The Overspend Audit: Diagnosing a Restricted-Schedule Pacing Export
Objective: Given a 14-day daily-spend export for a business-hours-only Google Search campaign, diagnose whether the account has drifted into the June 2026 30.4x monthly-cap pacing pattern, identify the exact day the trend broke from flat to accelerating, and recommend an alert-threshold fix instead of a panic budget cut.
You're the paid media analyst at Warby Parker, reviewing a Google Search campaign restricted to weekday business hours (9am-6pm) after the June 2026 pacing change rolled out across the account.
Read a daily-spend table, calculate the 7-day rolling average and projected monthly spend, and flag the day pacing broke from flat to accelerating relative to the 75%/90% alert thresholds.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free, no account setup, and sufficient for a 14-day export
The process
2 steps
Step 01 of 02
Since June 1, 2026, Google paces scheduled campaigns toward a full monthly cap of 30.4x the daily budget, even when the ad schedule only allows a fraction of the week, so restricted-schedule accounts can see 2-3x higher effective daily spend on active days than planned.
With a $150 daily budget (monthly cap: $150 x 30.4 = $4,560), this 14-day export shows spend holding flat for the first 8 business days, then rising sharply. Which day did pacing break, and what's the projected monthly overage if it continues?
Procedure
- Import daily-spend-export.csv and freeze the header row
- Add a rolling 7-day average spend column
- Add a projected-monthly column: rolling average x 30.4
- Scan the projected-monthly column for the first day it exceeds the $4,560 cap by more than 10%
Warby Parker Search - Frame Finder (Mon-Fri only), $150 daily budget, cap $4,560 Date Spend 7-day avg Projected monthly Aug 3 (Mon) $148 $150 $4,560 Aug 4 (Tue) $151 $150 $4,560 Aug 5 (Wed) $149 $150 $4,560 Aug 6 (Thu) $152 $150 $4,560 Aug 7 (Fri) $150 $150 $4,560 Aug 10 (Mon) $152 $150 $4,560 Aug 11 (Tue) $287 $179 $5,442 Aug 12 (Wed) $301 $198 $6,019 Aug 13 (Thu) $294 $217 $6,597 Aug 14 (Fri) $309 $236 $7,174
Healthy
Spend holds near $150/day and the projected-monthly column stays close to the $4,560 cap.
Unhealthy
Starting Aug 11, daily spend jumps roughly 90% and the projected-monthly figure blows past the cap toward $7,174, a 57% overshoot.
What this means
The break lines up with the restricted-schedule pacing behavior the lesson describes: with only 45 active hours a week, Google compresses more of the monthly target into those hours once its pacing curve recalculates mid-flight.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Projected-monthly column exceeds the cap by more than 10% | Set 75%/90% pacing alerts immediately and flag the account for a schedule review, not an emergency budget cut | 30 min |
Step 02 of 02
The lesson's checklist recommends re-checking pacing alerts weekly, confirming the actual monthly spend trend against the cap rather than reacting to a single day's number, and changing one lever at a time.
Using the projected-monthly figures from Step 1, at what point should a 75%/90% alert have fired, and what's the safe next action per the checklist's 'one lever at a time' rule?
Procedure
- Add a cumulative-spend-to-date column
- Add a percent-of-cap column: cumulative spend / $4,560
- Mark the first day percent-of-cap trend crosses 75%, then 90%, on the projected trajectory
- Write a one-sentence recommendation: what changes, and what does not
Day Cumulative spend % of $4,560 cap (projected trajectory) Aug 7 $750 16% Aug 11 $1,187 75% (projected trajectory crosses threshold) Aug 13 $1,775 90% (projected trajectory crosses threshold) Aug 14 $2,084 94%
Healthy
Alert fires at the 75% projected-trajectory crossing on Aug 11, giving a full week of warning before month-end.
Unhealthy
No alert configured, so the first signal anyone sees is the finance team asking about an invoice that's 57% over plan.
What this means
A pacing alert exists to catch the trend, not the total, checking only today's absolute spend misses the accelerating slope entirely.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| No alert thresholds configured on a restricted-schedule campaign | Enable 75%/90% alerts in Campaign settings > Budget, and review the ad schedule itself before touching the daily budget number | 5 min |
Final deliverable
A dated diagnosis memo identifying the exact day pacing broke from flat to accelerating, the projected monthly overage, and a recommended alert-threshold fix rather than a budget cut.
See a reference example
ThredUp, Search - Resale Marketplace, pacing diagnosis memo (excerpt) FINDING: Pacing broke on Day 9 (Tue), 6 business days into the flight. 7-day avg spend jumped from $210/day flat to $340/day. Projected monthly spend: $6,384 against a $3,952 cap (30.4x $130/day), a 62% overshoot. RECOMMENDATION: Do not cut the daily budget. Enable 75%/90% pacing alerts today, review whether the ad schedule can be widened, and revisit in 3-4 days once the trend is confirmed.
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Correctly identifies the day pacing shifted from flat to accelerating using the rolling-average column
- Recommends alert thresholds and a schedule review rather than an immediate budget cut