Budget management

Budget proposals judged on your revenue and your targets. Molecule proposes, you press Apply — except the stop-loss, which can pause and resume ads on its own.

Budget management turns your numbers into concrete budget changes: raise this campaign by 20%, cut that one, move money from one to the other, pause a creative that is burning spend. Every proposal is judged against your targets, on both Molecule's attributed revenue and the ad platform's own numbers, and shows the evidence behind it.

Nothing changes until you apply it — with one exception you choose. Molecule proposes; you press Apply, and only then is the change written to Meta or Google Ads. The one exception is the stop-loss with automatic pause turned on: it pauses and resumes single ads by itself. Ad sets, campaigns, keywords and ad groups always wait for your Apply.

It lives in Insights → Budget. Budget proposals are part of the Pro and Enterprise plans, and need at least one ad channel connected.

Turning it on

Open Insights → Budget and click Turn on budget proposals. Then set up your Policy — proposals start once your targets are in (in Stop-loss only, once a stop-loss amount is set).

You can turn it off again from the Policy page. Open proposals are withdrawn; your policy is kept for next time.

Your policy

The Policy page is where you tell Molecule how to judge your campaigns. Press Preview to see what a draft policy would propose on today's data before you Save it.

How bold — the Soft, Balanced and Aggressive cards set every boldness setting below in one click: the window, how sure Molecule must be, how far it moves. Adjust anything afterwards. Re-plan every sets how often the plan runs on its own, from every 2 hours to once a day.

Targets (required, except in Stop-loss only)

Campaign targets — a target ROAS or Cost per order, set on both bases: Molecule (your attributed Shopify revenue) and Platform (what the ad platform reports). Add overrides for a campaign role or a channel; the most specific one wins.
Blended targets — for the whole store: monthly spend min / expected / max, a Blended ROAS min (all net sales over all paid spend) and a First-time ROAS min.

How campaigns are judged

Window — the last 7, 14 or 28 days (14 by default), plus a check on the most recent days so a fresh drop is not hidden inside a good fortnight.
Attribution — one model for every campaign, or (the default) a model per campaign role: last touch for brand, retargeting and shopping; first touch for top-of-funnel and PMax. Roles are recognised from campaign names, and you can add your own rules. See How attribution works.
Growth — how boldly budget is added: Off (never add budget; cuts and moves still happen), Soft, Balanced or Aggressive.
Cutting — how quickly losers are trimmed: Soft, Balanced or Aggressive (Aggressive also needs less spend before it judges).
Pacing — spend evenly through the month or front-loaded.
Exploration — optionally set aside a share of spend for small test raises on campaigns the evidence cannot call yet.
Minimum campaign age — new campaigns are left alone until they have had time to learn (7 days by default).
Exclusions — campaigns whose names contain words you list (by default "brand") are never touched.

Creatives

Pause creatives judged on — for a creative that is below target after enough spend: both bases agreeing (default), Molecule only, or Platform only.
The stop-loss has its own block — see Stop-loss below.

Guards

A minimum spend and a minimum number of orders before a larger step is proposed.
Days after any change — a cooldown so a campaign is not changed again before the last change has had time to work (3 days by default).
A maximum step per channel (20% by default; 30% on TikTok).
Always: at most a 50% change, at most 500 raised per campaign per day, and at most 10 campaigns in one change.

Written rules — write any extra rules in plain language ("never cut the Black Friday campaigns"). The AI turns them into policy settings for you to review, with Put it in the form.

Stop-loss

The stop-loss is a hard rule, not a forecast: once an ad has spent your stop-loss amount in the lookback and still fails your rule, Molecule pauses it. It works on:

Meta ads.
Google ads in Search, Demand Gen, Display and YouTube campaigns — and on Google also keywords, ad groups and PMax asset groups.

Google is always judged on Google's own conversions.

Settings (Policy → Stop-loss)

Creative stop-loss — how much an ad must spend before the stop-loss can act (0 = off).
Lookback — the budget window, or 3, 7, 14 or 28 days.
Judge on — Molecule and platform (an order on either spares the ad), Molecule only or Platform only.
Pause when — No orders, Cost per order above a number, ROAS below a number, or Cost per order and ROAS together. With both, choose Both are breached (the default — an ad that is fine on one measure keeps running) or Either is breached.
Re-check paused for — 7, 14, 30 or 45 days.

Coming back

Orders are often attributed days later. A paused ad is re-checked on the same days it was paused for; when late orders lift it out of the stop-loss, you get a Resume card.
If you switch a paused ad back on yourself, only its spend after the pause counts — it is not paused again for the spend it was already paused for.
A change to the campaign's budget or status does not hold the stop-loss.

Automatic pause

Press Turn on automatic pause and tick the channels: Meta (the default) and/or Google. On every plan run, Molecule then:

pauses up to 10 ads that hit the stop-loss, biggest spenders first, through the same checks as Apply — never the last active ad of an ad set or ad group;
switches ads back on when late orders lift the stop-loss.

These cards say Paused automatically or Resumed automatically, and each change also shows in the Insights feed. Ad sets, campaigns, Google keywords, ad groups and asset groups are never changed automatically — they stay under Apply.

Stop-loss only

Tick Stop-loss only to make the stop-loss the only thing Molecule does: budget changes, below-target pauses, exploration and the AI's own cards are switched off, and campaign targets are not needed — only a stop-loss amount. The Budget tab then shows a one-line summary of your stop-loss instead of the account plan.

The Budget tab

At the top, the Account plan says what the month needs overall: add budget, move budget with the total flat, or reduce budget. Below it are three kinds of card:

Proposals — Scale, Cut, Reallocate, Pause or Resume, with the budget before and after, a plain-language reason, and an evidence table: orders and ROAS on the Molecule and the Platform basis, the likely range, and the chance the campaign is really above target. A move between two campaigns is a linked pair: the cut is applied first, and the raise only if the cut went through.
Attribution gaps — campaigns where Molecule and the platform disagree too much to act on. Choose Trust platform or Trust Molecule.
Watching — campaigns that are close but not ready, and why.

On a proposal:

Apply — makes the change in Meta or Google Ads. The live state is checked again first; if it or your policy has changed since the proposal was made, nothing is written.
Reject — tell Molecule why (wrong direction, too aggressive, too soon, bad timing, not enough data). The same change is not proposed again for 7 days.
Snooze 7d — hide it for a week.

Proposals are refreshed on your Re-plan every schedule (once a day from 04:00 UTC by default), when you open the tab if the last run is more than 6 hours old, and whenever you press Refresh. A proposal is valid for 24 hours; after that a newer plan replaces it.

Asking the AI

Press Ask AI for its take, or ask the AI Agent directly:

"What would you change if I judged on 28 days instead of 14?" — what-ifs are answered on the spot and never saved.
"Cut the retargeting campaign by 20%." / "Move budget from X to Y." — the AI drafts the change through the same checks as any proposal.
"Should my targets be different?" — it suggests policy changes for you to review and save.

With Let the AI create its own cards switched on in the policy, the AI also adds proposals of its own, labelled AI suggestion. Choose how much the engine holds it back: Guarded, Balanced or Pure AI. In Stop-loss only, the AI does not add cards of its own. In every case the change is only made when you press Apply (or confirm it in the chat).

Turning it on

Your policy

Stop-loss

The Budget tab

Asking the AI

What it can and cannot change