The daily budget slider in quick setup is built from published figures, not from a guess: the platform's minimum, what its optimiser needs to learn, the cost of one result in your industry, and your own monthly budget.
Before you start#
- An ad account is connected and chosen. The slider shows its currency, converted with the European Central Bank's reference rates. Its scale is logarithmic, so $5 to $30 takes as much room as $30 to $200.
- Madder files the product's industry when it reads your site; until then the all-industries figures apply. Change it from the Industry dropdown on the card, and the marks are recalculated at once.
- The amount you pick becomes the daily limit of a paused draft. Every later change asks for your approval first.
1. Read the four marks#
- Minimum is the platform's floor: on Meta about $1 a day for an ad set charged for impressions and $5 for one optimised for clicks or conversions; on TikTok $50 a day per campaign. Google publishes none, so the mark is about one click a day.
- Meta fully optimises (on Google, Enough for smart bidding) is where the platform's optimiser settles. Meta leaves its learning phase after about 50 results in 7 days, so the mark is the cost of one result × 50 ÷ 7. Google's target-cost bidding wants 30 conversions in 30 days: one a day. TikTok publishes recommended minimums instead: 10× the cost of a purchase or $200, 20× or $200 for an install, 50× or $100 for a lighter result.
- Recommended is about one result a day: the cost of one result, or the platform's minimum if higher. That is Google's own rate, and a week of it shows what a result really costs. On Meta it sits below the learning mark on purpose: a first test does not have to buy 50 a week. TikTok's recommended minimum is passed on as is. If your monthly budget is lower, the mark is your budget spread over the month, and the card says how many results a week that buys.
- Your monthly budget is the band from the welcome quiz divided by 30.4 days. No band, no mark.
2. Check what the amount buys#
The card says how many results a day and a week it buys (amount ÷ cost of one result) and when the platform settles. When it knows your price, one more line says whether a result pays back: for a sale, the margin you need; for a lead, one in how many leads has to buy.
3. Know where the cost of one result comes from#
- Your account first. Once it has at least 10 results over 7 days for this goal, Madder uses its own cost per result and says so.
- Published figures until then. Leads and clicks on Meta and Google: the 2026 LocaliQ averages by industry. Purchases on Meta, Google and TikTok: the Triple Whale medians by industry, read in October 2026. An industry without a figure for your goal falls back to the all-industries row.
- Rules of thumb are labelled. A traffic campaign has no learning threshold; its recommendation is about 20 clicks a day, a vendor rule of thumb named as one.
4. Change it later#
Open Your first campaign in the stage panel to move the slider again, or write Change my daily limit to 40 USD a day in the chat.
If it doesn't work#
- The recommended amount looks high or low. Move the slider; the line under the amount says what any amount buys.
- The card shows USD though the account bills in another currency. The ECB table has no rate for it.
- No slider, only a field. The plan could not be read; type the amount per day.
- The industry is wrong. Pick the right one in the Industry dropdown on the card, or in Settings → Products.