Okay, I've had this happen twice in the past week, and it's confusing the hell out of me.
For the sake of this example, let's say I fired up an advert 10 days ago with a daily budget of $5
Over the past 7 days, the cumulative spend on that ad is $3.45. Not per day, that's the entire week.
Amazon just emailed to say my ad has been paused because I hit my daily limit.
I switched my AMS reporting view to today only, and my total spend is 75 cents on that ad. Yesterday was 35 cents.
So, I upped the budget and they happily unpaused the ad.
(You might argue that there's a mystery $4.25 in ad spend which isn't showing on the report, but last time around there was no magical adjustment later on.)
My question is ... were their reporting algorithms put together by Wile E. Coyote using equipment salvaged from an Acme yard sale?
But being serious again - is there any wonder we have trouble spending daily budgets if they count 75c as 'over budget' on a $5 limit?
Speaking as a computer programmer, I would not be surprised if there was meant to be a 'soft' limit of maybe 85% of the total budget, and once you hit that they slow down delivery so you don't get 4000 clicks in three seconds and they end up eating the cost difference. Also speaking as a programmer, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they've got the 85%/15% limit reversed in their algorithm, so the slowing happens silently almost before the ad has begun to work.
The only test would be to stick a daily limit of something like $200 on one of my ads, and see whether there's a huge spike in impressions (if not clicks.)
Always remembering that AMS was probably set up to sell laptops and PCs and diamond rings and a ton of other high-value items, not $2.99 ebooks.
