A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the process to perform steps comprising:
- receiving information for an advertising campaign including one or more advertisements for presentation to one or more users of a social networking system, the received information for the advertising campaign including a budget, a duration, and an impression objective, the impression objective specifying a target number of presentations of the one or more advertisements to users of the social networking system on a plurality of client devices;
- determining an interval impression objective specifying a first portion of the impression objective to be completed in a first interval of the advertising campaign, the first interval representing a portion of the duration of the advertising campaign;
- determining a predicted number of impressions during the first interval;
- determining, by a computer, a scaling filter based at least on a combination of the interval impression objective, the predicted number of impressions, and the budget, the scaling filter being usable to regulate inclusion of the one or more advertisements of the advertising campaign in advertisement auctions;
- tracking, by the computer, a performance of the advertising campaign during the first interval, the performance comprising an impression count counting a number of times an advertisement from the advertising campaign was presented to users of the social networking system on a plurality of client devices during the first interval;
- determining an updated interval impression objective specifying a second portion of the impression objective to be completed in a second interval of the advertising campaign based at least on the performance of the advertising campaign during the first interval;
- modifying, by the computer, the scaling filter based at least on the updated interval impression objective;
- receiving a request to present content to a viewing user of the social networking system;
- responsive to receiving the request, applying, by the computer, the modified scaling filter to determine whether to include an advertisement of the advertising campaign in an auction for selecting content to present to the viewing user;
- responsive to determining to include the advertisement of the advertising campaign in the auction, determining whether to present the advertisement of the advertising campaign to the viewing user based on an outcome of the auction;
- and
- responsive to determining to present the advertisement of the advertising campaign to the viewing user, sending the advertisement for presentation to the viewing user.