Daily Budget Spend Alerts

Know instantly when daily ad spend hits 80% of budget before overspending

Google Ads integration that monitors daily spend across all campaigns and sends alerts when approaching daily limits. Prevents budget waste and lets you pause underperforming campaigns before they drain the budget.

Every four hours during the business day, Nora reads active Google Ads campaigns via the API. It retrieves the current day's cumulative spend and the configured daily budget for each campaign. Nora calculates the current spend velocity. If a campaign crosses the user-defined threshold, Nora compiles a summary showing the campaign name, current spend, and remaining budget, sending it directly via WhatsApp.

The marketing manager reads the alert in WhatsApp and decides the next action. They reply to Nora in the same chat thread to pause the specific campaign, adjust the daily budget, or do nothing. They no longer need to log into the Google Ads dashboard multiple times a day to manually check pacing.

Runs every 4 hours during business hours (9 am–6 pm) using Google Ads, run by your Marketing Manager.

How it works

1. Check active campaigns — On a four-hour schedule during business hours, Nora connects to the Google Ads API. It retrieves a list of all currently active campaigns across Search, Display, and Shopping, ignoring any that are already paused or removed.
2. Retrieve spend and budget — For each active campaign, Nora pulls the cumulative daily spend from midnight in the account's local time zone to the current hour. It also reads the maximum daily budget cap configured for that specific campaign.
3. Calculate budget pacing — Nora compares the current spend against the daily budget cap to determine the pacing. It identifies any campaigns that have crossed the defined spend threshold or are on track to overspend before the end of the day.
4. Handle normal pacing — If all campaigns are pacing normally and remain below the alert threshold, Nora takes no action. It logs the check internally and waits for the next scheduled run four hours later.
5. Compile the alert — When campaigns exceed the threshold, Nora drafts an alert message. This includes the campaign name, current spend amount, remaining budget, and options to either pause the campaign or increase the budget.
6. Send and await instruction — Nora sends the alert to the marketing manager via WhatsApp. It waits for a plain-language reply. If the manager asks to pause a campaign or change the budget, Nora executes that change immediately via the API.

What this replaces

A person opens the Google Ads interface multiple times a day. They navigate to the campaigns tab, filter for active campaigns, and manually compare the cost column against the budget column. They mentally calculate if the current spend is too high for the time of day, taking notes on which campaigns need monitoring or immediate pausing.

• Log into the Google Ads dashboard.
• Filter the view for active campaigns only.
• Compare current daily cost against the budget cap.
• Calculate the pacing based on the current time.
• Manually pause campaigns that are overspending.

Rough estimate rather than a measured figure: about 15 minutes per check, four times a day, totalling an hour daily to monitor 20 active campaigns.

What it needs to run

Accounts and plans

• Google Ads account with active campaigns
• WhatsApp account for receiving alerts

Access it asks for

• OAuth 2.0 access to the Google Ads API to read and modify campaign settings
• Developer token in the header to authenticate API requests

What Nora reads

• Campaign names and statuses
• Daily budget caps
• Cumulative daily spend per campaign

What Nora writes

• Campaign status updates
• Daily budget amounts

When it goes wrong

• The Google Ads API rate limit is reached for the day Nora stops attempting to pull data and sends a WhatsApp message notifying the user about the rate limit. It resumes checks the following day when the API quota resets.
• A campaign has no daily budget set Nora skips this campaign during the pacing calculation. It only monitors campaigns with an explicit daily budget cap, leaving shared budgets or uncapped campaigns out of the alert summary.
• The user replies with an ambiguous instruction like fix it Nora does not guess which action to take. It replies in WhatsApp asking the user to clarify whether they want to pause the specific campaign or increase its daily budget.
• The OAuth token expires or is revoked Nora halts the scheduled checks and sends an alert stating that Google Ads access is disconnected. It provides instructions on how to re-authenticate the connection to resume monitoring.

Who this is for

Worth it if

• Marketing managers running high-spend campaigns where daily budgets are strictly capped.
• Agencies managing multiple client accounts that need to prevent accidental overspend.
• Teams bidding on high-intent, expensive keywords that can exhaust a daily budget in hours.

Not worth it if

• Accounts with very low daily budgets where overspend has minimal financial impact.
• Teams using automated bidding strategies that strictly control daily pacing without manual intervention.
• Campaigns that use shared budgets across the entire account rather than individual campaign limits.

A worked example

A regional furniture retailer runs twelve Google Ads campaigns with varying daily budgets. They configure Nora to check pacing every four hours and send alerts to the marketing lead's WhatsApp if any campaign nears its limit.

Alert: Two campaigns are approaching their daily budget limit for today.

Campaign: Summer Sale - Search
Current Spend: $410.00
Daily Budget: $500.00
Remaining: $90.00
Status: Pacing high

Campaign: Dining Tables - Shopping
Current Spend: $285.00
Daily Budget: $300.00
Remaining: $15.00
Status: Pacing high

Reply to this message to pause a specific campaign, increase a daily budget, or ask for a full search terms report to see where the spend is going.

Frequently asked questions

Can I change the threshold that triggers an alert?

Yes. You tell Nora in plain language via WhatsApp or web chat what threshold you prefer. If you want alerts earlier in the day or closer to the absolute limit, you just ask Nora to adjust the trigger point. Nora updates the schedule and criteria for future checks based on your message.

Will Nora pause campaigns automatically if they overspend?

Not unless you explicitly instruct it to do so. By default, Nora only sends an alert with the current spend and remaining budget. It waits for your reply in WhatsApp before executing a pause or a budget increase via the Google Ads API. You always retain final approval over budget changes.

Does this work with shared budgets across multiple campaigns?

Nora calculates pacing based on individual campaign budget limits. If you use shared budgets, Nora evaluates the total spend against that shared cap. The alert will flag the specific campaigns contributing the most to the spend velocity. You can then ask Nora to pause the highest spenders or increase the shared budget.

What happens if I miss the WhatsApp alert?

The alert remains in your chat history, but Nora takes no further action on that specific alert cycle. The campaign continues running according to your Google Ads settings. Nora will check again at the next scheduled interval and send a fresh update if the campaign is still active and spending rapidly.

Connects to

• Google Ads — all 8 Google Ads automations

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