Introduction

The Spending Limit is designed to control and monitor advertising spend on a postpaid basis for each Ad account. It helps platforms manage risk, control advertiser exposure, and support postpaid billing workflows for advertisers that do not use a conventional payment gateway.

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The Spending Limit and Wallet features cannot be activated simultaneously. If your platform uses prepaid advertising, use the Wallet feature instead. If your platform uses postpaid controls, use Spending Limit.

Key Concepts

Spending limit

The spending limit is a predefined cap on how much an Ad account can spend during the current limit period.

Amount spent

The amount spent represents the Ad account’s total expenditure within the current limit period.

Remaining balance

The remaining balance is calculated as the spending limit minus the amount spent within the current limit period.

Reset period

The reset period is the interval for resetting the spending limit. The current model supports a monthly reset cycle.

If credit support is enabled, credits can offset part of the spend under the spending limit model.

Operational Mechanics

Setting spending limits

When using Spending Limit, each Ad account is automatically assigned one spending limit when it is created. Platforms define a default spending limit, which becomes the initial limit for new Ad accounts. Individual limits can then be adjusted based on account trustworthiness, historical spend, or platform risk assessment.

Monthly reset

The spending limit is configured on a monthly basis. The reset date can be the 1st, 15th, 25th, or 26th of each month. On the reset date, the spending limits of all Ad accounts are automatically reset. The reset date cannot be changed during operation without support from Moloco.

Tracking expenditure

The spending limit tracks each account’s spend against its configured limit. As the account incurs advertising expenses, those amounts reduce the available limit.

Automatic deactivation

If an Ad account reaches its spending limit before the reset period ends, it is automatically deactivated. Inactive accounts cannot continue serving ads until the limit is reset or manually increased.

Manual adjustment

Spending limits can be adjusted manually through the user interface or API. Platforms can increase or decrease the limit based on advertiser risk, business decisions, or support workflows.

The new limit can be applied immediately or at the beginning of the next reset period:

• Immediate application: the new limit takes effect as soon as it is set, typically when the new value is higher or not significantly below the amount already spent.
• Scheduled application: if the new limit is lower than the amount already spent, it will generally take effect at the next reset period instead of immediately.

Notifications

The Spending Limit feature can send notifications to all users of an Ad account when the account reaches its spending limit. If you do not want to send these notifications, contact your Moloco representative.

Legacy Billing Note

Most customers can treat the current billing model described above as the default behavior. If you need historical context for older records or prior platform behavior, ask your Moloco representative about the legacy billing version, which used a different logic for calculating ending balance for a given day.

Define Your Policies

Because of the Spending Limit feature’s operational behavior, several policy decisions are required before using it effectively:

• Define the default spending limit amount for new Ad accounts.
• Choose the monthly reset date (1st/15th/25th are available configurations).
• Decide whether to send notifications when an Ad account reaches its spending limit and is deactivated (webhook required).
• Decide whether credit support should be enabled for your spending limit model.

Once these decisions are made, share the details with your Moloco representatives.