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Temporarily cutting budget for 10 days
We have about 15 campaigns running and (mostly) performing well, with a total budget of around £800 per day. Due to an unexpected cost coming up on another digital channel we may need to trim some PPC costs in October if we can before starting afresh in November.
I know the consensus tends to be avoid pausing campaigns at all costs. When I’ve paused and restarted before the drop in performance has never been catastrophic, but I have definitely noticed a dip for around 1-2 weeks before the campaign starts performing normally again.
If I instead drop the budgets by around 90% for a few days before putting back to old budget on 1st November, would that be less damaging? I’ve seen this recommended as an alternative but have never really grasped the logic behind it, as the campaign will still have to readjust and re-optimise anyway.
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1 Reply
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There is no solid logic behind dropping budget vs pausing.
Pure speculation: A drastic budget change will cause more turbulence than simply pausing the campaign if you’re using automated bidding.
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I would pause it.
When I reduce budget on my campaigns, it drops my sites down the pack which can take weeks to come back up.
Pausing seems to bring the campaign back in much less time, usually 3 days.
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Thanks for the replies both, much appreciated.
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I’m more in the never pause camp. I too have seen it take 1-2 weeks for it to ramp back up, and if you are fine with that, then you can probably just pause them. I just never got the approval from the higher ups when I would say “give it 1 to 2 weeks”. A sneaky play could be to set device bid adjustments to -100%. Not sure how that would impact smart bidding or if it would also require a ramp up stage to recover.
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An alternative (and better) budget management strategy is to reduce bids and let lower impression share and lower CTR generate the budget reduction. Might take a few days to hone in on the right bid to get the daily spend where you need it but you’ll potentially be generating more efficient (although fewer) sales and don’t have to worry about any impact of pausing or doing daily budget changes.
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