Ad automation rules can free you up from constantly tracking your ads performance, as you can just set the rules that are activated when your ad meets the defined conditions. E.g. if your ads perform poorly, they can be paused and vice versa, when they're doing great, you can increase budgets, launch previously paused campaigns, or duplicate ad sets.

If you would like to skip all the reading and try building the rules right now, feel free to jump into our rule set-up guides for Meta, TikTok, Google and Snapchat.

Automated rules by Bïrch (as well as other Bïrch products) are based on API of the ad platforms like Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok Ads and Snapchat Ads. Before you start building rules, we suggest setting up your Bïrch first by integrating all the platforms you need. Please check out this article for detailed instructions.

Below, we will show the elements of the Rule page and explain what each of these items is responsible for.

Bïrch offers automation rules for 4 different platforms - Meta Ads, Google Ads, Snapchat Ads and TikTok Ads. You can switch between the platforms using the selector on the top left corner:

Once you selected the platform, you will see the list of rules you already created in your account. To build a new rule, please click Create rule on the top right corner.

When it comes to a new rule creation, you have two options: Create rule from scratch OR Start from a template. If you go with ready-to-use templates, you can choose from a wide range of pre-made rules. Feel free to filter out the templates you need by the items you want the rule to apply to - campaigns, ad sets or ads (for Meta Ads and Snapchat Ads), or campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords (for Google Ads), or campaigns, ad groups and ads (for TikTok Ads) :

or by the type of the template - Pause, Start, Budget Change:

If you opt for creating the rule from scratch, the rule builder will open up. Let's have a closer look at the settings inside:

Having a concise and distinctive name will help easily navigate through your list of rules. You can also add a description for future reference and sharing with your team members.

Here you need to pick the ad account you'd like the rule to apply to. You can choose up to 5 ad accounts for Meta and TikTok rules given that they all use the same currency, and 1 ad account for Google and Snapchat rules.

This is the section where you define what exact entities you apply your rules to, whether it’s all campaigns, certain ad sets from different campaigns, or a specific ad. Start with defining the level that the rule is applied to (options vary based on the platform):

Next, you need filter the items by clicking on the + button: it is possible to Select specific items or choose filters based on the name, status, delivery, or objective of the entities.

If you use Select specific items option you can pick specific campaigns, ad sets, or ads from the list or you can filter items by their name.

Note: You can choose ads from multiple ad sets, i.e. pick a couple from one ad set, then go to another ad set and pick ads there.

The other filtering options can help you pick items based on the name, status, delivery, objective, or campaign/ad set/ad metrics of the entities (the latter is for Facebook only). Filters vary depending on the platform.

For example, if you would like your rule to apply only to active ad sets within campaigns with Reach greater than 1000 for the last 7 days, your scope would look like this:

Level: Ad sets, Filters: Ad set status is active, Campaigns metrics reach > 1000 7 days

Please also note that if the level the rule is applied to and in the filter are not the same, the matching principle might be different:

We got to the core - tasks and conditions.  First, you choose the action of a rule: pause, start, increase/decrease budget or bid, duplicate, etc. Here is the list of actions that can be used on each level for Facebook Ads:

Some tasks have a Frequency setting, which is, essentially, a frequency cap for the action.

It allows you to set a maximum frequency limit for the action for each individual ad set/ad/campaign that is checked by the rule. Meaning that if the task frequency cap is set at every 1 hour, even if the rule runs the checks say, every 15 minutes, each ad set will not be affected more often than every hour. Please refer to this article for more details.

You can have multiple conditions in your rule using + Condition button and you can connect them with AND or OR operator:

AND = all conditions must be met for the task to trigger

OR = at least one of the conditions must be met for the task to trigger

Besides, you can create a set of nested conditions with their own AND/OR structure by clicking + Group:

As you’ve probably guessed from the + Add task button, you can have multiple tasks added within one rule. For beginners, it's probably better to keep different tasks in different rules - that way you can keep track of how each task works via the logs of the rule.

You can also choose to Browse templates, look through the collection of rule templates, pick a task template that fits you, and add it to the rule you are building by clicking the template.

The Preview option on the bottom right corner will provide a text description of the rule which might help review the complex automations:

The Schedule section of the rule defines how often or when exactly a rule checks the ads/adsets/campaigns matched in the Scope of the rule. Please check out this article for more details, and find the summary below:

Run every X minutes/hours: the options vary from 15 minutes to 72 hours. Once you set the rule live it starts running right away with the frequency you set.

Run on specific days and times: choosing this option will unfold the chart with days of the week and hourly slots. You can unfold every hour if you need 15-minute slots

For more advanced options, please click Show more options beneath the schedule. Here you can select a date range for your rule to run checks:

You can choose where you want to be notified once the rule is triggered.
In our example, we’ve picked a marketing channel in Slack, so that the whole marketing gets an alert when something is up.

You can also limit the notifications to Errors only by checking the respective option under Show more options.

Here you can set which timezone will be used in case you selected specific times and dates under Schedule. Ad account timezone is the default option. Learn more about different options here.

This setting can be found by clicking Show Attribution window settings at the bottom of the page in Facebook Rules. We recommend to keep this option on by default. Please refer to this article for more details on how it affects the rule performance.

Once you've created the rule and set it live, Bïrch will keep checking your entities to see whether they meet the defined conditions. Once the conditions are met, your rule will be triggered and you'll get a notification in the Slack channel/email you picked.

Feel free to check out our video library with examples of different rules that you can create in Bïrch:

Restarting ads with delayed conversions

Creating Notify rules in Bïrch

Creating duplication rules in Bïrch

Pausing underperforming ads

Creating Increase budget rules in Bïrch
​​Creating Decrease budget rules in Bïrch

And check out the articles about a specific platform you need to get more insights:

TikTok integration explained

Google Ads integration explained

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