Automation Rules
The Automation Algorithm of Billy Grace that allocates budgets to the best performing channels and campaigns will focus on the highest incremental uplift. But often clients want to increase the total budget if a certain ROAS (or CPA) is met. When Billy Grace updates your budgets automatically, you can use Automation Rules to further automate your daily tasks.
With Automation Rules, you can define rules that if they return TRUE will execute a task to the Automation in which the rules are added. For example:
Increase / decrease the total daily Automation budget if campaigns, adsets or ads perform well / bad;
Set a maximum or a minimum budget;
Allocate budgets to certain channel/campaigns
Pause poor performing campaigns / ad sets or ads;
Automation Rules are always added to an Automation and only work for campaigns and ad sets that have been added to the Automation. The rule is checked every night during the update of Billy Grace's algorithms.
In this article, we will define an Automation Rule which will increase the Daily Automation Budget by 10% every time the campaigns and ad sets in the Automation have a higher ROAS than 3 in the last 2 weeks.
How to create an automation rule?
To set up an Automation Rule, you have to follow these steps:
Presets - Template Automation Rules that you can use
Define - Select the task and define the rules that if met will execute the task
Selection (optional) - select channel on which the rule should apply
Summary - Enter a name and description and check the Automation Rule
Add the Automation Rule to an Automation
Presets
We created several presets which can be selected and used instantly. Want to create a new rule? Select: Create your own Automation Rule
2. Define
First, you need to select a task that will be executed if the rules you set in the next stage are met. You can select the following tasks:
Increase / decrease Daily Budget: Used to increase or decrease the total Daily budget of the Automation.
Increase / decrease Channel budgets: Used to increase or decrease budgets of certain campaigns / ad sets or channel inside the Automation, taking into account the maximum set Daily Budget.
Set Maximum Budget: Used to set a maximum budget for a certain channel, campaign, adset or ad. This can be defined in the Selection stage.
Set Minimum Budget: Used to set a minimum budget for a certain channel, campaign, adset or ad. This can be defined in the Selection stage.
Turn on Ads: Turn on ads in the Automation, this is done on campaign or ad set level.
Pause Ads: Turn off ads in the Automation, this is done on campaign or ad set level.
You can increase / decrease budgets by a percentage of the total amount or by a fixed amount per day.
Keep in mind: If an Automation Rule (other than the Increase / decrease Daily budget) will conflict with the total Daily Budget of the Optimization, the rule will be ignored.
2. Setting rules
In the define stage, you can set conditions for the task. If the conditions are true the task will be executed. You can add AND and OR conditions here.
For example, you can choose to set up a rule based on one of your Custom Events or a variable such as Spend, Clicks, or CAC.
Below are all the different options you can choose from:
Custom Events
Variables:
Spend
Impressions
Sessions
Clicks
CPM (Cost Per Mille)
CTR (Click Through Rate)
CVR (Conversion Rate)
CPC (Cost Per Click)
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
Date Features:
Days in the week: You can use this date feature to select specific days in the week. For example, if you would only like to increase the daily budget on the weekend.
Days in the month: For example, if you would only like to increase the daily budget around the date when salaries are paid.
Date Range: You could use this to pick a specific date range easily.
Month in the year: For example, if you would like to increase the daily budget for your campaigns during the summer months or decrease it during the winter months.
Weather:
Temperature: For example, if you would like to increase the daily budget when the average temperature is greater than X.
Chance of Rain: For example, if you would like to increase the daily budget when the chance of rain is greater than X.
In our example we will add a single condition: If the ROAS is greater than 3 in 2 weeks, then I want our task (Increase Daily Optimization Budget by 10% to be executed).
Time Period
The period the rule should take into account. The period always looks back from the moment Billy synchronizes its data, which is every night.
How to find the right period?
The right period depends on the use case. If you want it to consider more data points or, in other words, more data in the evaluation, then you choose 4-7 weeks. If you want it to be more reactive, then you might consider a shorter period of 1-3 weeks.
For example:
If the first three weeks are very good, but the last week is poor, the average ROAS (or other target) still comes out to 3 over 4 weeks. In that case, it will still increase the budget, even though the last week was performing under a ROAS of 3. So, if you want it to be more responsive to what is happening at the moment, then you could set a shorter time frame.
If you want it to look more at the constant line of performance, then you could take 4-7 weeks. Because it is not sensitive to potentially a bad or good week.
Important: This rule will be checked every time the algorithm of Billy Grace gives budget recommendations, which is every night. In the case of increasing the daily budget, this task will be executed every time the rules are true when checked. If this happens for a couple of days and after that the ROAS in the last two weeks isn't greater than 3 anymore the budget will automatically scale down again to the original budget set in the Automation.
You could extend this with a minimum spend in a set time period, with a minimum revenue, or with a weather forecast.
Weather forecast 🌧️ ☀️
The weather forecasts Chance of Rain and Temperature let you define a rule that will be executed when the weather forecast matches your defined rule. With chance of rain, it looks at the chance of precipitation. If you select temperature, it will look at the average maximum temperature forecast of the selected country. The period options are: Today (rules are executed at night), tomorrow or next week. Next week in this case is the same day the rule is run, but then next week (exactly 7 days ahead).
The weather forecast is fetched from this source.
Remember: Automation Rules are executed each night during the update of our algorithm's, the time period will look back from the execution day.
3. Selection
In the selection stage, you can select channels if you want to only let the rule work on certain channels (ruling out the not selected ones). This is optional, by default the Automation Rule applies to all campaigns / ad sets and channels that have been added to the Optimization.
4. Summary
In the summary stage, you see an overview of the Automation Rule. You can add a name and description here for future reference.
To conclude, the setting we have created will increase the Daily Optimization Budget by 10% every time the campaigns in the Automation will have a ROAS higher than 3 in the last 2 weeks.
How does the minimum & maximum adjustment work?
If you set up a rule to increase or decrease the daily budget if a certain rule is true, you need to fill in the minimum adjustment (and optional the maximum adjustment).
Filling in a minimum adjustment of 5% and a maximum adjustment of 10%, does not mean that if the rule is true, the budget will be increased between 5% and 10%.
For example: If you fill in a minimum adjustment of 5% and a maximum of 10%. This means that if the rule is true for tomorrow, the budget will be increased by 5%, and if the rule is true again for the day after tomorrow, the budget will again be increased by 5%. But then it has reached the maximum adjustment of 10%, so nothing will happen until the rule is not true anymore and the budget gets reset to the original budget in Billy Grace. Good to know: the budget in the admanagers will be set back gradually.
Once the rule is true again it will be increased by 5% again.
If you don't fill in the maximum adjustment, this means that every time the rule is true, the budget will be increased by 5%, without an end.
How to use the Automation Rule
Add the Automation Rule to an Automation to start using it. You can do this by creating a new Automation or editing an existing one.
The rule will be checked every time the Automation updates (every night). You can see the outcome of Automation Rules in Automation Performance -> Automation Rules
Examples use-cases:
ROAS threshold: create an Automation Rule that ensures only ads that meet your ROAS targets continue to run.
Control for ad-decay: by having checks on time periods such as the past 3 weeks you can ensure that ads that previously have had good performance are paused when it seems that their performance is decaying.
No conversion: ensure low performing ads without conversions are paused.
Testing on a bigger scale: You can set the minimum spend to a certain testing budget per ad, after which all poorly performing ads are automatically turned off.
Scale up good performing Automations: With this rule, you can automatically scale up the total Automation Budgets of good performing campaigns, adsets or ads.