Shared budget

Shared budget is a new feature in Google Ads that allows multiple campaigns to share a single budget. This can be useful for businesses that want to run multiple campaigns but don't have the budget to support each of them individually. With Shared budgets, businesses can set a single budget and let the Google Ads system allocate it across all of their campaigns. 

How Google Ads Shared Budget Works

Shared budgets work by allocating your budget across all of your campaigns based on their performance. Google will automatically adjust your budget based on which campaigns are delivering the best results. This allows you to get the most out of your budget by investing more in the campaigns that are working and less in the ones that aren’t. 

For example, let's say you have two campaigns running with a shared budget of $100 per day. Campaign A has a CPC (cost-per-click) of $0.50 and campaign B has a CPC of $0.75. Based on these numbers, Google will allocate more of the shared budget to campaign A since it is performing better. 

How to Set Up a Shared Budget

Once you have a Google Ads account, you can set up a shared budget by going to the "Budgets" tab and selecting "Shared Budgets." From there, you'll need to specify a few things: 

• The total amount you want to spend each day 
• The start and end date for your shared budget 
• Which campaigns you want to include in the shared budget 
• Whether you want the shared budget to be applied evenly across all campaigns or based on performance 

How to Optimise Your Spend with Shared Budgets 

Once you've set up your shared budget, there are a few things you can do to optimise your ad spend: 

• Review your performance regularly and adjust your budget accordingly
• Make sure you're targeting the right keywords and ad placements
• Use negative keywords to avoid wasting money on irrelevant clicks
• Test different ad copy and landing pages to see what works best for your business

What Are the Benefits of a Shared Budget? 

There are a few reasons to use shared budgets: 

• More consistent performance. Shared budgets can help ensure that your campaigns are performing consistently by evenly distributing the budget between campaigns, which helps keep them running at the same pace.
• Greater flexibility and scalability. With shared budgets, you can quickly increase or decrease your budget depending on how your campaigns are performing. This helps you take advantage of opportunities as they come up and react quickly to changes in the market.
• Easier budget management. Shared budgets make managing your budget simpler by allowing you to set a single budget and have Google Ads take care of the rest. This means you don’t have to manually adjust your budget every time one of your campaigns starts performing better than another. 

What Are the Risks of Shared Budget? 

There are a few risks to using shared budgets: 

• You could overspend: If one of your campaigns is performing very well, it could quickly consume your entire budget and leave other campaigns with no funding at all, which isn’t ideal if they are still important to your business. 
• Your underperforming campaigns can waste ad spend: If your campaigns are not performing well, you could end up wasting some of your budget on them rather than pausing it to try and work out why it isn’t delivering. 
• You have less control over your budget: With shared budgets, you have to rely on Google Ads to allocate your budget based on performance. This means you won’t be able to manually adjust your budget for each campaign.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which campaigns can I include in a shared budget? 

You can include any campaign that is running on the same network (Search, Display, Shopping, or Video). 

Can I use shared budgets with campaigns that have different budgets? 

No. All the campaigns included in a shared budget must have the same budget. 

How often is my Google Ads shared campaign budget allocated? 

Your shared budget is allocated daily. 

What if I want to stop using a shared budget? 

Google Ads shared budgets are flexible and you can turn them off at any time. Your campaigns will go back to operate on their regular budget.

How do I know if my shared budget is working? 

You can track the performance of your campaigns by looking at the "Shared Budget" column in your campaign reports. This column will show you how much of your budget was allocated to each campaign on a daily basis. 

How can I use shared budget to optimise low performing campaigns?

If one of your campaigns is not performing well, you can try adjusting its settings or reallocating its budget to other more successful campaigns. This can help improve your overall return on investment (ROI). 

When adjusting settings, adopt a scientific approach. Develop plausible hypotheses as to why you aren’t seeing the results you want. Then test each hypothesis individually to try and confirm any potential weak points in your campaign. 

How can I evenly allocate budget to all the campaigns in my shared library? 

You can allocate budget to all the campaigns in your shared library by using the "All Campaigns" option. This will evenly distribute your budget among all of the campaigns in your library. 

What is the difference between individual campaign budgets and shared budgeting?

The main difference between individual campaign budgets and shared budgeting is that with shared budgeting, your budget is divided among all of the campaigns in the shared budget. This can help save you time and improve your overall return on investment (ROI). 

How can I ensure that my high performance campaigns are getting the most funding?

If you want to ensure your best campaigns are getting the most funding, you can use the "Top Campaigns" option. This will allocate more of your budget to your campaigns with the strongest performance metrics. 

If I have multiple shared budgets, can I set an individual budget for each one?

Yes. You can set an individual budget for each shared budget. This will allow you to better control your spending and ensure every single campaign is getting the appropriate amount of funding.

What is the shared budget cap for each campaign? 

The shared budget cap is the total amount that can be spent on a campaign across all networks. This ensures your campaigns do not overspend and allows you to better control your spending. You can set shared budget caps at whatever level is financially sustainable for your business.