What is the difference?

Ad Spend vs Campaign Spend

Ad Spend

Campaign Spend

What is it?

Ad Spend is the amount of money spent on specific ad variations within a specific campaign or ad set. This metric helps regulate ad performance.

Campaign Spend is the amount of money spent on advertisements within a campaign. A campaign is a grouping of ads organized by a common business objective; a digital marketing campaign achieves this objective via digital channels only.

Who is it for?

Formula

ƒ Sum(Ad Spend)

ƒ Sum(Campaign Spend)

Example

Imagine you have a certain ad set with a daily budget of $200 and you have one or more different ads within that ad set. While it is possible that each of the ads within the ad set has spent the same amount of money, it is rare. Unless you specify otherwise, Ad networks tend to automatically spend more money on the most relevant ads, and less money on the least relevant ads.

Ad Set Budget = $200

Ad 1 = $100 Ad 2 = $50 Ad 3 = $25 Ad 4 = $20 Ad 5 = $5

A company sells directly to customers and via partners. They have a $1M marketing budget each year. Within this budget, the company runs two campaigns, and allocates $600K towards direct customers, and $400K towards partners.