What is budget pacing?
Budget pacing tells you, mid-month, whether a channel is spending faster or slower than its recent norm. It compares actual month-to-date spend against where a straight line through the channel's own last three months would put it today. A ratio of 1.0 means exactly on pace; above 1 is ahead, below is behind.
Formula
pacing ratio = spend to date ÷ (avg monthly spend × share of month elapsed)
Worked example
A channel averaged €9,000 per month over the last three months. On the 11th of a 30-day month, ten days are complete, so expected spend to date is €9,000 × 10/30 = €3,000. Actual spend over those ten days is €3,900, so the pacing ratio is 1.3 — flagged as ahead. At that run rate the month closes well above the recent norm. Whether that is a problem or a deliberate ramp is your call; the flag only says it is happening.
How Saldo Metrics computes it
v_budget_pacing computes one row per channel for the current calendar month.
Both sides of the ratio count the same days: completed days only, from the start of
the month up to and including yesterday (today is still partial and would understate
the daily rate). Spend to date sums spend_base from v_ad_spend_enriched over
those days, and the expected figure multiplies the baseline by the same share of the
month (on the 11th of a 30-day month, 10/30). On the 1st no day of the new month is
complete yet, so the row shows the month that just closed, in full. The baseline
averages the channel's monthly spend over the three prior calendar months, counting a
month without spend as zero; a channel that started spending within those three
months is averaged over the months since its first spend. pacing_ratio divides
actual by expected. There is no budget entry anywhere —
the reference is the channel's own recent history, so a channel that always
overspends its plan paces "normally" here.
In the app, a ratio above 1.15 shows as ahead and below 0.85 as behind; between the two counts as on track. A channel with no spend history before the month has no baseline and shows no ratio; a channel with no spend yet this month does not appear at all.
Why it matters
Platforms spend what delivery allows, not what your plan says, and a runaway campaign is much cheaper to catch on day 10 than in the invoice. The pacing row is the earliest structural signal that a month will land off its recent norm — before any efficiency metric can tell you whether that extra spend was worth it.
Common mistakes
- Reading pacing as performance. The ratio prices nothing — a channel can pace at 1.0 while burning money, or at 1.4 while profitably scaling into strong demand. Check MER or true ROAS before acting on a pacing flag.
- Expecting it to track your planned budget. The baseline is trailing actuals from up to three months. After a deliberate budget change, pacing flags the new level for up to three months until the average catches up.
- Ignoring intra-month spend patterns. The expected line is linear; a channel that always front-loads (launch bursts, sale events) shows ahead early and on-track later, every month.
Where you see this in the app
Marketing → Overview, in the budget pacing section's per-channel rows.