Ad Budgets, Spend Approval and Who Pays

You give Revnu one Monthly Ads Budget for every ad channel combined. Revnu splits it across your campaigns and pauses all of them before reported spend can pass it. Nothing spends until you approve, and each ad platform bills your own ad account directly.

Who pays for the ads?

You do, directly. Campaigns run in your own ad accounts, and Google, LinkedIn, X, Reddit, Microsoft or TikTok bills the payment method on that account.

Revnu doesn't take a cut or add a markup. Ad spend never passes through Revnu. What you pay Revnu is your plan ($99 a month on Pro), and that's separate.

How do I set the monthly budget?

1. 1

   Open Ads

   Open Ads in the dashboard. The Monthly Ads Budget card is at the top of Campaigns.

   Enlarge

2. 2

   Press Set Budget

   Press Set Budget. Once a budget exists, the button says Edit Budget.

3. 3

   Enter the monthly total

   Enter the most Revnu may spend across all channels in a month. The minimum is 50 in your account's currency.

4. 4

   Save it

   Press Save Budget.

Revnu may move money between channels inside this total. It can't raise the total on its own. The budget runs by calendar month (UTC).

What am I approving when Revnu asks for £10 a day?

Usually a learning budget: the money Revnu may use to test ad ideas on one channel. It shows on Ads as a card such as Approve a Google Ads Learning Budget, with three numbers:

What happens when you press Approve Learning Budget:

• Approving doesn't launch a campaign. The card says so. Every campaign is still built paused.

• On Pro, each new ad still waits for you. Ad Tests starts on Ask Me First in Settings > Agent > What Needs Your Approval, so Revnu prepares every new ad paused and asks before it goes live. If you switch Ad Tests to Just Do It, Revnu launches and swaps tests inside the learning budget without asking each time.

• It never adds to your monthly budget. Spend from the learning budget counts toward the monthly budget, which still caps everything.

• You can approve it before a monthly budget exists, but nothing launches until you set one. A launch without a monthly budget is refused with "Set a monthly ads limit before launching campaigns."

To decline, don't approve the card, and tell Revnu in chat that you don't want to spend on that channel. To spend less, tell Revnu the amount you're comfortable with, for example "make it £5 a day for two weeks", and it prepares a new card for you to approve. Once approved, a learning budget can only be lowered or turned off without a new approval. Raising it is always a new card.

Does anything spend before I approve it?

No. Revnu builds every campaign paused. These always wait for you, whatever your approval settings say:

• Launching or resuming a campaign

• Setting or raising the monthly budget

• Increasing the total daily spend

Why did all my ads pause?

Reported spend for the month got too close to your budget, so Revnu paused every campaign on every channel. The budget card shows Paused, and the change history says "Paused ads at the monthly budget".

Revnu pauses before the limit, not at it, because some platforms can spend more than a daily budget on a given day: Google and Microsoft up to twice it, TikTok up to 125% on Smart+ campaigns. Revnu keeps one such day free for every live campaign on those platforms. When reported spend plus that reserve would pass your monthly budget, it pauses everything.

Ad platforms also report spend late, so the final total for the month can still land slightly above what Revnu saw. Ads also pause if Revnu can't check reported spend safely, for example when an ad account reports in a currency it has no exchange rate for. The tooltip on Paused says which.

Worked example: why ads paused right after launch

Your monthly budget is USD 100, and you approve four TikTok ads at USD 20 a day. The reserve is 4 × USD 20 × 125% = USD 100, which already uses the whole budget, so Revnu pauses them straight away. If the reserve would pass the budget outright, Revnu refuses the launch instead.

With a USD 500 budget and two Google campaigns at USD 20 a day, the reserve is USD 80, so Revnu pauses once reported spend reaches USD 420.

How do I relaunch after the budget paused everything?

1. 1

   Raise the budget if you need to

   If you want to spend more this month, press Edit Budget and raise the total. Resume Ads refuses while spend is at or above the budget.

2. 2

   Press Resume Ads

   Press Resume Ads on the budget card. This allows launches again. It doesn't restart anything by itself.

3. 3

   Pick what runs again

   Your paused campaigns stay paused until you approve or resume them. Tell Revnu which to resume, or ask it what it recommends.

The pause carries into the next month. A new month doesn't restart your ads; Resume Ads does.

What is the smallest budget each channel will run?

Revnu's own minimum is a Monthly Ads Budget of 50 in your account's currency. Some platforms also refuse to serve below a daily amount. Where neither Revnu nor its ads guidance states a platform floor, the table says so.

At TikTok's minimum, four ads running at once spend about USD 80 a day.

What can't a tiny budget do?

• It can't run below a platform's floor. A monthly budget that can't cover USD 20 a day can't run a TikTok ad all month, and Revnu's monthly budget can't go below 50.

• It can't judge many ideas at once. Revnu runs one well-funded test at a time rather than several that each get a few clicks a week.

• It can't judge a rare outcome quickly. If your first outcome is a purchase or a booked call, a small budget may run for weeks before a zero means anything. Counting sign-ups or trial starts first helps. See set up outcomes.

If a test can't plausibly reach your result at your budget, Revnu says so before you approve and suggests a smaller plan.

Questions about budgets

What does a small budget buy?

As an example, £10 a day is about £300 a month. How many clicks that buys depends on what a click costs for your buyers. Before you approve, Revnu gives its estimate for your market, such as how many clicks a day the budget buys at the bids Google shows, and labels it as an estimate, not a promise.

Can I use Google's ad credit offer?

Yes, but you claim it yourself in Google Ads billing. Revnu can't accept offers or enter payment details.

• You pay Google, not Revnu. If the offer is "spend £400, get £400 of credit", the £400 goes from your card to Google.

• Check the offer's terms in Google Ads billing. Offers usually have a deadline to reach the spend and rules about who qualifies. Revnu can't see them.

• Match your monthly budget to the offer's window. Revnu's monthly budget counts the spend Google reports, whether a credit or your card pays for it. Tell Revnu, for example, "spend up to £400 on Google this month so we qualify for the credit".

How are currencies handled?

Your monthly budget is in one currency, set on the budget card. When an ad account bills in another currency, Revnu converts its reported spend using the European Central Bank's daily reference rates, plus 2%, so that rate changes and card fees can only make it pause early, never late. If no current rate covers an account's currency, Revnu pauses ads rather than guess.