Campaign Budgets and Caps Explained

What is the difference between a campaign budget and a cap?

A campaign budget is the most a campaign may spend in total. A cap limits how fast it spends or how many results it takes in a period, such as $5 an hour or 40 completions a day. A frequency cap is different again: it limits how often the same person can take part. On Sharklio every one of these is optional, and a value of 0 means no limit.

Used together, they turn a pay-per-result campaign into something you can plan around. The budget protects your total, the caps protect your review time and cash flow, and the frequency cap protects you from paying twice for the same person. This guide goes into how each limit is counted, because the details decide when a campaign actually stops.

The six spending and volume limits on a campaign

You set all of them in the Budget & rules section of the campaign builder, which Create your first campaign walks through field by field.

Money fields accept up to three decimals, such as 25 or 25.500. Count caps accept whole numbers up to 1,000,000. Separately from these limits, your prepaid balance acts as an outer limit on every campaign you run, which we come back to below.

How the total budget is counted

The budget is compared with more than approved spend. Before Sharklio accepts a new completion, it adds up three things: what the campaign has already been charged, the cost of its completions that are still open, and the bid for the next one. If that sum would go over the budget, the offer is no longer shown and new submissions are turned away.

“Still open” means waiting for your review, rejected but still inside the 72 hours in which the user can dispute, or in a dispute. Each of those might still be charged, so the budget treats them as spoken for. This is what keeps the total from being overshot when many people finish your task at once.

Two statuses come out of this. When approved spend reaches the budget, the campaign moves to Completed. If you later raise the budget above what was spent, or set it to 0, it becomes Active again without a new review. And if our team reverses an approved completion, for example for fraud, its cost is returned to your balance and taken off the campaign’s spent total, which frees that room in the budget again.

Hourly and daily caps are rolling windows

A daily cap on Sharklio does not reset at midnight. It looks back over the last 24 hours from the moment a user tries to submit, and the hourly cap looks back over the last 60 minutes. A campaign that hits a daily cap of 50 at 3 p.m. starts taking completions again as the earliest of those 50 slide out of the 24-hour window, not at the start of the next day.

Both caps count submissions, not approvals. Every completion in the window counts, whether it is pending, approved, rejected but still disputable, or disputed. Only a rejection that has become final drops out. Spend caps work the same way, adding up the price of those submissions and checking whether the next bid would push the total over the cap.

That has a practical meaning: rejecting a batch of weak completions does not free up today’s cap straight away. The slots come back when the rejection becomes final or when the submission leaves the window.

Spend cap or completion cap?

Use a completion cap when your limit is review time. If you can check 40 proofs a day, a daily cap of 40 keeps the queue at a size you can clear inside your approval window. Use a spend cap when your limit is money, especially if you bid differently by country: 40 completions at $0.60 in one market and $0.08 in another are very different bills, and a daily spend cap handles that for you. You can set both; whichever is reached first applies. Click campaigns use the same fields, counted in credited clicks instead of completions.

Budget vs balance: Completed is not the same as Paused

Your balance is shared by all your campaigns, while a budget belongs to one. What you can spend at any moment is your balance minus the cost of open completions across every campaign. If that available amount cannot cover the next completion, the campaign is paused and you get a notice. A paused campaign does not restart on its own after you top up; you choose Resume when you are ready.

So a campaign that stopped because its budget was used up shows Completed, and one that stopped for lack of funds shows Paused. How your advertiser balance works goes through the reserved amounts in detail.

Frequency caps: how often one person can take part

The frequency cap decides whether the same user can complete your campaign again: once per user (ever), after an interval from every 5 minutes to every 7 days, or Unlimited. The interval is measured from that user’s last submission. A few rules apply whatever you choose:

• A user with a completion still waiting for review, rejected but disputable, or in a dispute cannot start the same campaign again until it is settled.
• A user whose earlier completion was reversed cannot take part in that campaign again.
• A rejection that has become final does not count toward the frequency cap, so under “once” that user may try the task again and do it properly.

For sign-ups, installs and other one-time actions, keep the default of once ever. Short intervals only make sense for actions that can honestly be repeated, such as visits to a page that changes often. If you choose Unlimited, pair it with hourly or daily caps. The glossary entry on frequency caps covers how the term is used on other ad platforms.

Including and excluding users by campaign

Under User inclusion and exclusion you can list up to 50 of your own campaign IDs. Only users approved on campaigns shows the campaign only to people with an approved completion on one of those campaigns. Hide from users approved on campaigns does the opposite. The first is useful for a second step, such as reaching level 10 after an earlier install task was approved. The second stops you paying the same people twice across similar campaigns, such as two versions of a sign-up task in an A/B test on a small budget.

What users see when a limit is reached

When a budget, cap or balance limit is reached, the offer disappears from the offerwall for new users. Someone who had already started your task, and who has up to 24 hours to send proof, is told the offer is not available right now when they submit. That is why caps set far below real demand can frustrate people who were halfway through. Give yourself some headroom, and prefer a daily cap over repeatedly pausing and resuming a busy campaign.

Changing budgets, caps and bids on a live campaign

Budget, caps, bids, targeting and the frequency cap can all be changed while a campaign runs, and the changes apply right away without a new staff review. Your Campaigns list has quick Edit buttons for the budget and the caps, and each card shows the budget, what has been spent, the budget remaining, and the reserved balance for open completions. A new bid applies to new completions only; ones already submitted keep the price they were submitted at. Changes to the task itself, such as the title, instructions, proof or starting link, send the campaign back to review.

How to set budgets and caps for a first test

1. Work out what one result is worth to you. The cost per result calculator helps you turn a spend and a result count into a price.
2. Set the total budget to what you are willing to learn with, for example 50 to 100 results at your bid.
3. Set a daily completion cap you can review within your approval window, then a daily spend cap if your country bids vary a lot.
4. Keep the frequency cap at once ever unless the action can honestly be repeated.
5. Leave room in your balance above the budget so a burst of open completions does not pause other campaigns.

Then change one thing at a time. Set bids by country shows how to adjust prices once the first results arrive, and How to advertise on a small budget helps you decide how much to put into that first test.

Frequently asked questions