We understand that managing programmatic campaigns can be challenging. Trade desks and other teams or individual users struggle to oversee multiple campaigns simultaneously, making campaign management overwhelming.
To solve this challenge, we’ve developed Automation Rules – a powerful set of tools that automatically performs tasks for you, so you can save time and increase the performance of your Zemanta campaigns.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the basics of Automation Rules. To learn all about how to set them up and use them effectively, make sure to read the article about Automation Rules in Practice.
What are Automation Rules?
In principle, Automation Rules is a tool that enables you to create simple "if-then" rules that are periodically executed on your Zemanta account. Rules are executed based on conditions that have to be met before a series of predetermined actions is performed.
Automation Rules allow you to make customised scheduled actions on most aspects of your campaign management, from bid adjustments to daily budget management.
Generally, you can automate 6 different actions with rules:
Pause/turn off low-performing entities like ad groups, ads, publishers and media sources.
Adjust ad group bids and bid modifiers on all supported dimensions (publishers, devices, ads, etc.)
Adjust daily budget
Adjust daily budget by a percentage
Build publisher groups
Schedule custom email alarms
Where can I implement the rules?
Rules are available for set up on every level of the dashboard: agency, account, campaign, ad group and creative ad. You can choose to apply an automated rule to multiple entities at the same time.
Keep in mind that the rule always executes within the context of one ad group. If you specify the rule to run on an account or campaign, the rule will run on all ad groups within that entity.
Furthermore, all additional breakdown dimensions are supported: Publishers, Placements, Media Sources, Country, State/Region, DMA, Device, Environment, Operating System, Connection Type and Browser Targeting.
Where in the dashboard can I create a rule?
You can create a new rule directly in the grid actions or through the Automation Rules section in the Management console. To learn more about setting up a specific rule, please refer to the article about 6 Manual Actions to Automate with Automation Rules.
Adding a rule on the campaign level
Adding a rule through the Management console
Understanding the structure of a rule
When setting up a rule, you’ll be prompted to define five sets of settings:
Run rule on: Define the set of accounts, campaigns or ad groups on which the rule will run.
Note Rules are always executed within an ad group. Running a rule on campaign or account just makes it execute on all ad groups that are part of the selected entity. |
Action: Define what type of action you’d like to automate on what dimension. The actions might affect the status of the ad groups/ads/publishers, meaning they can pause them or adjust the bids. Any increase or decrease is defined in the form of a percentage (in case of bid modifiers) or a fixed amount (in case of adjusting the ad group bid).
On the ad group level, you also have the possibility to send an email alert or set a daily budget cap, which is the maximum (in case of increase) or lowest (in case of decrease) amount that can be reached for each ad group managed by the rule.
For a full list and descriptions of actions available for each dimension, please refer to the next section of the article.
Action frequency: Determine the least amount of time that needs to pass since the action was applied to a particular item. This allows you to gather additional data before applying the action again.
Example: Consider running a rule that increases publisher bid modifier with action frequency set to 3 days. If the rule increases the publisher’s dailymotion.com bid modifier today, at least 3 days will need to pass before the bid modifier on dailymotion.com will be able to increase again.
Conditions: Define performance criteria that must be reached before the rule runs. You can define multiple conditions for the same action. All conditions must match for the action to run.
Note: Behind the scenes, a report is made on the ad group dimension defined within the rule’s action. The conditions are applied to every item in the report, and if they apply, the action is executed. For instance, the dimension of the action Increase publisher bid modifier is publishers. The rule would increase the bid modifier on every publisher that matched all of the conditions.
Notification: Define whether you’d like to be notified when a rule runs or performs an action based on your criteria (keep in mind that all changes will be by default tracked in the Rule history independently of this setting).
List of available actions
Increase/decrease bid modifier: Defined in the form of a percentage. You can also set maximum and minimum bid percentage limits. Available on all dimensions.
Increase/decrease ad group bid: Defined in the form of an absolute value. You can set maximum or minimum bid value limits. Available on ad group dimension only.
Increase/decrease ad group daily budget: Defined in the form of an absolute value (depending on the currency of your account).
Increase/decrease ad group daily budget by a percentage: Defined in the form of a percentage value.
Pause/blocklist: Turn off active entities. Available on ad, ad group, media source, and publisher dimension.
Add publisher to publisher group: Add a publisher to an existing publisher group. Available on publisher and placements dimension.
Send email: Send an email alert whenever a specific condition occurs. Available on ad group dimension only.
Actions available depend on the dimension (full list available below). Generally, all manual optimisations that are available on each dimension can be automated.
Ad Group
Increase ad group bid
Decrease ad group bid
Increase ad group daily budget
Decrease ad group daily budget
Increase ad group daily budget by a percentage
Decrease ad group daily budget by a percentage
Pause ad group
Send email
Ad Group/Content Ad
Increase ad bid modifier
Decrease ad bid modifier
Pause ad
Ad Group/Publishers
Increase publisher bid modifier
Decrease publisher bid modifier
Blocklist publisher
Add publisher to Publishers & Placements group
Ad Group/Placements
Increase placement bid modifier
Decrease placement bid modifier
Blocklist placement
Add placement to Publishers & Placements group
Ad Group/Devices
Increase device bid modifier
Decrease device bid modifier
Ad Group/Regions
Increase region bid modifier
Decrease region bid modifier
Ad Group/DMAs
Increase DMA bid modifier
Decrease DMA bid modifier
Ad Group/Countries
Increase country bid modifier
Decrease country bid modifier
Ad Group/Operating systems
Increase operating system bid modifier
Decrease operating system bid modifier
Ad Group/Environments
Increase environment bid modifier
Decrease environment bid modifier
Ad Group/Media sources
Increase media source bid modifier
Decrease media source bid modifier
Pause media source
Ad Group/Browsers
Increase browser bid modifier
Decrease browser bid modifier
Ad Group/Connection types
Increase connection type bid modifier
Decrease connection type bid modifier
How can I monitor and access all existing rules?
All existing rules are accessible via the Automation Rules tab in the main menu (left side of the dashboard) or through the Automation Rules button in the grid action. The Automation Rules section consists of two parts: Library and History.
Automation Rules Library
In the Library, you can find an overview of all Automation Rules set on a specific agency or account. Here, you can also manage the already configured rules or create new ones. The workflow of creating a new rule from the Management console is the same as creating it directly from the actions grid. To learn how to get started, please refer to the article about 6 Manual Actions to Automate with Automation Rules.
Managing existing rules
If you’ve identified a specific rule that hasn't been performing as expected, or that you made a mistake when setting up, you can easily pause, archive or adjust it in the Library.
Pausing/resuming a rule
To pause a rule, search for it in the list of existing rules and click on the toggle button in the Status column:
Conversely, clicking on the toggle button if a rule is paused will re-enable it. Keep in mind that resuming a paused rule won’t trigger the rule execution immediately. A resumed rule will continue to run at the same time as other rules (depending when in the day you have enabled it).
Editing a rule
Search for the rule you’d like to amend, and click on the
icon next to the rule name. A dialogue window will open. You can edit every rule setting in the dialogue window.
Deleting a rule
To archive an existing rule, click on the
icon.
Automation Rules History
Automation Rules History enables the user to review past actions performed by rules. You can use filtering to narrow down on a specific rule, ad group or date period. Keep in mind all rules will also be logged in the regular ad group history tab.