A new tool in Facebook’s advertising platform – automated rules, which will help you save money and improve advertising results. In addition, I will give you 10 useful rules to help you track your campaigns, as well as a very important bonus rule that will let you know if there is a problem with your campaigns.
For example, a rule that says if the cost per lead exceeds 100 ILS – pause the ad.
How to activate automated rules?
Select the relevant campaign / ad set / ad and click on Create Rule
Options in Creating a Rule
Apply Rule To – Which campaign / ad set / ad the rule will apply to
Action – Whether to pause the campaign or just send an email
Conditions – Under what conditions to trigger the rule
Time Range – What time range to check the rule for
Attribution Window – Which attribution model to check the rule by
Frequency – How often the rule will run
Notification – Whether to receive an email when the rule is triggered
Subscriber – Who to notify when the rule is triggered
Rule Name – Name of the rule
Details of the Options
Apply Rule To – Which campaign / ad set / ad the rule will apply to. Whether to apply to active ads only or to all ads
Action – Whether to pause the campaign or just receive a notification
Time Range – What time range to check the rule for – Yesterday / 3 days / Week / 2 weeks / 30 days / Lifetime
-Cost per Add Payment Info (Facebook Pixel): The average cost of each payment info tracked by the Facebook Pixel on your website after people viewed or clicked on your ad.
-Cost per Complete Registration (Facebook Pixel): The average cost of each registration tracked by the Facebook Pixel on your website after people viewed or clicked on your ad.
-Frequency: The average number of times your ad was shown to each person.
-Impressions: The number of times your ad was displayed. On mobile apps, an ad is counted as displayed the first time people view it. In all other Facebook interfaces, an ad is displayed the first time it is placed in a person’s news feed or each time it is placed in the left column.
-Total Spend: The total amount you have spent so far.
-Cost per 1,000 Impressions (CPM): The average cost you paid to get one thousand impressions of your ad.
-Reach: The number of people your ad was shown to. This number is identical to unique impressions.
– Daily Spend: The total amount you have spent so far today.
Ten Automated Rules You Must Implement in Facebook Ads Manager
Rule #1: Cost per Lead
Rule example: Cost per lead is greater than the desired target cost – pause the ad if the cost was higher than the desired price yesterday Minimum impressions according to Facebook must be 8,000 impressions, but you can set more You can also create a rule that sends an email if the cost per lead is lower than a certain price (e.g., getting a lead for $20 when the target is $25) and then increase the budget and bid to maximize conversions This rule helps prevent wasting money on lead campaigns and allows tighter control over the budget.
Rule #2: Frequency
When frequency is high, the target audience stops clicking on ads, the CPC rises, and performance drops. I recommend that if the frequency of active ads only exceeds 3 over the last two weeks – you receive a notification and replace the creatives. This rule enables better creative refreshing and prevents audience fatigue.
Rule #3: Click-Through Rate (CTR)
When the click-through rate (CTR) drops below a certain percentage (e.g., less than 1%), it indicates that the campaign results are deteriorating and it’s time to refresh the creative. It is advisable to track the CTR on ads to identify when campaign performance declines.
Rule #4: Cost per Click (CPC)
In traffic campaigns driving users to a website, we know how much a click should cost for the campaign to be successful. We set a rule so that if yesterday’s cost per click is higher than the threshold that makes the campaign too expensive, we avoid wasting money on ineffective ads.
Rule #5: Daily Spend
If there are many ad sets in a campaign, it’s sometimes hard to limit daily spending. Therefore, I recommend setting a rule so that if the daily budget of the campaign exceeds a certain amount – you receive an email notification and can adjust the budget. This rule allows you to track the daily budget.
Rule #6: Total Spend
Sometimes it’s difficult to track the total spend of a campaign when a client requests to spend a set amount per month or for the entire duration of the campaign. A rule that allows you to receive an email when reaching the budget limit (or, as I like to do, when reaching 80% of the campaign budget) ensures that you will not exceed the planned campaign spend.
Rule #7: Cost per Add to Cart
In e-commerce campaigns, there is a target cost per add-to-cart that should be maintained, otherwise the cost per purchase will be high. Tracking the cost per add-to-cart allows us to know early on if we need to pause ads that aren’t driving users towards a purchase.
Rule #8: Cost per Cart (Initiate Checkout)
In sales campaigns, we want to track the cost of people who reached the cart / checkout before completing the purchase. In addition to the cost per add-to-cart, it is also recommended to set a target price here to ensure purchases stay within our target CPA.
Rule #9: Cost per Purchase
In sales campaigns, we have a target price per purchase we want to achieve. Similar to the previous 2 rules, another rule to help track campaigns is cost per purchase. You should build the rule so that if the cost per purchase is higher than our target price yesterday – the system will pause the ads and send us a reminder, allowing us to gain better control over the budget.
Rule #10: Cost per App Install
Rule example: Cost per app install is greater than your target cost per install – pause the ad if the cost is higher than the requested price over the last 3 days Minimum impressions according to Facebook must be 8,000 impressions, but you can set more.
Bonus Rule – What Happens When There Are No Results
This rule allows you to consistently monitor your campaigns when there are no results. Set a rule stating that if results are less than 1 yesterday (I prefer over the last 3 days) – the system will send you an email so you know there is an issue with the campaign.
This rule enables continuous tracking of results and raises a red flag when there are no results.
Summary:
Using these ten rules, we managed to reduce campaign costs for our client by 20% and deliver more results for the same budget.
You don’t have to use every rule for every client, but it is recommended to enable rules in every account to help you better manage the budget.
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A little about me:
Or Fialkov – Owner and CEO of the digital agency Fialkov Digital. Married to Inbal, father to Itamar, and a pioneer in Facebook campaign management. In April 2016, Facebook’s global business department published a case study he conducted for ’10Bis’ that yielded revolutionary results in mobile app downloads—this was the fourth case study Facebook published on Fialkov Digital clients. Writes professional articles, consults, and guides major companies in digital display advertising.
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