Monitor ad spend pacing

Monitor ad spend pacing

Nothing destroys trust faster than blowing through a client’s budget—or limping into month‑end with money left on the table. When you manage dozens of ad accounts, you can’t afford to monitor pacing in a spreadsheet and hope no one leaves a campaign running over the weekend.

Why pacing errors are so expensive

Pacing issues don’t just cause awkward conversations; they quietly drain your margins and put retainers at risk.

• Overspend hits your P&L: If you exceed budget, the agency often eats the difference to “make it right,” shrinking profit on the account.
• Underspend hurts performance fees: When you don’t deploy budget, you miss lead targets, miss revenue goals, and invite scrutiny of your entire strategy.
• End‑of‑month chaos: Teams scramble to adjust bids and budgets in the final days, usually spending less efficiently just to catch up.
• Leaders lack visibility: By the time someone notices pacing is off, it’s too late to fix without heroics.

UpdateMate gives you a reliable early‑warning system so you can correct course before budget problems become relationship problems.

What good pacing control looks like

High‑performing agencies treat pacing as an always‑on safeguard, not a manual task on someone’s checklist.

• Unified budget view: You see daily and month‑to‑date spend across all major channels per client, not siloed by platform.
• Clear thresholds: Everyone agrees what “off‑pace” means (for example, ±10–15% versus plan) so alerts are meaningful, not noisy.
• Actionable alerts: Media buyers get specific guidance—where spend is drifting and which campaigns to investigate first.
• Audit trail for clients: You can show how you monitored and adjusted pacing, which builds confidence during QBRs.

With UpdateMate, this runs automatically in the background instead of relying on one spreadsheet‑wizard on your team.

How to automate ad spend pacing with UpdateMate

You can create a “Budget Watchdog” agent that monitors daily spend and flags accounts that are likely to overshoot or undershoot their targets.

1. Define budgets and targets

Start by telling UpdateMate what “on track” means for each client.

“Client A has a $10k monthly budget. Client B has $5k. Use their current monthly budgets from our planning sheet as the source of truth.”

You can link this to your existing budget tracker (for example, a Google Sheet or project management tool) so updates flow through automatically.

2. Pull daily spend across channels

Next, have UpdateMate monitor actual spend where it happens.

“Every morning at 7 AM, pull yesterday’s spend for each client from Facebook Ads and Google Ads. Aggregate at the client level, not just per campaign.”

If you run additional platforms (LinkedIn, TikTok, programmatic), you can add them to the same check so you’re always looking at total paid media.

3. Project end‑of‑month performance

Once you know spend to date, UpdateMate can project where you’re likely to land.

“Calculate the projected end‑of‑month spend based on month‑to‑date spend and days remaining. If projected spend is above 105% of budget or below 90% of budget, mark the account as ‘Off Pace’.”

You can refine these thresholds by client: aggressive growth accounts might tolerate a wider band, while strict finance teams may want tighter control.

4. Alert the right person with clear next steps

Finally, decide who should see pacing alerts and what they need to know to act quickly.

“For any client marked ‘Off Pace’, send a Slack message to the media buyer and account lead: ‘⚠️ Pacing alert for [Client]: projected to hit [Projected % of Budget]. Top 3 campaigns by spend are [Campaigns]. Please adjust budgets or bids today.’”

You can also post a daily digest in a #performance‑ops channel so leadership can scan which accounts are running hot or cold.

With UpdateMate handling pacing checks automatically, you reduce budget surprises, protect your margins, and walk into every client call confident that spend is exactly where it should be.