How to Manage Facebook Ad Costs with Facebook Automated Rules?

Get your Facebook ad spend managed effectively with the help of Facebook’s Automated Rules.

But, how?

You will get every answer here, mentioned in this article, take a look now.

Reasons for Using Automated Rules for Facebook Ad Campaigns

Facebook automated rules allow users to optimize a growing number of campaigns effectively i.e. without consuming much time.

With the help of Facebook’s automated rules, you can combine different KPI metrics while defining rule conditions. You can also create your custom Facebook automation workflow.

It may need some attempts and errors to get the right automated rules, but it’s worth doing it.

You can set “predefined conditions for key performance indicators (KPIs) such as likes, reach, and leads, and ad campaign elements (campaigns, ad sets, ads, etc.)” in your Facebook accounts with the help of these rules.

After that Facebook will go through each condition you set at particular time intervals, and after a campaign meets the criterion, it will take that set predefined action, saving your time and money.

For instance, “if the cost per click (CPC) for a particular ad set increases beyond $X, turn off that ad set.”

Now, it’s time to know how automated rules work-

1) Choose Campaign Level of Your Rule

Steps for creating an automated rule for active ads, ad sets-

• Click on Facebook Ads Manager
• Then open “the menu” (with three lines showing in the top-left corner)
• Go to Pop-Up menu
• Click on All Tools
• Then choose Automated Rules (Create & Manage column)

Now click on the Create Rule button in the top-right corner in the next window.

• Now in Create & Manage dialogue box, you can build the type of automated rule you want.
• Now, choose the campaign level for which this rule will be applied.
• You will see options like “All Active Campaigns, All Active Ad Sets, and All Active Ads”.

2) Choose the Action Facebook Should Take for You

Now, you need to select “what happens when your rule condition is met”.

Your first two options will be “turn campaigns, ad sets, or ads off or on”.

An alternative option is “ask Facebook send you a notification when your condition is met”.

Then manual action can be taken if needed.

The final two choices will be “adjust your budget or manual bid”.

You are allowed to increase or decrease “daily/lifetime budget or manual bid by a certain percentage/amount when the condition is met”.

3) Name the Condition for Eliciting Your Action

Now, you need to set up the rule condition that will decide when the rule will run and start your actual action.

• Choose a KPI Metric
• Choose a KPI metric (Spent, Lifetime Spent, Frequency, Results, etc) from the drop-down menu.

If you don’t have any idea where to start, choose the KPIs which increases major performances and can be applied in numerous situations.

• Choose a Logical Expression and Value
• Now, you’ve to choose a logical expression (Is Greater Than (the default), Is Smaller Than, Is Between, and Is Not Between) to be added to your condition.

Whatever you choose will determine the flexibility for the chosen KPI.

You’ll find an input field in the right of logical expression where you have to enter a value for the selected condition.

When you’ve defined your condition, click on Add to apply it.

Remember, multiple conditions can be set in a single rule for more advanced automation.

When you click on Add, you get another option from Facebook to define another condition for the rule.

Click on the + button to add another condition.

Choose a Time Range

To select a time range, go to Time Range drop-down menu.

Then select the number of days of data for Facebook to look at in order to examine the condition.

The rule can be applied on the basis of lifetime data, data from the last 7 days, 14 days, and so on.

Change the Attribution Window

You can modify the Attribution view and for this, the default settings are “1 day after viewing the ad and 28 days after clicking the ad”.

Defining a custom attribution-

• Choose the Custom option
• Then click on the Edit Attribution Window link.
• Select “number of days for conversions that occur after viewing and clicking the ad”.

Set a Schedule

Now to set a Schedule, you’ll have to ensure how often Facebook should check ad account data to check the rule.

If you for choosing “Continuously”, Facebook will review the automated rule condition as often as possible which in general is 30 minutes.

If you go for clicking Set Custom Schedule, you’ll be able to define days and time whenever you want Facebook to review the rule.

 Choose Notification Preferences

If you want to choose other notification preferences, Facebook can do it by sending emails.

Anyone who is a Facebook ad account user will get a notification for automated rules.

Receiving of email notifications will depend on how many rules you set and how frequently Facebook will run them. If you’ve more than 10 rules, email notifications can irritate you.

Add a Rule Name

In the last step i.e. Add a Rule, you need to type a name for your ad rule and click on Create.

For multiple rules, choose a descriptive name.

4) Manage Your Automated Rules

Now, its turn to manage Automated Rules.

After clicking Create, Facebook gets you back to the dashboard of Automated Rules so that you can manage and view your results.

Manage Rules

Click on Rules to view all the rules, active and paused, set by you.

Go to Actions drop-down list to the right of each rule, you can take actions like preview, edit, and run or delete the rule.

If you want to turn on or off a rule, use the switch.

See Rule Activity

Facebook offers an option for Facebook notification and emails, but if you miss any notification or email, it may negatively affect your campaign performance.

If you want to track your rule activity easily, open the Activity tab to see the summary of rule activity.

This tab lets you data from all of your rules to see have there been any changes in campaign levels or not.

The data can be filtered to see changes made at different campaign levels and only see activity reports related to these filtering rules.

To filter your rules

Choose Hide Rule Results With No Changes checkbox available in the top-right corner.

You’ll then find a list of all automated rules which actually made changes in the account.

Facebook opens Ads Manager when you click in the Changed column and thus the exact changes chosen can be seen in the account.

For example, if you click on the first link in the image above, you can see the four ads chosen.

5) Facebook Rules Turn Off Non-Performing Ads

Rule1.

With the increase in ad frequency, you’ll have decreased CTR due to ad fatigue.

A lower CTR will make you pay more for each impression, causing decreased campaign performance.

If the CTR goes below a target percentage say 5%, the automated rule will turn off the chosen campaign level.

• Frequency > 2
• CTR < 5% (you can choose a different percentage depending on your expectation)
• Lifetime impression > 8,000 in lifetime duration

Rule2. As mentioned above, decreased CTR leads to increased ad costs.

This rule allows you to keep CPC/CPA under control when CTR goes below the target.

This rule turns off campaigns, ad sets, or ads (when the following conditions are met):

• CTR goes below 5%.
• CPC/CPA goes above the target cost (10, for instance).
• The chosen campaign level gets more than 2,000 impressions in the Yesterday time range.

Remember, Facebook by default recommends 8,000-lifetime impressions to use.

Although the rule is based on data from “yesterday” collection, it utilizes 2,000 impressions in place of 8,000-lifetime impressions as the condition.

Conclusion

Facebook offers multiple features on its marketing platform i.e. Ads Manager. Now in order to manage the cost of advertising, you need to understand Facebook more appropriately.

Facebook automated rules come with certain features that let you manage your Facebook ad costs.

Here are the steps which will make you know how Facebook helps you with its Automated Rules for managing the cost of advertisements.