Some advertising tasks come back every day or week: reviewing performance, checking your automation setup, or launching the next batch of creatives. Routines let you save these tasks in Birch AI and run them on a schedule or as needed.
What can Routines do?
Make changes in Meta Ads: create, rename, pause, or activate campaigns, ad sets, and ads; adjust budgets, targeting, schedules, and other settings; and duplicate ads into another ad set.
Create Meta creatives, audiences, and experiments: upload images and videos, build ad creatives, create custom and lookalike audiences, boost Instagram posts or Reels, and create or update A/B tests.
💡Connect Meta MCP to use the two capabilities above. Read more about Meta MCP here.
💡Campaigns, ad sets, and ads created through Meta MCP start paused. To deliver, the campaign, ad set, and ad must all be active.
Review campaign performance: identify meaningful changes and opportunities, and get data-driven recommendations.
Check for creative fatigue: identify declining performance and get recommendations on which creatives may need to be replaced.
Review automation rules: identify recurring errors, inactive or conflicting rules, and settings that need attention. Meta reviews can include activity logs; TikTok reviews cover rules and existing drafts.
Create ads from Google Sheets: use Stage to process eligible rows from selected sheets. For scheduled ad creation, your sheet must first be connected and configured in Stage.
Search Birch help articles, strategies, and metric definitions.
💡Results appear as text and tables; charts aren’t yet supported.
Use Cases
Start with one of four ready-made templates:
Use case | Example instructions | Template |
Launch new sheet rows on a schedule. Prepare your launch data in advance. The Routine checks the sheet on schedule and creates ads from eligible rows.
| "Every weekday at 10:00, check my sheet for new rows & launch them through Stage" | Launch ads from a Google Sheet |
Morning performance check. Review Meta performance changes, wasted spend, and opportunities without manually checking each campaign.
Read-only. | "Every weekday at 10:00, review my Meta performance, flag what changed and where spend is wasted, and tell me what to look at. Don't change anything." | Campaign performance advisor |
Catch creative fatigue early. Pairs with the sheet launches: find out what's fatigued, add replacements to the sheet, and the next scheduled launch picks them up.
| "Every day, check my active ads for fatigue, rank the worst, and tell me what to replace." | Creative fatigue watcher |
Weekly rules health check. For accounts with many rules and no regular habit of checking which ones are failing, silent, or conflicting.
Read-only. | "Every Monday at 10:00, review my rules: find ones that are failing, disabled, no longer firing, or behaving oddly. Give me the priority findings and what to change." | Rules health check |
You can also create your own Routine using its capabilities. Here are some example instructions:
Use Case | Example instructions |
Daily roundup across accounts. | "Every weekday at 9:00, review performance across all my Meta ad accounts and list the campaigns and ad sets where spend, CPA, or ROAS changed most vs. the previous 7 days." |
Rules cleanup | “Review my automation rules and find outdated, duplicated, risky, or conflicting ones. Prepare recommendations for cleanup.” |
Benchmark check (needs Meta MCP) | "Every Monday, compare my Meta campaigns' CPA, CTR, and ROAS with industry benchmarks from similar advertisers and list the ones furthest below." |
Competitor ad watch (needs Meta MCP) | "Every week, search the Meta Ad Library for new ads from [competitor 1] and [competitor 2] and summarize their offers, formats, and messaging." |
Schedule Meta budget changes (needs Meta MCP) | “Every Monday at 9:00, set the daily budget of [CBO campaign ID] to $200 and report whether the change succeeded.” |
Supported Platforms
template | Meta | TikTok | Snapchat | |
Campaign performance advisor | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Creative fatigue watcher | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Rules health check | ✅ | ✅ | — | — |
Launch ads from a Google Sheet | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — |
How to create a Routine
1. Open Home → Routines
Either click New routine or choose a template under Start from a template.
2. Name it and add instructions
Give the Routine a recognizable Name. Use Description to explain its purpose, and Instructions to describe what it should check or do and any requirements it should follow.
For clearer results, specify the relevant accounts, timeframe, and information you want returned. If you’re using a template, review its instructions and adjust them to your needs.
3. Choose accounts and approvals
Under Sources, select the ad accounts the Routine should work with. You can select Meta, TikTok, Google Ads, and Snapchat accounts.
A Routine uses its owner’s access and connections. It can read data the owner can access. Sources define which ad accounts are covered by the Routine’s approval setting.
Choose an approval mode:
Ask during each change - the default. The Routine asks for approval before making a change.
Approved in advance - the Routine can make changes to selected accounts without asking each time.
💡Changes to accounts outside Sources always require approval.
4. Choose when it runs
Under Trigger, choose Manual to run the Routine on demand, or Schedule to run it regularly.
For scheduled runs, choose Hourly, Daily, Weekdays, or Weekly, then review the available time and time-zone settings. Weekly schedules also let you select a day.
Choose whether to enable Notifications, then click Create.
