Facebook automated rules: how to manage them like real pros

Facebook automated rules are an incredibly powerful tool for managing your Facebook Ads. With the proper setup, Facebook automated rules can help you save time and money while maximizing your ad performance.

You can ensure your Facebook ad campaigns, ad sets, and multiple ads are monitored and optimized 24/7: underperforming ads are automatically paused, the bid of an adset with higher costs is lowered, and CTRs of all active ads are regularly checked.

The basics of Facebook ad rules

What is a Facebook ad rule?

Facebook automated rules allow you to automatically adjust your bid values and budgets and pause or activate ads as soon as a trigger is met. For example, you may want to change your budget when your cost per result reaches a certain threshold, or you can also use automated rules to pause ads if the cost per result is above your goal.

You can also use automated rules to send yourself email or SMS notifications when your ad performance falls below a certain level. By setting up the right Facebook automated rules, you can ensure that your ads are always running efficiently and that your ad spend is appropriately allocated.

Despite being helpful, skilled marketers managing several ad accounts might find the automated rules on Facebook not sophisticated enough. In this blog post, we will discuss the shortcomings of the classic Facebook ad rules and advise on managing them like a real pro!

Who could benefit from advanced Facebook automated rules?

Of course, not everyone should immediately set up advanced automated rules. Facebook ads manager rules might be enough if you only run a few campaigns in one ad account. Advanced automated rules can help you save time and resources if:

• You are running multiple ad accounts. Whether you work for an agency or have multiple markets, running several ad accounts takes time. Automated rules will help you have performance always under control and save time on manual campaign management.
• You run a complex ad account and regularly test new ads. You can set up advanced rules to pause underperforming ads and notify you about potential winners!
• You manage 6-digit monthly budgets. Big budgets always come with big responsibility! If you want to keep your spend under control, you’d better monitor it 24/7.

When implementing Facebook automated rules

Why are Ads Manager automated rules often not enough?

Besides ad spend, you cannot fully trust Facebook data

The traditional approach to automated rules is becoming increasingly outdated and is not as effective as it used to be. This is because the rules rely solely on Facebook data, and this data is often not enough to make informed decisions. With the rollout of iOS 14 and privacy limitations, advertisers are getting fewer data and conversion events than ever before.

Many brands rely on 3rd party data when it comes to optimizing active ad sets and active campaigns. If you are trying to optimize underperforming ad sets, you often want to make decisions based on your internal conversion data, attribution settings, or other external data sources.

Additionally, Facebook's automated rules are limited to the parameters set by Facebook. You cannot customize your rules to fit your exact requirements, for example, calculated metrics and the frequency of checks.

Facebook ad rules are not manageable in bulk

Managing Facebook automated rules can be daunting, especially for larger companies. This is because different rules need to be set for different target audiences, countries, and optimization goals.

For example, if a company wants to target a specific demographic in the US, it would have to set up an automated rule that limits ad spend to a certain amount per day or week. The same rule may not work for another target audience in a different country, as the ad spend may need to be managed differently.

Furthermore, it can be difficult to keep track of the rules set, as they can change depending on the optimization goals. Companies must constantly monitor and tweak their automated rules to ensure they get the desired results.

How automated rules by Kitchn.io are different

"I've noticed that it takes me more time to manage Facebook's automated rules than optimize multiple campaigns manually!" - this is a quote from one of our clients who was searching for a way to speed up rule management and have a good overview of what rule conditions are active in various ad accounts. Though automated rules help you to have your campaigns always under control, rule management can be very time-consuming.

There is no overview in ads manager of which automation rule applies to which ad set, campaign, or ad. Therefore, you have to check every ad account manually and adjust it.

At Kitchn.io, we realized how difficult it might get managing rules even for 3+ ad accounts. What happens if you have 10? You can easily spend half of the day adjusting automation rules.

To speed up the process and give a good overview to media buyers, we have developed a dashboard from which you can manage and create automated rules for multiple accounts. We also offer a couple more functionalities that are (as of today) not offered by any other tool!

By the way, if you are looking to automate Facebook campaign management, we have automated scaling solutions. Facebook advanced rules are a part of it, however, there is more like an automated rollout of winner ads, automated Facebook reporting, and valuable custom Slack notification.

This is how Kitchn advanced Facebook rules works

Step 1: Collect data to calculate all KPIs that are used in the rules

The first step is aggregating data from multiple data sources that we will use to calculate metrics dynamically, for example, cost per purchase or return on ad spend. Kitchn.io already has native integrations to Facebook Ads Manager, Google Analytics, Hyros, and other tools you use to get reports' data. If your tool has a public API or can push data into a spreadsheet or CSV, Kitchn.io can pull the data into its platform.

