Pace writes two things to your ad platforms: campaign budgets, and campaign status when a safeguard needs to pause or resume something. Everything below is a question customers ask about where that stops.
Does Pace change bids or only budgets?
Only budgets. No pacing run on any platform touches your bid strategies, bid values, targeting, audiences or creative. The CPA and ROAS targets you set in Pace steer where money goes between your campaigns (a campaign beating its target gets funded first), and they never change how much the account spends in total. You can still edit a Google Ads campaign's bidding yourself from the campaign row's gear menu, but that's a manual edit you make, not something pacing does. See how Pace decides your budget changes.
What happens if I change a budget directly in Google Ads or Meta Ads?
Your edit sticks until the next pacing run, then Pace steers from there. Every run reads each campaign's live budget from the platform first, so your number becomes the starting point, and Pace moves it back toward the monthly plan from there. Pace also reads Google Ads' and Meta Ads' own change logs every hour and folds those edits into your Changes tab with an In-platform badge, so an overnight edit in Ads Manager is visible. To make a number permanent, set it in Pace or take the campaign out of automation.
Can I switch Pace off for one account or one campaign?
Yes, at three levels. For a single account, open Account Settings, stay on the General tab, and under Campaign Automation tick Exclude entire account from automated actions. For single campaigns, untick them in the same Campaign Automation list, and Pace then moves budget only between the ones left ticked. For everything at once, turn off Enable Pacing on the Pacing Schedule card in Settings, which stops pacing across every connected platform in one click.
Does Pace work with shared budgets and CBO campaigns?
Campaign budget optimisation campaigns, yes: on Meta Ads and TikTok Ads, Pace paces the single campaign-level budget. Google Ads shared budgets are the exception. Several campaigns spend from one shared budget, and overwriting it would move money another campaign depends on. So on an account paced to a monthly budget, Pace skips the write and records the campaign as Skipped, with a note suggesting you give it a budget of its own. If you set a minimum or maximum daily budget on a campaign that uses a shared budget, the limits apply to the shared budget as a whole. What Pace paces on each platform has the full breakdown.
What does Pace do on the first of the month?
Three things, in your workspace's timezone. Month-to-date spend resets, so pacing starts the month from zero. Pace resumes every campaign that overspend protection paused, so nothing carries a pause into a fresh budget. And if you scheduled a different figure for the new month, that figure becomes the target from the first run. On accounts with budget rollover switched on, Pace also works out last month's under or overspend at the start of the 1st in the account's own timezone, and adds it to this month's target.
Can I set a budget in a different currency?
No. Every budget you set in Pace is in the ad account's own billing currency, which comes from the platform when you connect the account and can only be changed there. Pace shows spend, budgets and performance figures in that account's currency, so an AUD account reads in AUD. A portfolio holding accounts in different currencies adds the native amounts together without converting them and labels the total in the portfolio's declared currency.
What happens on weekends?
Whatever your Active Schedule says. By default it's Every day, so weekends are treated like any other day. If the account is dark at weekends, open Account Settings, and on the General tab set Active Schedule to Weekdays, or use Custom for any other pattern. Pace then divides the monthly budget across only the days you selected, so daily targets stay accurate, and it holds back alerts on the days you're off. It's a pacing instruction, not an ad schedule: Pace doesn't pause anything on your dark days, so the last budget it set stays in place. If delivery has to stop, set the ad schedule on the platform itself.
Does pausing a campaign free up budget for the rest of its group?
No, and that's deliberate. A campaign that spent earlier in the month and is now paused keeps counting toward its campaign group's month-to-date spend and its cap, so pausing mid-month doesn't quietly hand the remaining campaigns extra room. Pace won't write a budget to a paused campaign on any of the seven platforms. Re-enable it and it rejoins the managed set on the next run with nothing to reconfigure. Hover a group's spend bar to see the split between campaigns still running and campaigns since paused.
Still stuck?
If a specific change still looks wrong, why did Pace change my budget? walks you through finding the entry and reading it. For anything else, email [email protected] with the account name and the date and time of the change.