With Bïrch ranking conditions you can rank Meta campaigns, ad sets or ads based on their performance and apply the rule to a portion of selected objects (either top or bottom performers based on a single metric).
How to apply ranking:
Create a Ranking condition by selecting it from a drop-down menu as shown on the screenshot.
Select metrics and the time frame your ranking will be based on.
Choose value and ranking type: quantity or percentage (either top or bottom-performing group of items).
You can either choose items that fall into the range defined by ranking condition (Is within) or drop out of it (Is not within)
When the default setting Including zero values is unchecked - zero and empty values will not be included into the ranking sample.
What are the key features of ranking conditions?
Available at all levels: campaigns, ad sets, and ads
Scope section of a rule is where you define which items go into ranking (read this article for more information on how to apply the rule at a specific level), however, this group of items is always ranked within its parent object. It means items will be ranked within the ad account if the rule is applied at a Campaign level, ranked within a campaign in the case the Ad sets level is selected, and ranked within the ad set if you set Ads level. If your rule is checking ad sets belonging to different campaigns, they will be ranked each within their own campaign.
You can select either number or percentage of ranked elements (from top or bottom edge), e.g. Top 3 or Top 3 %
Takes a lower whole number out of a fractional value when you calculate % of an odd number (50% of 3 = 1)
You can control whether ad sets/ads/campaigns with 0 metric values are included into the ranking using a special setting "Including zero values":
If the rule has two or more conditions - one that uses ranking and one that does not, the rule will rank the items regardless of whether the second condition is met.
For example, let's take a look at the rule with the following conditions:
Website purchases Last 3 days (Incl. today) is within top 25% (Including zero values) and
Website purchase ROAS Last 3 days (Incl. today) ≥ 1.2
In this case, all checked items will receive a rank regardless of whether website purchase ROAS is higher than 1.2 or not. However, the rule will not trigger if the second non-ranking condition is not met (Website purchase ROAS ≥ 1.2), even if the ad set is ranked as top 25%)If several checked ads/ad sets/campaigns have the same metric value, the they will not receive identical ranks, instead, the system will assign consecutive ranks (1,2,3)
Example: various ranking settings
Combined with other types of conditions Ranking allows you to build even more sophisticated rules to automate your ad management routine. Check out a few use practical cases below:
1. Rotating ads.
Let's say we want to always keep 3 active ads in an ad set. Once one ad stops - the other one replaces it.
This rule restarts 1 ad with minimum lifetime impressions once the number of active ads in an ad set drops below 3. The rule keeps running every 15 minutes turning on 1 bottom ad ranked by impressions and stops firing if the ad set contains 3 active ads.
As per the Scope setting, only paused ads in active ad sets are ranked by impressions.
Check out corresponding strategy: Rotate ads to test creatives
2. Scale budgets for x% top performing ad sets.
This rule increases the budget every 1 hour for active ad sets which have ROAS value that falls into the top 25% in their campaign today (if ROAS > 2). The last 2 conditions ensure the budget will be increased only for ad sets that have already spent half of their daily budget and their ROAS > 2.
3. Pause x% of low-performing ad sets once a day at midnight.
Say, you have 5 active ad sets in 1 campaign. Some of them had sales in the last 3 days, some didn't. Cost per purchase is within 20% top, in this case, means the rule will take an action on 1 ad set in this campaign with the highest cost (20% of 5 = 1). Additionally, if the top cost was over $10 in the last 3 days (as we set this criterion in a separate condition below) - the rule will stop the ad set. But the rule won't trigger if the top cost per purchase in the campaign is below $10.
Note: Running the rule with ranking condition with 15-30 minutes frequency involves taking an action on a group of objects continuously. To confine ranking appliance you can set threshold values (for example, CPA < X) in additional conditions along with ranking not to affect items that hit certain criteria.
If you have your own special setup but you doubt the settings, we're always ready to help so don't hesitate to reach out to our team ;)