What happens at your impression cap

Nothing happens. Your ads keep serving, you are not billed an overage, and you are not moved up a plan automatically. That is the whole answer. The rest of this article is why, and the one thing we do not do well yet.

What the allowance actually is

Each plan quotes a monthly impression allowance. That number sets the price point and tells you roughly which plan fits your site. It is not a meter that trips, and there is nothing in the product that stops serving when you pass it.

Soft on purpose, not by accident. A cap that cuts you off takes your ad slots dark in the middle of a month, usually on the day your traffic is best. That punishes you for the thing everybody wanted to happen, so we chose not to build it that way.

What we do not do

• We do not stop serving. Your zones keep filling and your advertisers keep getting the impressions they paid for.
• We do not bill you an overage. There is no per thousand charge waiting at the end of a big month.
• We do not upgrade you automatically. Your plan does not change because a number moved, so nobody gets a surprise invoice.
• We do not send a warning email. Passing an advisory number is not an incident.

So when should you move up?

When you are consistently over rather than once. A spike because something you published did well is exactly what a soft cap is for. Six months at double your allowance is a different thing, and moving up then is fair to both sides, because the bandwidth behind those impressions is real and somebody is paying for it.

If you are a long way over and staying there, we will write and suggest it. We will not do it to your card without asking.

The part we are not good at yet

There is no usage meter in the product. You cannot open a screen today and see how many impressions you have served this month against your allowance. That is a real gap, and it is the obvious companion to a soft cap, because "do not worry about the number" is easier to believe when you can see the number.

In the meantime your reports will tell you. Set the period to this month on your dashboard and read the impressions tile: that is the figure the allowance is about. Read your reports covers where it is.

Why we write all this down

Plenty of platforms treat the cap as the thing that makes you upgrade, so they are vague about it. Ours is advisory and we would rather say so plainly, including the part where we have not built the meter. If that changes, this article changes with it.