Schedules and caps

Schedules decide when a campaign may buy. Caps decide how much it may buy from one visitor, in one day or in total. All of them are optional and set in the campaign form.

Start and end dates

In the Basics step, Start (optional) and End (optional) limit the campaign to a period. The end must be later than the start and in the future. Before the start and after the end, the campaign does not compete for traffic.

Day-parting

In Advanced, tick Only run at certain hours (your account time zone) to show a grid of the seven weekdays by 24 hours.

• Click a cell to switch one hour on or off.
• Click a weekday name to switch the whole day on or off.

The campaign runs only during the hours you switch on, measured in your account time zone. A weekday with no hours switched on does not run at all.

Frequency cap

Tick Limit how often one visitor sees the campaign and set:

When counting impressions, only rendered impressions count, not ad requests. When counting clicks, filtered clicks do not count. Once a visitor reaches the cap, the campaign stops bidding for that visitor until the window ends.

Volume caps

The daily volume cap counts by your account day, the same day money budgets use, and starts over at midnight in your account time zone. Only impressions and clicks that count toward billing are counted: traffic marked as fraud, and renders your budget or balance could not pay for, do not use up the cap.

Conversion cap

Tick Cap conversions and set:

• Conversion type (letter): the conversion type to count, such as A. It must be a type that exists under Tracking.
• At most: the maximum number of conversions.
• per day or in total.
• Stop serving at the cap: tick to stop buying traffic once the cap is reached.

Only conversions of the chosen type count, and conversions from traffic marked as fraud never count. The daily period counts by your account day (your time zone).

On a CPA campaign, conversions above the cap are recorded but not charged. If you do not tick Stop serving at the cap, the campaign keeps buying traffic after the cap, and conversions from that traffic are still not charged. For most CPA campaigns, ticking it is what you want.

Share of eligible traffic

Share of eligible traffic (%) lets the campaign bid on only part of the requests it matches, from 1 to 100. It slows spend without changing your bid, which is useful when a new campaign spends faster than you can evaluate it.

Budgets

Daily and total money budgets are covered in Budgets and limits.

Choosing settings for a test

• Set a frequency cap from day one. One impression per visitor per day is a reasonable start for popunder and interstitial.
• Use day-parting only after you have a week of data by hour; early on it hides useful traffic.
• On CPA campaigns, set a conversion cap that matches what your offer accepts per day.