This was supposed to be a routine flight. A blended media campaign across influencers, paid search, and offline out-of-home, pacing cleanly toward the quarter's close.

Then one influencer post went viral. Clicks spiked 70% in 8 hours. Paid channels overcompensated and burned through the daily cap. Cost-per-acquisition nearly doubled overnight.

We paused nothing. Instead, I deployed a velocity control layer; rate-of-change flags tied to channel pacing logic. If momentum surged beyond thresholds, it throttled bid aggression across sibling campaigns. Stabilized the spike without losing the upside.

Campaigns don't fail because of pressure. They fail because of panic. When you engineer for control instead of reaction, you get to ride the wave instead of drowning in it.

Speed isn't the enemy. Uncoordinated acceleration is.