Plan modes: by campaign, by platform, or by account

Why are there three modes?

Because not every client is planned the same way. When the structure agreed on is respected, a plan campaign by campaign is the most precise thing there is. But there are clients who move budget between campaigns and between platforms all the time: for them, a campaign-level plan goes out of date in three days and you spend the month re-linking campaigns instead of reading the numbers. What you agreed with that client was "this much on Meta and that much on Google this month", or simply "this much this month" — and the plan should be able to say exactly that, no more and no less.

How do I choose the mode?

• In Paid Media > Planner, click New Plan.
• At the top of the dialog, Plan mode offers the three cards: By campaign, By platform, and By account. By campaign comes preselected.
• Fill in the rest as always (name, period, currency, notes) and click Create Plan.

The dialog only asks for the mode: in all three the plan is born empty and you load its rows inside it — campaigns, platforms, or the period budget — with the same side panel. So creating the plan takes seconds, and you budget when you have the numbers agreed with the client.

What does a by-platform or by-account plan look like?

Like the plan you already know. Same header (budget, invested, remaining, pacing, days) and the same table as always: the same toolbar — search, filters, views, Columns, Download CSV, screenshot, labels, Sync costs — the same bulk editing, and the same side panel when you open a row. What changes is what a row is: a platform, or the period budget of one currency. And because underneath it's the same row, a platform or account row carries status, labels, start and end dates, comments, and change history, exactly like a campaign.

How do I load its rows?

• Add rows from the header button, which is named after what the row is: New platform in a by-platform plan, New budget in a by-account one. A brand-new plan offers those same buttons in its empty state.
• In a by-platform plan there's no name field: the name is the platform. Pick it in Platform, one per row, just like a campaign: each option tells you whether it has a connected ad account (green, with the account name) or not (amber), and choosing a connected one suggests its currency. Platforms already in the plan aren't offered again. Other asks you for a name (Pinterest, programmatic, an off-platform buy) and creates a manual row. When you edit an existing row, its platform stays fixed.
• Check the linking before saving. Link to ad account shows in green which connected account(s) that platform syncs with, and warns in amber when there's no ad account connected or the row is manual — in that case its investment stays at whatever you enter by hand.
• Load the spend no integration brings. A manual row has Manual spend (that number is yours to keep); a row that syncs has Manual adjustment · optional, which adds on top of the synced spend — a fee, an off-platform buy.
• In a by-account plan the currency defines the row: one row per currency, and if there's already one in that currency it won't let you save another. Its linking lists every connected ad account with a checkbox — all included by default; untick one to leave it out of this row's sum (a newly connected integration joins in automatically). It also takes a manual adjustment.
• Bring in the spend with Sync costs, exactly as in a campaign plan. It also runs in the daily automation and in the workspace's bulk sync — you don't have to link anything for it to work.
• Expand a row with the chevron on its left to see the real breakdown: that platform's campaigns with their spend and their share of the total (in a by-account plan, first the platforms and each one into its campaigns). It's read-only detail: no budget, no pacing at that level.

What doesn't work in the new modes?

Everything that only makes sense on a campaign row. In a by-platform or by-account plan there simply are no campaigns to work with, so these tools stay in campaign mode:

• Linking real campaigns and the bulk campaign linker — the row's spend already comes from the whole ad account.
• Google's Auto-Budget: it adjusts real campaigns' daily budgets, so it only reads campaign-mode plans (the others aren't even offered in its import dialog).
• Plan templates, importing campaigns from another plan, and the CSV campaign importer: all three bring in campaigns, and here a row isn't a campaign.
• Duplicating a row: there's one row per platform and one per currency by design, so duplicating it would double-count the same ad account's spend. To add another platform, create it.
• The platform filter in a by-account plan: there's no platform dimension in its rows (each one is a currency). Search, status filter, labels, and the Columns manager do work in all three modes.
• Comparing plans only offers plans of the same mode: comparing campaigns against platform rows wouldn't mean anything.

Everything else keeps working exactly the same: the toolbar and the Columns manager, search and the status filter, bulk editing, labels, pacing, each row's comments and change history, the client portal, the email with its PDF, the CSV, the send history, and the workspace-level cross-account view — where you can also expand a plan and open each row's real campaign breakdown, just like in the plan itself. Carryover works in all three modes and also between modes — you can carry the balance of a by-platform January into a by-campaign February.

How do I know which mode a plan is in?

By its chip. Every plan carries its mode chip — By campaign, By platform, or By account — on its card, in the plan list, inside the plan next to its name, in the cross-account view, in the report editor's plan picker, and in the header of the email and the PDF the client receives; with plans of different modes side by side, none goes unlabelled. In the plan list, a mode filter also appears as soon as the account has a plan that isn't by campaign.