The challenge

ROAS-Schweiz wanted to understand whether campaign performance could be improved without changing budget, creative, or targeting.

Traditional even pacing is a proven, reliable approach that distributes the budget evenly throughout the day. However, it treats every inventory opportunity equally, regardless of changing auction dynamics, inventory quality, or audience engagement levels. The team wanted to answer one question:

Could real-time bid optimization reduce acquisition costs and increase engagement while maintaining the predictable delivery advertisers rely on?

To find out, ROAS-Schweiz set up a controlled A/B test to measure the impact of the pacing strategy alone.

Automatic pacing follows a predictable daily budget distribution, aiming to keep campaign spend on target by the end of the day. It also goes a step further by continuously analyzing live market conditions and dynamically adjusting bids in real time to prioritize high-performing inventory at the lowest possible cost.

The solution

To isolate the effect of pacing, two identical native advertising campaigns were launched on Readpeak using the same creatives, budget, targeting, and campaign settings.

The only difference was the pacing strategy:

• Campaign A used traditional even delivery
• Campaign B used automatic pacing

Automatic pacing follows a predictable daily budget distribution, aiming to keep campaign spend on target by the end of the day. It also goes a step further by continuously analyzing live market conditions and dynamically adjusting bids to prioritize high-performing inventory at the lowest possible cost.

When cheaper, high-quality opportunities are available, the algorithm lowers bids and concentrates spend there. If delivery falls behind pace, it selectively expands into more expensive inventory to maintain campaign delivery.

By adapting to supply and demand throughout the day, the automatic pacing option helps identify inventory with stronger engagement potential and lower acquisition costs while maintaining smooth, stable delivery.

The results

The test demonstrated that pacing can be a meaningful performance driver rather than just a delivery mechanism.

Beyond the increase in conversion volume, the quality of traffic also improved. Conversions were measured as visits to additional product pages, indicating stronger product interest and higher purchase intent.

While conversion volume increased significantly, time-on-site remained relatively stable, suggesting that automatic pacing was identifying more relevant audiences rather than simply generating more traffic.

The results show that advertisers do not need to choose between predictable delivery and stronger performance. With automatic pacing, ROAS-Schweiz achieved lower acquisition costs, higher engagement, and significantly more conversions without changing budget, creative, or targeting.