Automation Rules is a powerful tool imagined to simplify your day-to-day campaign management.

Here are a few things you should consider before deep diving into it and start using it for your Zemanta campaigns.

If you’re just starting to get familiar with Automation Rules, start by setting up one or two simple rules and make sure to test and monitor them before you feel comfortable enough with the idea of automating more dimensions of your campaign.

You can use our top 6 Automation rules use cases to get some ideas on how to start using them on your Zemanta campaigns.

Setting conditions for a rule is one of the most important parts of the functionality as it requires you to do some thinking about your campaign KPIs. For example, you need to decide whether a particular amount of ad spend is high or low for your business and make bid or budget adjustments accordingly.

When applying rules such as bid modifications or budget adjustments, we always recommend selecting at least two conditions. One to define your KPI, and the other to define the amount of data needed for the rule to execute.

Let’s say your primary KPI is to achieve a bounce rate lower than 30%. In that case, you set up a rule that will pause every publisher where the bounce rate is higher than 30%. However, you don’t want to pause a publisher after it received just one click (even if that click bounced right off your site). This is where the second condition comes into the game - add a condition such as total spend, or the number of clicks or impressions - this will ensure the rule doesn’t run actions on entities that have insignificant data.

Make sure to set up the rules to run after enough data has been collected to make a decision. This can mean different amounts of data for different types of campaigns and budgets.

For example, if you automate publisher blocklisting based on conversion performance, be sure a publisher has spent at least 2-3x your CPA goal before you decide to block it. You can also use the number of clicks as a buffer - a good rule of thumb is at least 50 clicks per entity before you decide to adjust the bid or pause a publisher.

Rules are a great way to automate the manual optimization process. However, even the best-automated tools (like Automation Rules!) cannot replace a good old-fashioned human check-in. It is important to check your campaigns regularly and review performance to confirm the rules are functioning the way you planned when you implemented them. Even if it’s once a month or once a quarter, regularly check back to ensure the rules are doing the job you need them to do.

Luckily, you can set up a rule to send you an email about performance or update you on yesterday’s spend. Take a look at this example to learn how you can easily create a custom email alert on your Zemanta campaign today.

Automation Rules are a great tool to help you save time and offer multiple possibilities to automate frequent optimization tasks. To check out the complete list of actions and conditions, associated with Zemanta Automation Rules, make sure to read this article.