Smarter PPC Budgeting with Shared Budgets
Advertisers tired of constantly monitoring their budgets and adjusting for unspent paid search dollars should consider using the Shared Budgets feature in Google AdWords. Shared Budgets automatically adjusts budgets across campaigns to shift unspent fund
Pay-per-click (PPC) involves coordination between around three key factors – placing the right ads in front of the right audience at the right time. In order to match up all three aspects – relevancy, targeting, and timing – oftentimes meant creating separate campaigns that each focused on a specific goal.
While these practices added value to campaigns, a fourth area that sometimes complicated matters was budgeting. Especially when trying to set and achieve very specific goals for ROI, trying to accommodate changes in costs could become tricky.
On Monday, Google announced in their AdWords Blog the introduction of Shared Budgets – a feature that allows advertisers to establish a single daily budget that's shared by multiple campaigns. These changes give advertisers more control over budgeting and should make account management much easier.
To better demonstrate how this budgeting option might play out – consider the following scenario:
Scenario: Say you are a hotel looking to spend your PPC dollars ($100/day) across three campaigns:
- A campaign targeting desktops ($50/day)
- A campaign targeting mobile devices ($30/day)
- A remarketing campaign to reach people who visited your site but didn't book a room ($20/day)
Traditionally, a budget would be manually set for each campaign and typically each campaign would hit its daily budget. However, if on one day the desktop search campaign saw fewer impressions and clicks and only spent $40, resulting in a total daily spend of $90. With Shared Budgets, however, the unspent $10 from the desktop campaign could then be funneled into the mobile or remarketing campaigns.
To create a shared budget, advertisers should click Shared library and then select Budgets. Google will then provide step-by-step instructions to create a new shared budget.
In conclusion – the shared budgets feature should help compensate for fluctuations in paid search traffic by automatically making adjustments across campaigns. This should untimely improve performance and help marketers spend less time constantly monitoring budgets and more time optimizing.
For more PPC strategies and tips, go to Milestone Insights blog.
About Milestone Inc
Milestone drives online discovery and customer acquisition for over 2,000 companies through an AI-native digital presence platform. Milestone's platform integrates a GEO-first CMS, AI Agents Platform, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Personalization Engine, AI Content Studio, Local Listings, Schema Manager, Analytics, and Performance Marketing services. Businesses across hospitality chains, management companies, and independent brands trust Milestone to enhance visibility and deliver engaging customer experiences.
Clients include leading brands such as Marriott, Choice Hotels, IHG, Velas Resorts, Preferred Hotels & Resorts, SeaWorld, and Sun Outdoors. Milestone powers over 300 million annual website visits, 540 million schema-powered content clicks, and 3.7 billion local searches. Recognized by Forrester, G2, the Adrian Awards, and the US Search Awards, Milestone is consistently ranked among the top MarTech platforms. Learn more at www.milestoneinternet.com.