skill-050-shared-budget-appropriateness-check

Skill 050: Shared Budget Appropriateness Check

Purpose

Shared budgets pool spend across campaigns, which can simplify management but also cause uneven distribution, campaign starvation, or difficulty in performance analysis. This skill evaluates whether shared budgets are appropriate for grouped campaigns and identifies spend distribution issues.

Data Requirements

Data Source: Standard

Standard Data:

• data/account/budgets.md - Shared budgets and linked campaigns
• data/account/campaigns/*/campaign.md - Budget settings, shared budget IDs
• data/performance/campaigns/*/campaign_metrics_30_days.md - Campaign spend and conversions

Reference GAQL:

SELECT
  campaign_budget.id,
  campaign_budget.name,
  campaign_budget.amount_micros,
  campaign_budget.explicitly_shared,
  campaign_budget.reference_count,
  campaign.id,
  campaign.name,
  metrics.cost_micros,
  metrics.conversions,
  metrics.impressions
FROM campaign
WHERE campaign.status = 'ENABLED'
  AND campaign_budget.explicitly_shared = TRUE
  AND segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS

Use /google-ads:get-custom for shared budget reference counts.

Analysis Steps

1. Identify shared budgets: Find all shared budgets with budget ID, name, daily amount, number of campaigns, campaign names/types.

2. Analyze spend distribution: Calculate each campaign's share of spend, identify dominant campaigns (>50%), identify starved campaigns (<10%), calculate concentration index.

3. Assess campaign compatibility: Same business objective? Similar CPA/ROAS? Complementary or competing? Different priority levels?

4. Evaluate performance impact: Are efficient campaigns constrained? Are inefficient campaigns getting too much share?

5. Calculate separation impact: Model individual budgets based on current performance, project impact on conversions.

Thresholds

Condition	Severity
Shared budget with different goals	Critical
Single campaign >60% of shared spend	High
Campaign <5% of shared spend	High
CPA range within shared >50%	Warning
>5 campaigns sharing budget	Warning
Concentration index (HHI) >0.40	Warning
2-3 campaigns evenly shared	Info