Cum. Ad Spend
How much of the day's ad budget has gone out by this hour.
What it means
Cum. Ad Spend is a running total: the Ad SpendAd SpendRead it next to ROAS and sales; spend only helps if the return holds. for the hour on the row plus every hour before it, in your store's currency. Ad Spend here is Meta and Google added together, the same figure the single-hour column shows. It lives on the Hour tab, so the rows are hours of the day, not dates.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Cum. Ad Spend at any hour = that hour's Ad Spend plus every hour above it. Nothing is averaged or weighted. It's addition down the column, and the last row equals the total for the whole range.
One row per hour, not per hour per day. Choose a 7-day range and the 09:00 row holds all seven 09:00 hours added together, so the running total is the range's money by that hour — not one day's.
Worked example. On a single day, the hours to 07:00 total €40. 08:00 adds €35, 09:00 adds €55, 10:00 adds €70. The 10:00 row reads Ad Spend €70 and Cum. Ad Spend €200. By mid-morning you are past a fifth of a €900 day, before most of your customers have opened a laptop.
The % △ column beside it compares the same hour in the comparison period, so it answers whether you are ahead of budget right now rather than at midnight.
It answers the question
How far into the budget are you at this point in the day? A day that spends most of its money before lunch is a different day from one that spends evenly, even when the two totals match to the euro.
Why it matters
Every other spend figure in the app is a total after the fact. This one shows pace, which is the part you can still do something about — money already gone by noon cannot buy the evening.
It also makes a runaway budget visible while the day is still running. If the curve is well ahead of the comparison period at 11:00 and sales are not, you have hours to act instead of a post-mortem tomorrow.
What good looks like
There's no healthy euro figure here — the number is your own budget at a point in time. Read the shape instead. Set it against Cum. Total SalesCum. Total SalesShows how revenue builds through the day. on the same rows: the hours where spend climbs faster than revenue are the ones making the day expensive. Then set it against the comparison period, which the % △ column beside it already does for you.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Match the schedule to the hours that sell | Set an ad schedule so delivery starts around the time your orders actually start arriving | The ramp shifts later, the daily total holds | 3–7 days | The hours you switch off may have been the cheap ones, and a shorter delivery window can leave the daily budget unspent altogether. |
| Fast Cap the campaigns doing the early ramp | Find the campaigns spending hardest before your first orders land and cut their daily budgets | A flatter curve through the morning | 1 week | You flattened it by buying less. Sales in those hours usually come down too, so check Cum. Total Sales at the same row before you keep the change. |
| Slow Rebalance the two channels | Shift budget between Meta and Google so the ramp lines up with when revenue arrives | The same money spread differently across the day | 2–4 weeks | The channel you cut gets smaller, and small hourly numbers are noisy — the comparison you were reading gets harder to trust before it gets better. |
A running total isn't good or bad on its own. These levers change the shape of the curve, not the size of the number.
Read it with
A spend curve on its own is a budget report. Against the revenue curve it becomes a decision about the rest of the day.
Bought the growth
Both curves are running hot. Fine while the ratio between them holds — the question is whether the extra revenue cost more than the extra spend.
The expensive shape
You are further into the budget than last period and further behind on revenue. This is the only corner that gets worse by waiting.
A cheaper day so far
Less money in, more money out. Worth checking that the spend gap is a real change and not a campaign that stopped delivering.
Quiet on both sides
Both curves are down together, which usually means less advertising rather than a worse market. Check budgets and approvals first.
The running total says how much has gone out; MER says whether the day's revenue can carry it. A spend curve well ahead of last period is only a problem if the efficiency figure moved with it — the same money spent faster, against the same sales, is a pacing question rather than a performance one.
Read the single-hour column to find which hour changed, and the running total to see whether that hour mattered. A €300 hour is a shock at 06:00 and a rounding difference at 22:00, and only the pair tells you which one you're looking at.
Common misreads
It's every day in the selected range added together, hour by hour. If you want one day's ramp, set the range to one day.
It's ahead at this hour. Read the revenue curve on the same row before deciding — more spend against more sales is a different day from more spend against the same sales.
The Hour tab doesn't support the country filter, and says so when one is selected. Hourly ad data isn't available broken down that way.
Also called
Cumulative Ad Spend · running ad spend · spend to date
See yoursYour spend curve hour by hour on the Hour tab, beside the revenue curve it should be read against.
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