Glossary
Ad budget ops glossary
The vocabulary of managing an ad budget — pacing, run rate, reconciliation, the daily floor, surplus reallocation, and the rest. Plain-English definitions, no jargon for its own sake.
Ad budget pacing
Controlling how fast you spend an ad budget so you finish the period on target.
Expected pace
Where your spend should be today, based on the share of the period elapsed.
Month-to-date (MTD) pacing
How your spend so far this month compares to where it should be by now.
Run rate (burn rate)
Today's spending speed projected to the end of the period.
Daily budget floor
The adjusted daily spend target that keeps a channel on pace to period-end.
Cadence-aware pacing
Pacing that accounts for how a channel actually spends across the week.
Holiday-aware pacing
Pacing that adjusts the daily floor for holidays and demand spikes or dips.
Overspend prevention
Catching a channel projected over budget early, while a small fix still works.
Month-end reconciliation
Locking the month, comparing actuals to plan, and deciding what to do with surplus.
Surplus reallocation
Deliberately moving underspent budget forward or elsewhere instead of losing it.
Append-only budget ledger
A budget record where every change is a new entry and nothing is overwritten.
Budget vs. performance tracking
Tracking spend dollars (budget) vs. results like ROAS (performance) — two different jobs.
Budget pacing
The general term for controlling how fast any budget is spent over a period so it lands on target.
Ad pacing
Controlling how fast ad spend goes out per channel or campaign so it finishes a period on target.
Digital ad pacing
Ad pacing applied to digital channels — Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and the rest — where daily spend can actually be adjusted.
Spend pacing
Pacing described from the spend side — actual dollars going out, compared to where they should be.
See the terms in action.
Caeros does pacing, overspend prevention, reconciliation, and the append-only ledger for you — for every channel. Try it on sample data, no signup.
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