About minimum daily budgets and bid safeguards

Apple Ads does not allow a campaign’s daily budget to fall below its highest keyword bid or ad group default CPT bid. Budget Allocation checks these limits when you create or edit an allocation group and again after the daily budget distribution is calculated.

How the minimum daily budget is calculated

The minimum daily budget is based on the campaigns included in the allocation group. For each campaign, Budget Allocation checks:

1. The highest Ad Group Default CPT bid.
2. The highest Keyword bid.
3. Whichever of these two values is higher.

The higher value becomes that campaign’s minimum. Budget Allocation then adds the campaign minimums together.

The result is the lowest daily budget you can enter for the allocation group.

Example

Assume an allocation group contains five campaigns.

In this example, you cannot enter a daily budget below 695.

Minimum budget validation

The minimum daily budget check applies when you:

• Create a budget allocation group.
• Update an existing budget allocation group.
• Add or remove campaigns and save the allocation group.
• Change the daily budget.

If the entered amount is below the required minimum, the allocation group cannot be created or updated.

The validation message states:

The total daily budget cannot be updated. You cannot enter a daily budget that is less than the sum of max Default CPT bids (<default cpt bid amount>).

Increase the daily budget before continuing.

For setup instructions, see Create a budget allocation group.

How bid safeguards work

Budget Allocation also checks campaign bid minimums after completing the daily budget calculation. This safeguard most often affects campaigns with little or no spend because the daily calculation might otherwise assign them a very low budget.

For each campaign, it compares the newly calculated budget with:

• The campaign’s highest keyword bid.
• The campaign’s highest ad group default CPT bid.

If the calculated budget is already high enough, no change is made. If the calculated budget is below the required minimum, Budget Allocation raises it to the higher of the two bid values.

This is the same campaign-level minimum used when validating the daily budget during creation and editing.

Why the allocated total can exceed the daily budget

Raising a campaign to its required bid minimum can increase the total allocated budget above the configured daily budget.

When this happens, Budget Allocation does not reduce the budgets of the other campaigns to offset the increase.

Example

Assume the allocation group’s configured daily budget is 1,000. After redistribution, one campaign receives a calculated budget of 80. However, its highest Keyword bid is 120.

Budget Allocation raises that campaign’s budget from 80 to 120. The additional 40 is added to the allocation total. It is not removed from the other campaigns.

As a result, the final allocated total can be higher than 1,000.

When to review your bids or budget

Budget Allocation uses the following threshold to interpret the difference:

• An overage of 10% or less of the total daily budget is treated as a minor expected variance.
• An overage above 10% can indicate that campaign bids and the allocation group’s daily budget are not aligned.

When the difference is above 10%, review the included campaigns’ keyword bids and ad group default CPT bids, or increase the allocation group’s daily budget.

The safeguard is checked when the allocation group is created and every day while it is running. This allows Budget Allocation to account for bid changes made after creation, including a new Keyword with a higher bid.

For the complete daily calculation process, see How Budget Allocation redistributes campaign budgets.

Related links

• How Budget Allocation redistributes campaign budgets
• Edit, pause, resume, or delete a budget allocation group
• Troubleshoot Budget Allocation
• Create a budget allocation group

Need more help?

If you have further questions on the process, contact your dedicated Customer Success Manager or contact the support team via live chat.