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How do you catch CPL spikes before they destroy your budget?
Posted by on January 10, 2026 at 7:58 amHad a CPL jump from $18 to $32 over the weekend. Didn't notice until Monday morning. Cost about $600 in overspend.
What's your early warning system? Do you:
– Check dashboards multiple times per day (exhausting)
– Set up manual alerts in Meta/Google (never work well)
– Just accept you'll find out about problems 1-2 days late
– Something else I'm missing?
I'm trying to move from reactive to proactive but haven't found a clean solution yet.
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1 Reply
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Automated performance alerts via Slack or email triggered at campaign level not account level… set thresholds like “notify if CPL increases 40%+ vs 7-day average with minimum 20 conversions” so you catch spikes with statistical significance not noise.
For my client accounts, I use custom scripts or third-party tools that check hourly and flag anomalies… the main thing is setting alert thresholds that balance sensitivity with false positives because daily CPL fluctuates 20-30% naturally so alerting on every 15% swing just creates noise.
Weekend spikes are common when conversion rates drop but spend continues… most high-spend clients I work with either pause campaigns Friday night or reduce budgets 30-40% for Saturday/Sunday because lead quality typically tanks while CPLs spike.
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Same way you pre-empt a heart attack; you can’t.
Best you can do is run rockstar level optimisations and hygiene. Set up alerts to trigger emails to you if there’s a massive day on day change in key metrics.
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I usually set alerts in Google Ads and Meta with thresholds a bit below the normal CPL so I get notifications before the budget blows up
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