The Plans page in Bidding & planning helps you manage and track the performance and spend for a group of campaigns over a specific time range. You can use Plans to view estimated performance, track actual spend against your targets, and automate budget management with a budget bid strategy.
On this page
Benefits
Using Plans offers several key advantages:
- Estimate performance: Before launching, you can view the estimated volume and efficiency you might get from your planned budget.
- Track spend: Easily monitor actual spend against your target spend throughout the plan's duration.
- Automate budget management: Plans can automate budget allocation and spending when paired with a budget bid strategy.
- Consolidate reporting: Get a single view of performance for a specific group of campaigns over a defined period.
View your plans
The Planssection of Bidding and planninghas 2 sub-menus for viewing your plans:
- The Active planstab shows plans that are currently running.
- The All planstab shows all active and upcoming plans.
Active plans
Under Active plans, you’ll find a list of plans grouped together by key metrics. Some of the columns you’ll find in the table under this tab include:
- Plan period: This shows you the period of time that a group of plans is active.
- Plan status: This column details the number of plans within a group. It also shows how many of those plans are on track.
- Spend pacing: Under this column, you’ll find a progress bar showing how much of your spend has been used. This column will also determine whether you’re underpacing, overpacing, or on the right track.
To view more detailed forecasts, select Viewnext to the group of key metrics you want to track. In the page that opens, you’ll find a table that displays all of the plans for the selected key metric, as well as a graph that visualizes your spend and performance. You can choose to display your data using either a cumulative or non-cumulative graph.
The graph features 3 distinct aspects:
- “Cost Actual” is the actual amount spent in plans during the selected date range.
- “Cost Pacing” is the amount that’s been allocated in plans for a selected date range.
- “Cost Forecast” is the total amount predicted to be spent in plans for the selected date range.
All plans
The All planstab initially looks similar to the Active planstab, however, it displays plans individually instead of in groups. This tab also details the plan period and status of each plan. Additional columns include the following:
- Actual
- Forecast
- Metric
- Recurrence
- Target
When you select a plan, you’ll find a more detailed table that shows your forecasted spend and forecasted key metrics, along with your actual cost spent and measured key metrics.
Create a report on plans
To report on plans, follow the steps below:
- Sign in to your Search Ads 360 account.
- Navigate to a sub-manager account .
- In the left navigation panel, open the Bidding & Planningdropdown, then select Plans.
- Select the All planstab.
- The table lists metrics for each plan.
- By default, plans are listed in ascending order by date.
- (Optional) To view the data and configure the report, do the following:
- Select any of the column headings to sort the report by the information in the column.
- For example, if you want to sort the plans in descending order, select the “Plan status” column heading. This will filter the report by plan status.
- Download the report for offline viewing. Above the table, select the download icon
, then select the format you want from the dropdown.
- Select any of the column headings to sort the report by the information in the column.
Notice a difference in the metrics reported for plans and campaigns?
Differences in the metrics reported for plans and campaigns might be the result of conversion delays and the selected time range. A conversion delay occurs when a click and the conversion attributed to the click occur on different days. Metrics are attributed to plans (and campaigns) only when a conversion occurs, but are reported based on the selected time range.
View spend pacing
If you want to use Bidding & planningto track the spend for the same campaigns as a spend pacing report, you can use the Search Ads 360 experience to view spend pacing.
To view the spend pacing report chart for a selected campaign, follow the steps below:
- Sign in to your Search Ads 360 account.
- Navigate to a manager or sub-manager account.
- In the left navigation panel, open the Bidding & Planningdropdown, then select Plans.
- Select the Active planstab.
- Under the “Spend pacing” column, hover over the gray line to view the pacing cost of all active plans.
Keep in mind
Changes related to campaigns and plans, such as creating a campaign, adding campaigns, or removing plans, are logged in change history reports. Learn more about how to View change history for campaign groups and plans .
