CruiseControl Frequently Asked Questions

• CruiseControl must be turned on at the Budget and Campaign-level to work properly!
• Campaign daily budget changes must be made in Shape. Changes made in advertising platforms will be overwritten.

2. Should I apply CruiseControl to all my campaigns?

Only include the campaigns you are comfortable with allowing Shape to adjust daily budgets. NOTE: Shape will not make any daily budget changes on campaigns with CruiseControl activated but have a paused status.   

CruiseControl does not work for Pinterest Ads or TikTok Ads campaign types.

3. How does CruiseControl decide to adjust daily budgets and how often? 

The platform checks spend levels multiple times a day for every Budget.

Shape evaluates whether or not campaigns in a Budget with CruiseControl enabled are on pace and calculates an ideal daily spend value to achieve the target budget cap. If campaigns are not on pace that day, CruiseControl will adjust campaign daily budgets one (or multiple) times throughout the day.  

4. If I update daily budgets in the ad platforms, how does this affect the daily budget changes CruiseControl is making? 

When using CruiseControl, we do not suggest making daily budget changes in the ad platforms. We highly suggest making the changes to the daily budget in Shape (which will push to the ad platforms). 

This is because CruiseControl will automatically override whatever daily budget changes you make in the ad platform the next time the CruiseControl pacing algorithm is run (approximately every hour).

If you wish to make a daily budget change to a campaign, we suggest following the steps below:

1. In Shape, navigate to the budget that houses the campaigns you want to adjust
2. Set the new "daily budget" and "CruiseControl default daily budget" to the same number. 
3. Evaluate the CruiseControl min and maximum daily budgets.
   • Does your new daily budget/default budget fall within the min/max range?
   • Is the ideal spend Shape recommends within your min/max range?
   • Do you feel comfortable allowing Shape to spend down to your minimum or up to your maximum to achieve your target budget? 

It's useful to make daily budget changes from Shape not only to ensure your changes do not get overwritten, but also that when you make target budget amount or daily budget changes, that your CruiseControl mins, maxs, and default daily budgets are still within an acceptable range.

5. Will CruiseControl alert me when campaign daily budgets are changed?

CruiseControl is not set up to alert via email or in-app notification when a campaign's daily budget is changed. This is not possible due to the sheer volume of daily changes.

You can view daily budget changes made by CruiseControl in the change history. 

6. Will CruiseControl pause campaigns when my target Budget is hit? 

No. Like AutoPilot, CruiseControl's goal is to help you hit your target Budget. However, it does so by changing campaign daily budgets, not campaign statuses. To hit your target budget and also protect against overspending, we highly suggest utilizing CruiseControl with AutoPilot Pause Only or AutoPilot Pause/Enable. 

7. Does CruiseControl work with AutoPilot?

Yes, CruiseControl works with AutoPilot. Please, see below for more information and caveats. 

AutoPilot helps prevent overspend in your account by changing campaign statuses when your target Budget is hit.

CruiseControl works to prevent under and overspending by adjusting campaign daily budgets to keep them on pace. But CruiseControl doesn't change your campaigns' statuses if/when your target Budget is achieved. 

Therefore, we recommend using CruiseControl with AutoPilot Pause Only or AutoPilot Pause/Enable. Both of these AutoPilot modes turn campaign statuses to paused if the target Budget is hit during a Budget Cycle. (AutoPilot Pause/Enable will re-enable those campaigns at the start of the next Budget Cycle, AutoPilot Pause Only will not). 

8. Why Don't You Suggest Using CruiseControl with AutoPilot Daily?

 While CruiseControl can be used with AutoPilot Daily, we recommend against it.

AutoPilot Daily calculates the ideal daily spend a campaign should hit based on the Budget's target budget amount. It will pause campaigns if they exceed this ideal spend on a given day, and reenable them the next day. 

CruiseControl calculates the ideal daily spend campaigns should hit based on the Budget's target budget amount. It then adjusts campaign daily budgets up or down from a default amount to achieve the target budget amount. 

These two products achieve the same goal of helping a budget hit its target goal; however, AutoPilot Daily primarily works best for budgets with consistent overspending. It does not resolve underspend issues.

In this case, we suggest using CruiseControl to pace spend evenly toward your Budget target and AutoPilot Pause Only or AutoPilot Pause/Enable to ensure you hit your Budget target without going over.  

9. Does CruiseControl work with RollOver?

Yes. RollOver is the difference between a Budget's campaign spend and budget target. Shape users can "rollover" overspend or underspend to the next Budget Cycle. 

The RollOver amount is utilized to calculate the target Budget cap and the ideal daily spend at the start of a new cycle.

Any changes to RollOver or the target Budget amount will cause CruiseControl's algorithms to reevaluate the ideal daily spend. If you make these changes, we suggest you reevaluate your Default, Min, and Max daily Budget settings to ensure your thresholds make sense. 

10. Does CruiseControl work with SmartSync?

Yes. Budgets with SmartSync and CruiseControl enabled will have CruiseControl enabled on all new campaigns added by default. We highly recommend that you set the Default, Min, and Max settings for these campaigns once the campaign has been automatically added to your Budget.

11. Can CruiseControl use Custom Values to Make Daily Budget Adjustments?

CruiseControl calculates the ideal daily spend campaigns should hit based on the Budget's target budget amount. It then adjusts campaign daily budgets up or down from a default amount to achieve the target budget amount.

Therefore, CruiseControl cannot utilize custom values to adjust campaign daily budgets at this time.

12. Will my Facebook and Google campaigns be put back into a "learning phase" if CruiseControl makes daily budget adjustments?

Changes to daily budgets made by CruiseControl can cause Google and Facebook campaigns to be placed back into the Learning Phase.

For Google, this applies to campaigns that utilize automated bidding strategies, while it applies to all types of Facebook campaigns.

While budget changes can impact learning, Google and Facebook have evolved their products to the point where potential impacts aren't too drastic and the learning periods have become both less volatile and shorter. It's recommended to keep daily budget changes to 20% to minimize the likelihood that a campaign will be placed back into the learning period. This can be achieved using CruiseControl's Min, Max, and Default setting.

During our initial testing period, we found that the impact posed by campaigns defaulting to a learning phase was minimal. For Budgets with severe budget pacing challenges, we believe that the value of CruiseControl's automation outweighs performance fluctuations caused by the learning period.