💡 Runs are staggered by a few minutes, so they may not start at the exact minute selected.
5. Review results and manage your Routine
The list shows each Routine’s schedule and next run. Open a Routine to review its instructions, settings, and past runs. Each run has a chat where you can review results and ask follow-up questions.
You can also:
Use Run now to start a run without waiting for the schedule.
Pause the Routine to stop scheduled runs.
Edit its instructions or settings.
Delete it when it’s no longer needed.
💡Only the Routine’s creator can open or edit it. Other team members can see its status and latest sheet results in Stage; contact the creator if changes are needed.
Routines for ad creation from Google Sheets
Routines can use Stage to create Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat ads from selected Google Sheets on a schedule. You prepare the launch data in your sheet, and review the results afterward.
You can start from either Stage or Home → Routines. Both options use sheets that are already connected and configured in Stage.
1. Prepare your sheet in Stage
Connect and configure your sheet using Row-by-row mode, as only Row-by-row sheets can be selected for Auto-launch. 👉 See Getting started with Stage using Google Sheets for connection and mapping instructions.
💡Each sheet must be configured for one platform and may include multiple ad accounts.
Open the sheet’s Auto-launch tab and review these two settings:
Include existing rows in this sheet’s first auto-launch run
Turn this on to include the unprocessed rows already present when the sheet’s first Auto-launch run starts. If you leave it off, rows present at that moment are permanently skipped by Auto-launch, and only rows added afterward can become eligible.
❗️This choice locks when Auto-launch first starts for the sheet. Deleting or replacing a Routine doesn’t unlock it.
Turn on created ads and ad sets
Choose whether newly created ads and ad sets are turned on or created paused. Changes affect future Auto-launch runs only; they don’t change the statuses of ads or ad sets created earlier.
2. Create the Routine
From Stage: in the sheet’s Auto-launch tab, click Set up routine. The Launch ads from a Google Sheet template opens with your sheet already selected.
From Home → Routines: choose Launch ads from a Google Sheet under Start from a template, then add your Stage sheet under Sources.
In the setup window:
Give the Routine a recognizable Name and review its Description and Instructions.
Under Sources, check that the selected sheet is the correct one.
Choose the approval mode.
Switch Trigger to Schedule, configure when it should run, and choose whether to enable Notifications.
Click Create to save the Routine. It will appear in each selected sheet’s Auto-launch tab, even before its first run.
💡 Only sheets selected under Sources are included. Mentioning a sheet in the instructions doesn’t replace it.
Auto-launch processes all eligible rows in each selected sheet, including:
New rows that haven’t created ads yet.
Rows that failed earlier without creating any ads.
Existing, unprocessed rows on the first run, if you chose to include them.
❗️You can’t select individual rows or apply filters to Routine Auto-launch. Keep rows that aren’t ready to launch in a separate sheet that isn’t included in an active Routine.
To launch specific rows, use Row range or Rows matching a filter directly in Stage.
3. Approve the launch
If you select the "ask during each run" approval mode, the routine asks for approval before launching.
In the run chat, choose:
Allow once to approve all eligible rows in that sheet for the current run.
Deny to decline that sheet’s launch.
While waiting, the sheet’s Auto-launch tab shows Awaiting approval.
Unanswered requests expire after 24 hours, and the sheet is reported as not launched.
❗️Scheduling a Routine doesn’t approve future launches. If you want to do so, select the "approved in advance" approval mode.
4. Review launch results
You can review the results in either place:
In the Routine’s run chat: read the summary showing the sheet link, scheduled and actual run times, launch results, and platform errors for failed rows.
In Stage: open the sheet’s Auto-launch tab to see each Routine’s status, creator, next run, and latest result for that sheet.
For detailed errors, open the related Stage task, marked with a Started by routine badge. In Stage, the latest result for each run can have one of these statuses:
Status | What it means |
Success | Ads were created successfully. |
No eligible rows | There was nothing eligible to launch. |
Warning | Some ads weren’t created because of errors. |
Error | No ads were created because of errors. |
No runs | The Routine hasn’t run for this sheet yet. |
Open routine is available in Stage only to the Routine’s creator. If another team member created it, contact them to request changes.
What happens if a row fails?
If a row fails without creating any ads, it remains eligible for a later run. Review and fix the error, then wait for the next scheduled run or use Run now.
If some ads were created from a row but others failed, the row isn’t retried automatically. Review the task’s errors and resolve the remaining failures manually
❗️Stopping a Routine run doesn’t cancel a Stage launch that has already started. The result appears after Stage finishes.
Availability and Usage
Routines are available on all plans. If you're on an Essential plan, you will see an upgrade prompt when selecting a Routine that involves Rules, since Rules aren’t included in that plan.
Each Routine run counts as one prompt toward your Birch AI usage limits. Runs that launch Stage tasks are excluded from those AI usage limits.
If you have any questions, please reach out to us via the chat bubble on the website or via email at support@bir.ch 💛