DV360 101: Campaign Planned Spend

So you're working on a campaign and open up an Insertion Order and see this fun note, "your campaign is expected to overspend it's budget, stupid" - ok maybe not exactly that, but it's certainly Google's tone. If you see this it's not an immediate sign to panic. Here is what this notification means, and what the campaign Planned Spend dimension does.

What is "Planned Spend" For a Campaign in DV360?

Seems like a simple question, but it doesn't have any impact on how much you actually spend. Planned spend is your total budget figure, but it doesn't serve as a cap. This is VERY important.

You will spend in a given campaign up to the total Insertion Order budget(s) regardless of what you set as your planned spend, here's an example.

For a campaign let's say we have a $500k budget with 3 Insertion Orders ($200k Display, $200k Video/CTV, $100k YouTube). We would set the campaign Planned Spend to $500k, if accidentally setting our YouTube budget to $101k we would see DV360 flag that we are expected to overspend against our Planned Spend by $1k. DV360 will NOT stop that spend from happening unless you update the Insertion Order budget to the proper level. You've been warned!