Daily vs lifetime budget

Daily budget = platform spends up to N per day, indefinitely. Lifetime budget = total N spread over a defined campaign duration; supports dayparting (specific hours/days). Daily is the default; lifetime fits time-bound promos and dayparted campaigns.

Who is this for

Mediabuyers choosing budget type for a new campaign. Anyone running Black Friday / holiday promos. Teams using dayparting.

The two budget types

Verified apps/backend/src/types/campaigns/canonical.enums.ts BudgetType enum:

Daily budget

When you set daily budget = $50:

• Platform spends up to $50 per day

• May spend up to 25% over on a given day if performance is strong (then less the next day to balance)

• Continues indefinitely until you pause / end manually

• Predictable monthly spend (≈ $50 × 30 days = $1.500/month)

Use daily when:

• Always-on / evergreen campaigns

• Predictable monthly budgets needed

• No specific end date in mind

• Simplest setup

Limits:

• No end date enforced (you must pause to stop spend)

• Doesn't support dayparting (delivery 24/7)

• Can't front-load spend for time-sensitive events

Lifetime budget

When you set lifetime budget = $1.000 over 30 days:

• Platform spreads $1.000 across the campaign duration

• Daily spend varies based on opportunity (more on high-performance days, less on slow days)

• Campaign auto-ends when budget exhausted OR end date hit

• Supports dayparting (run only specific hours / days of week)

Use lifetime when:

• Time-bound promotional events (Black Friday week, sales periods)

• Specific end date required (event registration deadline, product launch window)

• Want dayparting (e.g. business hours only for B2B)

• Want platform to optimize delivery timing within the period

Limits:

• Less predictable daily spend (varies by performance)

• Requires explicit end date

• More complex setup

• Some platforms (TikTok) have lifetime budget restrictions on certain objectives

Dayparting (lifetime budget only)

Run ads only specific hours / days:

Wevion's Campaign Creator surfaces dayparting fields when LIFETIME budget selected. Set per-adset (different adsets can have different schedules).

Common patterns

Pattern A: Evergreen e-commerce

• Daily budget $100

• Always-on, 24/7 delivery

• Pause Black Friday week (use separate lifetime campaign instead)

Pattern B: Black Friday wave

• Lifetime budget $5.000 over 7 days (Nov 22-29)

• Dayparting: 24/7 (no restriction; want every conversion)

• Front-load not enforced (platform optimizes)

• Auto-ends Nov 29 — no manual pause needed

Pattern C: B2B lead-gen

• Lifetime budget $2.000 over 30 days

• Dayparting: Mon-Fri 09:00-18:00 only

• Avoids nights/weekends (lower-quality leads for B2B)

• Auto-ends after 30 days OR budget exhausted

Pattern D: Event registration

• Lifetime budget $1.500 over 21 days (ending event registration deadline)

• Dayparting: 24/7

• Auto-ends at deadline — no manual cleanup needed

Front-loading risk with lifetime

If your campaign has limited time (e.g. 3-day flash sale) and lifetime budget too high, platforms may front-load spending in early hours (high-opportunity windows) and run out before day 3.

Mitigations:

• Set per-day cap within lifetime (some platforms support)

• Split into separate daily campaigns per period (more management overhead)

• Trust platform's smart delivery (usually balanced over duration)

Switching between daily and lifetime

• Daily → Lifetime: requires creating new campaign (Meta restriction). Pause old + create new with lifetime + duration.

• Lifetime → Daily: similar, requires new campaign.

So decide at launch.

Budget changes mid-campaign

Both daily and lifetime budgets can be scaled up/down mid-campaign:

• Daily: change the daily amount (e.g. $50 → $100). Takes effect immediately.

• Lifetime: change total (e.g. $1.000 → $1.500). Platform re-distributes remaining over remaining days.

Don't make changes too often (every 24-48 hours minimum to allow re-learning).

DTO field

In bulk-launch.request.dto.ts: daily_budget field (in cents). For lifetime: the field is lifetime_budget + end_time (timestamp).

In Wevion's launchers

Express

Budget step (4 of 6): toggle Daily / Lifetime + amount + (if lifetime) end date + (if lifetime) dayparting fields.

Pro

Campaign-level config (CBO) or per-adset config (ABO): same fields, more granular.

Bulk Launch

daily_budget column for daily; separate lifetime_budget + end_time columns for lifetime rows.

Common questions

• "Can a single campaign have both daily AND lifetime adsets?" No. Budget type is campaign-level (not per-adset).

• "What's the minimum budget?" Platform-dependent. Meta: ~$1/day minimum daily; lifetime minimum varies.

• "Does Wevion enforce front-loading prevention?" No — Wevion respects what you set + what the platform supports.

• "How does dayparting interact with timezones?" Dayparting uses the ad account's timezone (set at account creation). For cross-timezone campaigns, consider separate ad accounts per region.

Related

• Budget CBO vs ABO — orthogonal to daily/lifetime

• Campaign objectives — some objectives have budget restrictions

• Publish paused vs active — budget starts spending only after activation