Aggregating data from Facebook and Google Analytics in Kitchn.io

Aggregating can happen inside of Kitchn.io or even in a tool of your choice, which we will further use to push new into and fetch data to compare to your goals. It could be as simple as Google Sheets, Airtable, or even Notion. Again, you choose where you want to base it.

You will also need to define the frequency of how often you need the rules to be checked. Therefore, each time before the rule check takes place, we will fetch new data and renew the database.

This is how we will aggregate data from all possible data sources, calculate unique metrics, and set a custom schedule for rules trigger.

Step 2: Define your goals and choose actions

After getting the metrics, we will compare them to your goals. List all KPIs that you want to monitor for all possible dimensions. For example, if you advertise in multiple countries, you might have different CPA/ROAS targets depending on the country. Then, list all goals for all countries, and we will automatically compare them to the actual metrics.

Then, define the actions that need to be triggered. It could be a direct change to the adset, campaign, or ad. For example, you can decrease manual bids, pause ads, send notification or increase budget.

Defining Facebook automated rules in Kitchn.io

With this approach, you can manage all your rules and conditions in one place, and in case your goals change, you can easily swap the number straight in the database. For instance, if you use a manual bid with an "unlimited budget," you can set a rule to decrease bid by 10% if the actual cost per result is 15% higher than the goal. You will have a column for the goal, action (increase/decrease/pause/notify), and percentage value, if applicable.

Interested to know why our automated rules solutions can be a game-changer for you? Here are a few benefits of using Kitchn.io to manage your ad accounts automatically.

Flexible rules

Kitchn.io's automated rule solution is highly customizable and allows users to combine multiple data sources while setting up custom rules and frequencies. It is designed in a way to give you maximum flexibility.

You can choose any desired time frequency to run the checks. For example, you can run a CTR check every 4 hours. As soon as the decline in CTR is detected, you can automatically pause underperforming ads or send a Slack notification to your favorite channel.

Another advantage of this approach - it allows you to calculate any metric in your way. Have a custom conversion rate or return on investment calculation formula that combines multiple sources?

Since the dashboard is based on Google Sheets, Airtable, or Notion, you can calculate all metrics you want and track and analyze them. We will help you build the dashboard to your specific needs and goals.

Running many Facebook ad accounts and need to handle many ad sets and ads?

Manage from a spreadsheet

Managing Facebook rules with Kitchn.io is efficient and user-friendly. It is a simple yet comprehensive solution to create and maintain multiple automated rules associated with a single or multiple Facebook accounts. Our solution will provide an overview of all the rules in one place, allowing you to stay flexible when defining conditions and values for the automated rules.

You can manage all your Facebook rules from one place with Kitchn.io!

Having an overview of all the rules in one place makes it much easier to manage and keep track of them. Even better, you can combine multiple accounts in one database! This feature makes it easy to manage several accounts simultaneously, saving you time and resources.

You will have complete control over Facebook's automated rules —giving them peace of mind that their settings remain secure and up-to-date. It's a great tool for those agencies and brands who need to manage multiple accounts quickly and efficiently.

Relative KPIs monitor

With Kitchn.io, you can monitor not only the absolute values but the relative too. It could make a big difference if you base your optimization decision on the CTR, CPC, or CPA change instead of looking at the actual number. Seeing an upwards trend in ad frequency? Decrease the daily budget. Click through rate is lower than the average of the last week? Pause underperforming ads.

At one point, all your ads will experience ad fatigue (learn more about ad fatigue and how to manage it effectively in our creative testing blueprint). And the only way to detect it is to monitor the relative values. You can create automated rules to monitor changes in the main KPIs and send notifications or adjust budget values when the trend is detected.

Another example will be a rollout of the best ads from creative testing to ever-green campaigns. You can compare ads to each other on the ad set level and only take the best one to the campaign. This way, you will never overspend on creative testing and keep your Facebook campaigns up-to-date!

Summary

In conclusion, Facebook automated rules are a powerful tool for managing Facebook Ads, allowing for 24/7 optimization of campaigns, ad sets, and individual ads. However, relying solely on Facebook data can be limiting, and managing multiple ad accounts with different rules can be time-consuming.

Kitchn.io offers an advanced solution that collects data from multiple sources to dynamically calculates metrics and allows for customizing rules to fit specific requirements. Kitchn.io’s custom dashboard provides an overview of active rules for various ad accounts, making rule management much easier manageable. By using Kitchn.io, media buyers can save time, optimize campaigns effectively, and have better control over their ad spend.

If you want to learn more about how Kitchn.io can help you automate Facebook ad operations and save time managing campaigns, check out our Facebook Ads Automation solutions.