If you rely on running ads only on specific days of the week rather than 24/7, Google Ads is changing how it will pace your campaigns. The news broke this week that campaigns using ad scheduling will now try to spend the full monthly average on the days that the campaigns are enabled. If this sounds confusing, that’s because it is, and it will no doubt trigger unexpected overspend for unwary advertisers.
Google has always and will continue following 2 budget pacing rules:
- Monthly spending limit is 30.4 times your Average Daily Budget
- A campaign will never spend more than 2x the daily budget on a single day
It used to be that Google would shorten that 30.4 monthly average for the days of the month that ads were scheduled to run. For example, if you have a weekend only campaign with a $100/day budget set, Google pretended your month was only going to be about 8 days long (4 two-day weekends), Therefore, your monthly spend would be right around $800.
Now, Google will look at that same campaign and set the monthly spend limit to $3,040 ($100/day x 30.4 days). With the 2x daily spending limit still in place, we can expect the weekend campaign to spend $1,600 per month.. Therefore, if we want that campaign to only spend $800 in a month, we need to set the daily budget to $50.
When is this happening?
According to email notices being received by advertisers, this goes into effect on March 1, 2026. A Google Ads Liaison on LinkedIn reported that the rollout however is phased and only accounts receiving notices will be affected immediately.
Now what?
If your ads rely on custom schedules and you received the email from Google, it’s imperative to adjust your daily budgets to account for the new calculation. Even if you haven’t received a notice from Google Ads yet, we recommend watching the spend on your scheduled campaigns for behavior changes and adjust accordingly if the campaigns are spending more aggressively than expected.
The Google Premier Partner team here at Upward Engine is keeping up with all of Google’s ever-changing ads policies and functionalities. If you need an extra set of experts making sure your campaigns are succeeding, let’s talk!
