Eliminate Overspent PPC Budgets with "AutoPilot Pause Only" Mode

Image of AutoPilot Pause Only logo with one arrow above a plane

It’s scary automating something you are used to doing manually.

  • - Did I set it up right?
  • - Will the automation work like it’s supposed to?
  • - Will I save time or create more work for myself?
  • - What will the results be like?

AutoPilot is one of Shape’s most powerful automation tools and is designed to prevent advertisers from overspending their digital ad budgets. But when it comes to managing your company’s or your clients’ advertising dollars, we know you might be hesitant to fully automate your PPC budget management process.

As part of our recent AutoPilot Modes release, we announced AutoPilot Pause-Only mode. We’ll go into detail about how AutoPilot Pause-Only mode works, how it’s different from our other modes, use cases, and more!

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What is AutoPilot Pause-Only mode?

Shape allows you to group campaigns across multiple advertising channels and networks into budgets. The platform monitors campaigns’ spends and performance metrics progress toward a budget target.

While it is great as a performance monitoring tool, Shape also offers automation features to help advertisers reduce the time they spend managing advertising budgets. One such tool is AutoPilot.

AutoPilot monitors your campaign spend against a budget target. When you’ve hit your budget target, Shape sets your campaign statuses to paused and alerts you. This prevents your campaigns from overspending by stopping your campaigns from spending any additional dollars once you’ve hit the budget target.

In AutoPilot Pause-Only mode, your campaign statuses can only be paused. Campaigns will never be reactivated automatically.

A graph showing how AutoPilot Pause Only will pause campaigns when they hit their target budget but will no reactivate the campaigns at any time

In order for your campaigns to accumulate additional spend and metrics, you must reactivate your campaigns manually in Shape.

Should I use AutoPilot Pause-Only mode?

For advertisers who are looking to combat overspent budgets, AutoPilot Pause-Only mode is a great first line of defense.

Campaigns in this mode may only be paused by Shape. There is no need to worry that a campaign might accidentally get activated if you change a campaign setting or increase your budget target.

For advertisers who’ve been hesitant to try Shape’s powerful AutoPilot features thus far, AutoPilot Pause-Only mode can help you gain confidence. You can relax knowing you’ll never overspend because the platform will pauses ad campaigns before they hit their budget target.

If you use this mode, it’s extremely important that you carve out time to reactivate campaigns at the start of your new budget cycle Shape won’t automatically reactivate campaigns in Pause-Only mode. If you forget to re-enable campaigns no additional performance metrics or spend will accumulate until you manually enable the campaigns in Shape.

How Does AutoPilot Pause Only mode Work?

You have a $2000 monthly budget to advertise your company’s PPC services. You set up a budget in Shape that combines all your Google, Bing, and Facebook ad campaigns (10 in all) together. You enable AutoPilot Pause-Only mode on all 10 campaigns.

Due to a spike in PPC services related searches, you’ve spent about $1900 by September 25. Thus far, you’ve spent $75/day on average, so it’s likely you’ll hit your budget target of $2000 in the next few days.

Shape refreshes the spend and performance metrics for your campaigns approximately every hour. At about 3 PM on the 26th, Shape notices your spend hits $1965. AutoPilot pauses all 10 of your campaigns and sends you an email alert.

Why $1965? By default, AutoPilot pauses your campaigns when they’ve spent 98% of your budget target to prevent your campaigns from overspending.

Since you have a $2000/month budget to advertise your company’s services, on the 1st of the next month, you check in on your budget and manually enable all 10 of your campaigns. “AutoPilot Pause Only” reengages and begins monitoring your campaigns’ progress toward their budget target anew.

How Do I Set My Campaigns to AutoPilot Pause Only Mode?

For a full tutorial on how to implement AutoPilot Pause-Only mode on new or existing campaigns, please watch the video below and visit Shape’s knowledge base. You’ll find walkthroughs, videos, and more to guide you through set up.

If you’re looking for more time savings than AutoPilot Pause-Only provides, we offer two additional AutoPilot modes that can help more fully automate PPC budgeting and/or pacing. To learn more, use the links below:

Explainer Video

Read more from our blog:

PPC Management
Scaling and growing your ppc operations
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Recent product related updates and information from the Shape team
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