What are my budget options?

Your budget is how much you want to spend per day on your ads. The right choice depends on your goals and how you want to monitor your spending.

Before you can submit your ad campaign, you need to set a campaign budget amount and select a budget type. Don't worry, you can change your budget amount and budget types at any time. Changes to your budget generally take effect within an hour or so.

Important

We strongly recommend using one of the "Standard" budget types which optimize your budget spend throughout the day. "Accelerated" budget types are not recommended for most advertisers and should only be used by those who are looking to show their ads early in the morning until their budget depletes, even if that means that their ads don't show the rest of the day.
If your campaign is limited by budget, using an Accelerated budget type will mean that your budget will be depleted early in the day. You should monitor your budget every day to make sure you are not limited too early. Otherwise, consider switching to a Standard budget type.

The four possible budget types are:

Budget Type	Details
Daily - Standard	Distributes ad impressions for your campaign across the entire month, and optimizes your budget to show your ads evenly throughout each day.
Daily - Accelerated	Distributes ad impressions for your campaign across the entire month, showing your ads as quickly as appropriate early in the day until your daily budget is depleted.
Shared - Standard	Distributes ad impressions for multiple campaigns across the entire month, and optimizes your budget to show your ads evenly throughout each day.
Shared - Accelerated	Distributes ad impressions for multiple campaigns across the entire month, showing your ads as quickly as appropriate early in the day until your daily budget is depleted.

Important

Your daily limit is a target; your actual spend might be higher or lower. Variations are caused by a number of factors, such as different traffic volumes in different days of the week, or automatic detection and refunding of fraud clicks that can give money back to a campaign within a few hours of the click. Microsoft Advertising anticipates and automatically compensates for the fluctuations, and usually keeps overspend to less than 100% above your daily limit.

Change your budget type expando image

Click Campaigns located at the top of the page.
Click the name of the campaign you want to update.
Click the Settings tab.
Select the appropriate budget type, enter an appropriate amount, and click Save.

For information on setting up a shared budget, see How do I share a budget across multiple campaigns?

Comparing budget types

The right budget type for you depends on what's important to you:

If you want...	Choose...
To set the maximum amount that you want to spend each day.	Daily - Standard, Daily - Accelerated, Shared - Standard, or Shared - Accelerated
To have Microsoft Advertising automatically adjust how your budget is spent across multiple campaigns for extra flexibility.	Shared - Standard or Shared - Accelerated
To take advantage of changing market conditions, such as a holiday season or special promotion.	Daily - Standard, Daily - Accelerated, Shared - Standard, or Shared - Accelerated
To make frequent changes to budget throughout the month.	Daily - Standard, Daily - Accelerated, Shared - Standard, or Shared - Accelerated
To monitor your budget daily.	Daily - Standard, Daily - Accelerated, Shared - Standard, or Shared - Accelerated
To have impressions distributed as evenly as appropriate throughout the day.	Daily - Standard or Shared - Standard
Your daily budget to be spent as quickly as appropriate each day until it’s all gone.	Daily - Accelerated or Shared - Accelerated

If you still can’t decide which budget type is right for you, try each one and watch how your ads perform. Remember, you can switch budget types at any time. Also, be sure that you understand what happens if you reach your budget limit (for more details, see What if I reach my daily budget limit?).

To learn more about shared budgets, see How do I share a budget across multiple campaigns?

How your budget is calculated and spent

Your daily budget setting is only a target, so your actual spend might be higher or lower. This is because, regardless of the budget type you choose, Microsoft Advertising always calculates a monthly budget and then the actual budget limit is calculated for an entire month. Daily budget types simply help you make sure that your budget is spread out over an entire month, and not used up in the first day.

The calculation to convert your daily budget to a monthly budget is:

monthly budget = daily budget x days in month

If you happen to change your daily budget mid-month, then your current monthly limit is calculated as your spend so far that month, plus the daily budget amount multiplied by the number of days remaining in the month. Like this:

monthly budget = Spend-to-date + (daily budget x days remaining)

In the unlikely event that your campaign’s spend goes over your monthly limit, Microsoft Advertising will refund the overspend at the end of the month.