Budget metrics are essential for allocating resources effectively based on actual campaign performance. Use these metrics in combination with other report insights to understand whether elements are supporting or hindering performance. For example, you can assess whether a max bid price is impacting your ability to spend the campaign’s budget in full and reach the intended audience.

You can review data and analytics related to seven budget metrics in the IQM platform:

Note that each metric in the Budget category will only appear after certain dimensions are added to the report. Refer to Troubleshoot a report for more details on these conditional fields.

The IO budget represents the total monetary value or impression amount that can be reached before the campaign must stop spending. The choice between the two depends on the campaign’s goals, budgeting preferences, and desired outcomes, and the budget type was defined during initial IO setup. Refer to What is a budget vs. impression-based IO? for more information.

Advertisers can define daily spending limits to manage pacing for a campaign. Daily budget represents the maximum amount that the campaign can spend per day including any applicable data, media, and pre-bid expenses.

Daily budget metrics can display as a monetary value or impression value depending on whether a budget-based or impression-based budget was defined for the campaign. Budget-based campaigns run until the designated budget is spent, with options to regulate spending on a daily, weekly, or overall basis. Impression-based budgets include a target number of impressions per day. The campaign can continue to spend until that impression count is reached.

Total budget represents the full amount that the campaign can spend in total including any applicable data, media, and pre-bid expenses. You can set this budget at the campaign level, or distribute a single total budget across multiple campaigns.

Total budget metrics can display as a monetary value or impression value depending on whether a budget-based or impression-based budget was defined for the campaign. Budget-based campaigns run until the designated budget is spent, with options to regulate spending on a daily, weekly, or overall basis. Impression-based budgets include a target number of impressions. The campaign can continue to spend until that impression count is reached.

Max bid price represents the highest bid amount that we can place for your ad at auction. You specify this amount during campaign setup, or adjust it while the campaign is running. This metric is calculated on a CPM basis.

Base bid price represents the lowest bid amount that we can place for your ad at auction. You specify this amount during campaign setup, or adjust it while the campaign is running. This metric is calculated on a CPM basis.

Budget completion represents the percentage of the total budget that the campaign spent. A campaign will stop spending when its end date is reached or its budget is depleted (100% budget completion).

We recommend using budget completion in combination with the Dashboard app’s Campaign Pacing and Daily Pacing reporting columns to assess whether your campaign is on track to spend its full budget by its end date. Refer to A guide to IO pacing, campaign pacing, and daily pacing in IQM’s platform for more information.

Advertisers didn’t need to worry about overpaying for ad placements when second-price auctions were the norm. In first-price auction environments, however, you’ll pay the amount you bid if it wins—regardless of the next-highest bid. For example, if your bid won at $4, and the next-highest bid was $2, you would still pay $4. This can lead to inefficient bidding and increased costs, making paying the right price more important than ever.

With bid shading, we’ll lower your bid when you can win the auction for a lower price than the max bid you specified for the campaign. We enable bid shading by default across all campaigns to help you bid competitively in first-price auctions without overpaying.

Bid shading savings represents the costs saved through using bid shading on the campaigns that served ads in first-party auctions. For example, if you set a max bid of $10 but bid shading allowed you to win at $9.30, you’ll see a bid shading savings of $0.70 in the Reports app for this campaign. This metric is calculated on a CPM basis.