Daily budget and limits: how not to burn through the morning

A daily budget in Yandex Direct strategies is not a separate field for “how much may burn before lunch.” It is a share of the weekly budget. Maximum spend per day is calculated on Moscow time: with a schedule of one day, up to 100% of the weekly budget and the carryover; with two days, up to 50%; with three or more, or with no schedule limits, up to 35%. That ceiling does not diagnose click fraud. A morning when impressions stopped can be the daily ceiling, a sum frozen for review, or a stop because the site is unavailable.

For strategies, the help recommends a weekly budget of at least 10 × the margin per conversion per week for “Maximum profit,” and at least 10 × the conversion price for “Maximum conversions.” The minimum weekly budget is 300 ₽. The multiplier of 10 is a recommendation for the strategy to work, not a payoff threshold and not a sign of wasted spend.

The daily ceiling and what restarts it

Direct spreads the weekly budget from Monday through Sunday and does not exceed it for the week, except on a restart. A restart happens when the weekly budget changes, when the payment model changes, and when the start date is moved into the future. Stopping and turning the campaign on again, changing the strategy, the limit type, or the click or conversion price does not restart spend. If the budget is changed mid-week, what was already spent is not subtracted from the new limit.

On pay-per-click, the restart day can take up to 35% of the old budget plus 35% of the new one. On pay-per-conversion, up to 100% of the old plus 100% of the new. The help’s example: a budget of 7,000 ₽, 4,000 ₽ spent by Thursday, the budget changed to 5,000 ₽ — from Thursday through Sunday another 5,000 ₽ can be spent. Seven, four, and five thousand are the help’s example, not a normal spend. The help prefers changing the budget at the start of the calendar week. The daily ceilings of 100%, 50%, and 35% without a restart are set separately: on a restart day a share of the old budget is added to them.

A teaching example, not a norm. A weekly budget of 10,000 ₽ and a schedule of three days or more give a daily ceiling of 3,500 ₽. That is 35% of the week, not a “morning burn.” If the budget was changed on Thursday, what was already spent is not subtracted from the new limit, and the restart day can take a share of both the old and the new.

In the “Maximum clicks” strategy, the average click price is the week’s spend divided by the week’s clicks. Adjustments affect it. The minimum for rubles is 0.9 ₽. The average limit holds for a calendar week if the strategy ran the whole week without changes or stops. Within a day the average can sit above or below the value you set. If the week has fewer than 100 clicks, the result can exceed the price you set, but by no more than two times. The minimum weekly budget of this strategy is 300 ₽, and the budget for a period is 50 ₽ a day. Those are the strategy’s thresholds for rubles, not a sign of fraud. An expensive morning under that average does not yet break the weekly limit.

Carryover, schedule, and a stop of impressions

In pay-per-click strategies, underspend carries to the next week, but by no more than 30% of the weekly budget you set. Carryover is not counted in the first week. Leftovers do not pile up: only the previous week’s underspend is taken. The carryover is spent first, then the new week’s budget. The week’s ceiling is up to 130% of the budget you set, and only because of the previous underspend. Cumulative spend over several weeks, the help promises, stays no higher than the sum of the planned budgets of those weeks. Carryover does not retrain the strategy and does not restart spend. It does not apply to the account’s overall balance: when total spend reaches the account limit, impressions stop. For pay-per-conversion, this page describes a restart separately, not this 30% carryover.

Ads run around the clock by default. The schedule is set in the “Impression schedule” block, by a template or by day-and-hour cells. The sum of impressions is at least 8 hours a week. Eight hours is the schedule minimum, not a “working day.” A campaign has one time zone; reports and the start date stay on Moscow time. For different zones the help suggests different campaigns. Time targeting limits when impressions run, not when clicks happen: a click can happen hours later if the tab was left open. Even in an hour that is turned off, phrase bids take part in the predicted-bid calculation. The advice not to limit a campaign to office hours is a recommendation of the same page, not a ban.

Clicks found invalid by online filtering are not paid. Statistics are then checked again: some clicks already counted can also be filtered, the money for them is returned, and a notice goes to the campaign email. While the check runs, Direct blocks the sum of the click price but does not show this as a charge in the interface. If the blocked sum reaches the remainder on the campaign balance, impressions stop and resume when the invalid clicks are unblocked. The help suggests estimating potential spend as the number of filtered clicks times the average click price. That is an estimate to compare with the remainder, not a formula for the campaign’s losses. What an invalid click is, and whether Yandex returns the money, this freeze does not replace: it explains why impressions stopped while the sum is blocked.

Site-availability monitoring stops impressions while the site does not answer and resumes them when the site is available again. A morning without impressions can be an unavailable site, not a hole in the daily limit.

In VK Ads, the page “Why the budget is spent quickly” names other reasons: a harder goal needs a higher bid, a wide and active audience gets impressions faster, a larger budget is spent faster, and a bid that is low relative to the market slows impressions. The algorithm wants to spread the budget evenly, but it can spend it at once if impressions are cheaper now or people are more likely to convert. For a smoother spend it suggests changing the goal action, narrowing the audience, picking less active hours, and setting a frequency for media campaigns. Bots, invalid clicks, and a refund are not named on this page. This is spend speed, not a fraud diagnosis.

Who clicks without a purchase is covered in the article on who clicks ads. The difference in terms is in the article on click fraud and sklikivanie.

Not burning through the morning in Direct means reading 35%, 50%, or 100% of the week from the schedule, not changing the weekly budget mid-week without counting the restart, and not mixing a freeze during review with a limit that has been used up.