Campaign Overspending: What does it mean & how can I resolve it?

Campaign approvals can involve several steps. An Advertiser may have their assets and offer approved, but still come across a rejection message: “Risk of overspending,”: 

In this article, we’ll explain the reasons behind this type of rejection and show you how to review your campaign to resolve the issue.

Reason for the rejection

This rejection occurs when a campaign targets more traffic than the set budget can cover. Since our servers refresh every 5–10 minutes, the system may not immediately recognize that your budget has been reached until the next refresh. As a result, your campaign could risk overspending significantly past your intended budget.

How do I know if my campaign has overspending risks?

If your campaign has already been rejected for overspending risks:

• You’ll usually receive an email from our Compliance team listing the specific campaign IDs that were rejected, along with advice on changes required for reapproval.
  
• You’ll also see the campaign status updated in your Admin Panel, as shown in the screenshot above.

To determine if your campaign has overspending risks, there are 3 key factors you should review:

1. Traffic Volume Targeted
   Check the Traffic Estimate tab at the bottom right of your campaign settings. This shows the estimated daily traffic volume your campaign is targeting based on its current setup.
   
2. Daily Budget
   Ensure that your daily budget is aligned with the traffic volume you are targeting. 
3. Bid
   Review your bid amount, as higher bids combined with high traffic volume can quickly lead to overspending.

Now, let’s take this rejected campaign as an example:

• The campaign is targeting over 150 million daily impressions: 

• The bid is set at $0.80 CPM:

• Daily Budget: $20

Even if the campaign captures only 1% of the available traffic, the cost would already exceed the daily budget: ((150,000,000×0.01)÷1,000)×0.80=$1,200. This is 60 times higher than the daily budget set.

How to resolve campaign overspend?

To resolve this issue, here are three steps you should take:

Step 1: Refine your targeting options and campaign setup

Enabling specific targeting options helps reduce the overall traffic volume in a campaign, which prevents overspending risks. At the same time, it helps optimize for the right audience, which can ultimately help boost conversions.

Here are some common targeting options worth enabling for your campaigns:

• Location Targeting: Target one GEO per campaign, as each location has different bid prices and traffic performance for each offer. This also reduces the overall traffic volume in a single campaign, helping control costs more effectively.
• Device Targeting: Creating separate campaigns per device can boost performance and reduce costs.

• Frequency Capping: We recommend setting it to 1 impression per 24 hours. This reduces the amount of traffic targeted within the same campaign while giving you a higher ratio of unique visitors.

• Language Targeting: Are you looking to conduct a more detailed test? Then test out Language Targeting. By including or excluding specific languages in your campaign, you can reach your target audience better while limiting the traffic sent to the campaign.
• Select Specific Traffic Sources or Traffic Type: In Step 5 of your campaign settings, you can target specific traffic sources. Targeting multiple sources with a massive traffic volume increases the risk of overspending and potential rejections.

If you’re unsure which traffic sources work best for your campaign, we recommend getting started by testing RON and Premium traffic in separate campaigns. RON and Premium. This allows you to clearly determine which type of campaign performs better and ensures you are not wasting campaign budget while controlling the traffic flow for each campaign.

Step 2: Examine and adjust your bid

Maintaining a competitive bid is important. However, if your bid is too high, your campaign can quickly exhaust its daily budget and increase the risk of overspending. Review your bid in relation to the traffic volume and campaign goals, and adjust it accordingly to ensure you stay within budget while still remaining competitive for the traffic you want.

Additionally, this FAQ article Negative and Positive Examples of Price Settings provides very useful guidance.

Step 3: Increase your daily budget and optimize delivery mode

Your daily budget should be sufficient to cover the volume of traffic your campaign may receive.

Next to the daily budget settings, there’s a dropdown menu where you can select the delivery mode. We recommend choosing ‘Distribute throughout the day’, which paces your campaign to reach the set budget or impression limit evenly across the day.

How to avoid campaign overspending

In this article, we have covered the ways you can avoid campaign overspending. By following these steps, you can increase your campaign performance and ensure you are making the most of your budget. If you are still unsure or you would like personalized guidance on resolving overspending risks for your campaigns, please reach out to our Customer Success Team. They can provide tailored recommendations to help you optimize performance while staying within budget. If you are not yet advertising your offers with ExoClick, sign up today! And take advantage of high-quality traffic and large volumes!