Google Ads expanded “Campaign Total Budgets” into Search, Performance Max, and Shopping campaigns. The change expands the feature that sets the budget type from Video and Demand Gen.

Advertisers can set a fixed, single amount for the entire duration of a campaign, rather than managing the average daily ad spend.

For short-term campaigns, this type of feature offers benefits, and the change appears to simplifies campaign management -- mostly for those intended to run for a fixed duration such as three to 30 days. Holiday ads or new product launches fit into this category. 

There is no limit on the budgets, which cap spending at two times the daily average. This allows the system to spend aggressively on high-traffic days.

Budgets are locked for the duration the campaign runs, and changes cannot be made.

Advertisers must trust Google’s automation and pacing. Without daily spending caps, Google AI may spend the entire budget quickly, even on days when there is high traffic on the web and across the brand's site. The marketer must select this option during the initial campaign creation and setup.

Google explains in a post that the feature is available for all bid strategies, but only for new campaigns.

For example, in terms of the bid strategies, advertising using Performance Max can apply it to target return on as spend (ROAS), maximum conversion value, target CPAs, and maximum conversions.

For those that understand how to use account goal settings, there is no learning curve. Early adopters are seeing better performance.

For example, the U.K.-based beauty brand Escentual.com used the tool to solve budget under-utilization issues during key promotional periods. By switching to campaign total budgets, they achieved 16% increase in traffic without exceeding their total budget, and 5% performance above their target ROAS.