A. Create Budget Pools in Smartly
Go to Intelligence ▸ Reporting.
(Optional) Click a channel tab to filter your view.
Select campaigns with daily budgets that you want to include in the pool.
Click Optimization ▸ Budget Pools ▸ New Budget Pool.
Name the pool and review campaign selections.
Deselect any conflicting campaigns. Smartly auto-excludes invalid ones.
Enable PBA (or save as a plain pool if staging setup).
Choose Optimization Goal:
CPA – minimise cost per conversion
ROAS – maximise return on ad spend (requires selecting both conversion event and revenue metric)
Set Attribution Window:
Up to 7 days
Note: TikTok uses its Ads Manager default, which cannot be overridden.
Choose Budget Management Mode:
Fixed Daily recommended for the first test for stable optimisation.
Apply Best Practices (see below).
Save Budget Pool.
Recommended Best Practices
Keep funnel stages distinct: It’s generally more effective to separate prospecting and retargeting campaigns into their own pools to give PBA clearer optimisation signals.
Group by market: Consider creating separate pools for each market (e.g., UK vs US) to account for regional performance differences.
Align campaign objectives: PBA performs best when all campaigns in a pool share the same optimisation goal (e.g., Conversions).
Cross-channel pools: When combining multiple channels, use Smartly’s per-channel min/max caps to maintain balance and prevent over-allocation to a single channel.
CBO vs. non-CBO:
With CBO ON, PBA allocates at the campaign level.
With CBO OFF, it allocates at the ad set level.
Aim to keep structures consistent within each pool for smoother learning.
B. Enable PBA (if not toggled during creation)
Open the pool.
Click the PBA icon ▸ Toggle ON.
Select CPA or ROAS as your optimisation goal.
Choose the appropriate conversion event (and revenue metric if ROAS).
Confirm attribution window and budget mode.
Click Save.
C. Add Fospha (Prism) Columns in Smartly Reporting
Fospha’s Prism integration pushes daily, full-funnel conversion and revenue signals into Smartly via a secure Server-to-Server (S2S) feed.
These signals power PBA decisions and appear directly in reporting.
In Reporting, open Column Selector ▸ Create Column ▸ Create Metric.
Name the metric.
Under Server-to-Server, map Fospha metrics for each channel:
S2S: Fospha Attribution ([channel]) – ConversionsS2S: Fospha Attribution ([channel]) – RevenueS2S: Fospha Campaign New Conversion ([channel]) – ConversionsS2S: Fospha Campaign New Conversion ([channel]) – Revenue
Click Create Metric, then add these to your reporting view and optimisation setup.
D. Quick-Reference: Guardrails & Defaults
Setting | Default | Guidance |
Optimisation cadence | Meta/TikTok: every 2 days • Pinterest: every 3 days • Snap: every 3–4 days | Keep cadence slower for upper funnel to allow signal stabilisation |
Budget change limits | +50% / −30% (max +200%) | Adjust for speed vs. stability |
Exploration budget | 10% (range 0–70%) | Enables controlled experimentation |
Cross-channel min/max caps | 10% per channel | Prevents overspend in a single channel |
Attribution window | ≤7 days | TikTok uses platform default |
First-optimisation delay | 7 days | Allow ≥3 days (upper funnel) or ≥5 days (lower funnel) before first reallocation |
E. Notify Your Account Manager
Once your budget pool is live, please share a quick confirmation so we can begin tracking its performance in Fospha.
This allows us to:
Confirm which campaigns are included in the budget pool
Verify that Fospha metrics are flowing correctly into Smartly
Add your live test to our performance tracker for weekly insight reporting
This short step ensures we can validate results early and share meaningful learnings from your PBA test as soon as data begins flowing.