Basics · also called budget pacing, delivery pacing
Pacing
Pacing is how evenly (or deliberately unevenly) a campaign spends its budget or delivers its impressions across its flight dates, so it neither runs out early nor under-delivers.
Pacing is the speed control of a campaign. If a US$30,000 campaign runs for 30 days, even pacing means spending roughly US$1,000 a day. DSPs and ad servers adjust bids and delivery throughout the day to stay on target.
Pacing can be "even" (spread evenly), "ASAP" or "accelerated" (spend as fast as possible), or weighted toward certain days or hours, such as heavier spend before a product launch or on weekends for a restaurant chain. Publishers pace direct-sold advertising campaigns in their publisher ad server to deliver what the insertion order promised.
Pacing problems are common and costly: under-pacing leaves budget unspent (and may cost a publisher make-goods), while over-pacing burns money on whatever inventory is available, often lower quality. Sudden pacing spikes at odd hours can also reveal bot traffic, since bots do not sleep. Ad operations teams watch pacing daily.
Think of it like this
Pacing is like rationing a road-trip budget: spend it all on day one and you are stuck; spend too little and you come home with money you meant to enjoy.
An example
A 20-day campaign has spent 30% of budget by day 10. The DSP raises bids so it catches up to 100% by day 20.
Related terms
Campaign
A campaign is an organised set of ads with a shared goal, budget, audience and time period, run across one or more channels and measured against defined KPIs.
Ad operations (ad ops)
Ad operations (ad ops) is the technical team and set of processes that set up, deliver, troubleshoot and report on ad campaigns, on either the publisher or the advertiser side.
Insertion order (IO)
An insertion order (IO) is the signed contract between an advertiser or agency and a publisher or vendor, specifying what ads run, where, when, in what volume and at what price.
DSP (demand-side platform)
A DSP (demand-side platform) is software that advertisers and agencies use to buy ad impressions automatically across many exchanges and publishers, deciding which impressions to bid on and how much.
Frequency capping
Frequency capping is a setting that limits how many times the same person, device or household sees a particular ad within a set period, such as three times per day.