up with the pacing plan around the 8th.
Performance graph key
X-axis: Days of the month
Y-axis: Spend
Pacing Plan (gray line): Planned monthly spend
Adjusted Plan (dotted red line): Projected adjustments due to underspend or overspend
Current Spend (blue bars): Actual daily spend
Tip: Hover your cursor over the dotted red line to view budget performance stats (i.e., current spend vs. target spend, pacing percentage, overall pacing percentage) for that day.
Updating pacing strategies for existing budgets
You can select a budget pacing strategy for a specific account, at the Blueprint level, in Bulk Manage, or with Advanced Download. Here's how:
For a single account
Go to Manage (globe icon) in the left menu.
Select Accounts.
Click on an account in the list.
Select the Budgets tab.
Click on a budget from the list of budgets associated with the account.
Go to Settings & Tools under Budget Actions near the top.
Scroll to find the Pacing section.
(Optional) Click Show More Pacing Strategies to see all the options.
Select a pacing strategy.
Click Save.
For a Blueprint
Go to Automate (rocket icon) in the left menu.
Select Blueprint Editor.
Click on a Blueprint in the list.
Expand open the Settings & Configuration section, and select the Budget Config. tab.
Expand open a budget configuration to view the Pacing Strategy section.
Select a strategy from the list—or click Show All Pacing Strategies, select a strategy.
Click Save Changes.
Setting default pacing strategies for new budgets
When creating a new budget, the default pacing strategy is None, including budgets pulled into Fluency via reverse sync. To designate a different default pacing strategy:
Go to Settings & Tools (gear icon) in the left menu.
Select Customer Info.
Under Budget Management, click + Add New Budget Management.
Select Default Pacing Strategy (e.g., EVEN).
Type in a different pacing strategy (see the list of strategies above).
Click Save.