Facebook Automated Rules

Facebook Automated Rules are one of the biggest updates I've seen in a while. These were made available last year to advertiser who worked with a Facebook Marketing partner, but now anyone has access via Ads Manager or Power Editor. 

What's the use case for Automated Rules?

Managing Facebook campaigns is definitely not a "set it and forget it" endeavor. You need to constantly monitor and tweak campaigns in order to optimize your key performance indicators. Agencies or internal marketing teams with large budgets have even more on the line since a neglected campaign can spend a lot of money in the wrong direction. More money, more monitoring. 

I used to manually write bid rules when I handled Paid Search Marketing campaigns at Adobe. Like most Digital Marketers, I had a system to help me determine when to stop an ad, change budgets, or adjust bids. Adobe now has an algorithm that handles this fine tuning , and we now have the same luxury with Facebook Automated rules. 

As per Facebook "With automated rules, you can create rules in Ads Manager and Power Editor that automatically update or notify you of changes to your campaigns, ad sets or ads. Automated rules put more control in your hands. Rather than checking the performance of your campaigns, ad sets or ads daily, automated rules can run these checks for you and take the actions you'd normally do manually."

That said, you should still keep an eye on your campaigns to make sure they're meeting your business goals. However, this feature will help cut down on some of your day to day pruning, and give you time to focus on other activities. 

How do Automated Rules Work?

You need to create your Automated Rules by defining specific criteria.

Apply Rule To: Your rule will apply to the specified campaigns, ad sets, and ads that are active at the time the rule runs. You can also have this apply to all active campaigns, ad sets, and ads.

Action: These are the action your rule can take if your defined conditions are met:

  • Turn off
  • Send notification only
  • Adjust budget
  • Adjust manual bid

Conditions: These will be used to evaluate if the rule's action needs to occur or not. The following conditions are available:

  • Daily Spent
  • Frequency
  • Impressions
  • Lifetime Spent
  • Reach
  • Cost per Result
  • Cost per Add Payment Info (Facebook Pixel)
  • Cost per Click (Link)
  • CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions)
  • Click Through Rate (Link)
  • Cost per App Install
  • Cost per Add to Cart (Facebook Pixel)
  • Cost per Initiate Checkout (Facebook Pixel)
  • Cost per Purchase (Facebook Pixel)
  • Cost per Lead (Facebook Pixel)
  • Cost per Complete Registration (Facebook Pixel)

You can select more than one condition, and the tool also suggests conditions based on your input. You can choose from "is greater than", "is smaller than" ,"is between", "is not between".

Frequency: This is how often Facebook runs the rule. The only option here is "Continuously", but this may change later. Usually, the rule runs every 30 minutes. However, it won't take action unless your conditions are met. 

Notification: You'll get a notification when conditions for this rule are met and an action takes place. Beyond that, you can also receive a notification via email. 

Subscriber: Here, you can choose who gets receive rule results. You'll want to carefully consider who to put on this list. For example, let's say you add the CEO of your company. You may find yourself answering performance related questions on a daily basis. This could result in you becoming a reporting robot as opposed to a Digital Marketer. 

What Automated Rules am I using?

One of my eCommerce clients has a great deal of variance in their CTR. As they're a startup, they don't want to damage their brand image by serving ads that people are ignoring. Beyond that, this also increases CPC, which makes conversions more expensive.

As a result, we're implementing bid rules that automatically turn off ads that have a CTR below 1.5%. However, you want to wait until these ads get a sufficient amount of impressions. Facebook recommends waiting until you get at least 8,000 impressions, but you'll want to use your own judgement based on campaign goals, audience size, and budget. 

 

 

We're also creating bid rules that increase our overall budget if CPA is much lower than average. Reason being, we want to get as many of these low cost conversions as possible. 

How about you? What rules have you set up?

For a step by step guide on how to create your Automated Rules, check out Facebook for Business.