Regular sudden Daily Cap overspends issue

Question

freewi11 OP

Created Jul ’18

Replies 5

Boosts 0

Views 4.3k

Participants 5

Hi,

I've been running a Search Ads campaign since January this year and have already spent quite good money. Overall, the experience and the results are both satisfying (less satisfying the former, more - the latter.) Throughout the months I'm getting about 9% TTR and 45% CR. There is, however, one bug that is continuously annoying me a lot.

My daily cap is $45, and therefore I expect the daily amount to be around this number. Logically, why should it be otherwise? But there are quite a few occurrences since March when some days I see sudden spikes in spent amount. The first occurrence happened on 20th of March when $225 were burned just in a single day. It led to blocking off my card, as it has transaction limits, followed by suspension of the campaign because Apple could not charge the card. Not good for planning, right? Here is the graph: https://pasteboard.co/HsJsDSg.png

I wrote to Apple support team and got the following reply: "...We identified an issue that temporarily caused an overspend of your daily spend cap beyond the normally expected parameters. We have since implemented a fix, and you should no longer experience this issue. Please note that Search Ads may on occasion slightly exceed your daily spend cap, but will never charge you more than your total campaign budget."

Despite the fix, two other occurrences followed in May - $85 and $127: https://pasteboard.co/HsJt3tB.png

And even more in June - $75, $95, $197, and $103: https://pasteboard.co/HsJtces.png

I was quite frustrated that it was happening again and made me unable to plan campaign budgets properly. So I went back to their support and wrote: "We have noticed that there is again an overspend, which is over 4 times than our daily cap set in the campaign settings (about $200 instead of $45), and the day is not over yet. In your last message, you wrote 'We identified an issue that temporarily caused an overspend of your daily spend cap beyond the normally expected parameters. We have since implemented a fix, and you should no longer experience this issue.' Unfortunately, we still experience the issue. Please help and fix ASAP."

For this, I've got the following reply: "Thank you for your patience during this process. Our Technical Teams have concluded their investigation. It was determined that the behavior that you encountered was an isolated occurrence and the behavior has been readdressed to help prevent further occurrences. As a result a refund for the daily cap overspend accrued against your campaign will be applied to your account for this occurrence. The credit in the amount of $152.29 will be applied within the next 48 hours ... We appreciated your patience during this process. Thank you for your understanding and thank you for being a Search Ads customer."

Well, you are welcome, but how about stopping spending 2x, 3x, 4x of the daily budget? (I am not even mentioning that the refund hasn't arrived yet). And guess what happened recently? The second day in July cost me twice as much - $84: https://pasteboard.co/HsJtkHJ.png

Now I have no clue what to do, except just stopping the whole campaign and move to other, more predictable means of app advertisement. I am really sick of this abruptness. Has anyone by any chance experienced same trouble and managed to resolve the issue with Apple guys? Would be great if you could share your experience.

Best,

Roman.

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Answer 1

AdamRedboxMobile OP

Jul ’18

Hi, Apple Search Ads will never spend more than your overall budget but can sometimes overspend your daily budget depending on a variety of factors. If you're looking for an alternative platform then I work at a company that has developed one: www.blackbox-platform.com. We use the Apple Search Ads API to show your ads the same way Apple does it. Feel free to email at adam@redboxmobile.com if you have any questions!

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Answer 2

freewi11 OP

Jul ’18

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your reply.

Search Ads will never spend more than your overall budget - yes, I've got the same reply from the Apple support. The thing is that I've got a fixed monthly budget. When the overspend occurs, the budget is exhausted before the month ends. As a result, the campaign is put on hold until I increase the overall campaign budget, and thus spend more money than I initially planned. It doesn't make sense. Search Ads never spends more of the overall budget, but regularly overspends my daily budget (twice and more!) depending on unknown factors. What the daily cap is needed for after all, if the system doesn't stick to it, and spends per day as much as Apple pleases?

If you're looking for an alternative platform - I'm not, but thanks. I have briefly checked your website. As long as you are using Apple Search Ads API, and from what I've seen in the video, the impression I've got that Blackbox is a fancier visualization of Search Ads platform with some add-ons for the unknown price. You should be facing the same issue with daily caps, if you've got them, right? How does your system distribute campaign budget over time and how is it different from Search Ads?

I learned how to get best out of the "not-so much-fancy" Search Ads platform, and I'm okay with it. However, the ability to control my spendings is paramount, and if the platform fails to give me the control, I'm out quite soon.

Best,

Roman

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Answer 3

AdamRedboxMobile OP

Jul ’18

Hi Roman,

Unfortunatley I don't know the ins and outs of Apple's algorithms so can't explain any more than that.

We only use the Apple Search Ads API for displaying the ads. Blackbox has its own algorithm for spending etc and that money is then sent to Apple a bit at a time depending on what our system has spent. We are also different to Search Ads in the way that we manage keywords. For example, our system will bid on keywords that you haven't even thought of (i.e translations) which is something Search Ads can't even do. These translations are very often much much cheaper than the English ones but still drive downloads. For example, the Wall Street Journal is one of our biggest customers and they often get many downloads from Chinese keywords within the US App Store which competitors, like The New York Times, are not even bidding on - including brand names.

If you have any more questions regarding Blackbox then I'll happily answer them for you!

Many thanks,

Adam

0

Answer 4

AfnanAhmad OP

Jun ’21

This still holds true and Apple's reply are still the same. What's the point of a daily cap if daily spending can go over it ?!

1

Answer 5

amiga_mac OP

Jun ’21

Yes I too can also confirm this is still a live issue.

As a new user of search ads I discovered that the daily cap still does not work as expected and yes you can still spend your entire budget in a few hours let alone a day!

User / Advertiser be warned - That's a serious bug from an end user point of view not so much for an Apple point of view, because I can see this issue was raised 2 years ago.

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