Limits reference
Every row, column and control of the Limits card, which caps exist on which level, the CPA Auto Deactivation pair and what the fields will take — the companion to the Set volume limits and budgets guide.
The companion to Set volume limits and budgets, which has the steps, the defaults per role, pinned actions, where delivery stops and the fix-it checklist. How counters behave is on How limits behave; the REST endpoints on Limits over the API.
Metrics — the rows
| Row | Counts | Side | Money? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget | The gross the entity’s pricing computes — spend, in US dollars | Demand only | Yes |
| Requests | Ad requests received by the inventory | Supply only | No |
| Opportunities | Times the entity was selected to serve, before an impression is confirmed | Demand only | No |
| Impressions | Registered impressions | Both | No |
| Clicks | Clicks | Both | No |
| Conversions | Conversions across all your conversion actions — VAST playback events (quartiles, viewability, player interactions) are not counted; cap those with a per-action limit on the event’s action | Both | No |
Rows always appear in that order: money first, then the funnel from the request a publisher receives down to the conversion an advertiser pays for. Below them come the pinned actions, one row each, in the order they were pinned.
Periods — the columns
| Column | Covers | Starts over |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | The calendar day | Midnight |
| Weekly | The ISO week, Monday to Sunday | Start of Monday |
| Monthly | The calendar month | Start of the 1st |
| Total | The lifetime of the entity | Never — only when you clear it |
Days, weeks and months are those of the network’s time zone — UTC unless your network has been set to another zone — on every ad server; see When a counter starts over.
All six metrics offer all four periods, so the complete grid is 24 caps. The periods are independent calendars, not rolling windows: a weekly cap set on a Friday gets the remainder of that week, not seven days, and a week spanning the turn of a month still counts as one week while the monthly counter starts over mid-week. A pinned action’s row offers Daily and Total only.
Everything else on the card
| Control | What it does | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Card switch | Creates the limit record when on, deletes it when off | Deleting takes the counters with it; switching off asks for confirmation, which says so when a pinned action has a cap, because those caps stay |
| Start date | Delivery does not begin before this moment | Picked date defaults to 00:00 |
| End date | Delivery stops after this moment | Picked date defaults to 23:59; must be after the start (“End date is smaller than start date” disables Save) |
| Local time (UTC ±X) | Reads start and end in your browser’s time zone, each with the offset in force on that date | Networks on UTC only; affects only those two dates |
| Network time | Names the zone start and end are shown and taken in | Replaces Local time on a network with its own time zone |
| Even pacing | Spreads remaining volume across the period | Renders on all five levels; with time targeting, spreads across the allowed hours |
| Eraser (per cap) | Queues that counter for a reset | No confirmation; not instant (Limit will be reset within the next hour) |
| Usage bar (per set cap) | How much of the cap is used, compact figure and percentage (18.2K · 73%) | Hover for the exact numbers; stands at the stop share, not 100%, when a share stopped delivery |
| CPA … Auto Deactivation | Two paired fields, collapsed | Campaign and banner only, own permission — see below |
| Save | Saves every cap, the dates, pacing and the pinned rows | Enter in any cap also saves; success is “Limits saved” |
Where each cap exists, per level
The card is one component used in five places, and which rows it offers depends on the side of the platform, not on the level — so an advertiser, a campaign and a banner get an identical set, and a site and a placement get an identical set.
| Advertiser | Campaign | Banner | Site | Placement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Budget × 4 periods | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Requests × 4 periods | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Opportunities × 4 periods | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Impressions / Clicks / Conversions × 4 periods | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Start / End dates, Local time, Even pacing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CPA Auto Deactivation | — | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Pinned actions, Daily and Total | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| REST API for limits | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Zones have nothing to cap. There is no zone limit record, no zone Limits card, and nothing between a placement and its site that can stop delivery.
CPA Auto Deactivation
Campaign and banner pages add a collapsed CPA … Auto Deactivation subsection with two paired fields — No conversions traffic, ad impressions and No conversions period, hours, each with a read-only counter and its own eraser. If the subsection is absent, ask your network administrator for the No Conversions Within Period permission. Only real conversions reset these counters — VAST playback events do not — so the rule works on video campaigns too.
It takes both, not either. The entity is only stopped when it has delivered that many impressions and that many hours have passed, both without a conversion. Setting one of the two alone does nothing at all: with hours left at 0 the pair can never both be reached. Set both, or neither.
This pair is not a pause, it is an off switch. Unlike every cap in the grid, the no-conversions rule is not evaluated on the ad request at all. It is applied by the hourly job, which sets the entity’s active flag to false — so it takes up to an hour to bite, and when it does the entity is switched Off and stays off until someone turns it back on.
Despite the name there is no pricing-type check — it works on any campaign or banner, so do not set it on one that legitimately gets no conversions.
What the fields will take
Counts go up to 4,000,000,000 and money to 9,999,999,999.999. A larger figure is trimmed as you
type. Counts are whole numbers; only a budget takes decimals. 0 means no cap. The ladder
daily ≤ weekly ≤ monthly ≤ total is checked for every metric by the card and the API alike —
see the caveats on the guide.
Per-role notes
- Advertiser — on the stock Advertiser role you set only the flight’s Start date and End date; the total and daily Budget are read-only, and impression and click limits are not shown. Your network manager sets the caps, or widens your role. The Requests row never appears on this side. See What your network controls.
- Network manager — the demand-side card and the site and placement card, both on the stock role; weekly, monthly and opportunities caps need extra grants.
- Publisher — no Limits card on sites or placements; volume ceilings are the network’s to set.
- Can View share — caps are read-only, with no Save and no erasers; changes need Can Edit or Is Owner.
Exact grants: see User roles.
