Here's a scenario you might encounter while fine-tuning flight and budget settings. Say you're working on Journey Canvas, and you have a budget for a path with two or more steps. How do you allocate the ad spend budget to each step? This article shows you how to find and configure budget allocation settings.
For this demo, I created a path on Journey Canvas with two steps: one with a display image and one with a video. The budget is $2000. Most of what you read here also applies to Classic Canvas budgeting, but there are a couple of differences, which I describe at the bottom of this article.
Selecting a budget allocation option
The first step is to open the Budget & Scheduling form.
- Go to a path on Journey Canvas and click the pencil icon. A side panel displays on the right side of the page.
- Go to the Budget & Scheduling heading.
- Click the Budget Allocation field and select an option. (see below)
- Click Save.
Reviewing the options
There are three options. If your initial configuration is producing less than satisfactory results, you can open the live campaign and re-set these options and percentages.
1. Allow illumin to automatically budget spend
Choose this option if you want illumin to make budget allocation decisions to obtain the best performance possible. The platform will recommend the best option, so no thinking is required.
2. Manually allocate a minimum budget spend based on creative type
Choose this option to manually allocate the budget by creative type. Enter a percentage for each creative type in the path. The total allocated percentage must be 90% or less. The unused percentage is auto-allocated by the illumin algorithm.
3. Manually allocate a minimum budget spend based on creative steps
Assign a percentage to each step in the path. Same as above, the total allocated percentage must be 90% or less.
Classic Canvas differences
On Classic Canvas, you can allocate a budget according to creative type but not to a specific creative step (which you can do on Journey Canvas). As a result, the Budget Allocation drop-down menu on Classic Canvas has two options instead of the three that you get on Journey Canvas. On Classic Canvas, choose:
- Allow illumin to automatically budget spend. Or,
- Manually allocate a minimum budget spend based on creative type.