Back in February 2011 Google launched Automated Rules for all advertisers – a feature that helps advertisers save time by automating Google to pause / activate selected campaigns / ad groups / keywords / ads when a chosen event occurs.
For example you can use Automated Rules to alter your daily budget based on the day. For instance if you know a day in the future or a chosen day of the week is particularly quiet or busy you can schedule AdWords to alter your budget accordingly.
It can even be used to alter CPC bids based on the click through rate (CTR) or conversion rate, meaning that if these stats fall below a chosen level you can schedule AdWords to increase the CPC bid to try and boost the average position and therefore CTR and / or conversion rate back up again.
Earlier last week Google announced that it has increased the amount of automated rules you are allowed to 100. Previously advertisers were only allowed to set 10 rules, so this extra 90 will give advertisers the ability to test more rules and use them to automate more processes in their accounts.
Google has also added the option to undo a rule, so if an advertiser sets up an automated rule and it does not have the desired affect they can simply choose to ‘undo’ them in the ‘Actions’ columns of the Logs table.
Like many of Google features the use of Automated Rules could be extremely helpful if used properly. In order to set up an Automated Rule, navigate to the level (ie. campaign, ad group, keyword or ad) for which you want to apply a rule and then highlight the ones that you would like to schedule changes to. Then click the ‘Automate’ drop down, which is located just above the column titles, alongside ‘change status’ and ‘alerts’ drop downs.
In the drop down box you have the choice to “enable campaigns / ad groups / ads / keywords when…” or “pause campaigns / ad groups / ads / keywords when…” along with options to change bids for keywords or daily budgets for campaigns (depending on which tab you are in).
Once you have selected the type of changes you wish to make you must select your criteria for the rule, these include ‘Requirements’ and ‘Frequency’. Here are some examples of the screens you will see:
By setting requirements your rule will only make changes when specific conditions are met. You can choose to have several or no requirements at all.
Frequency is how often you want Google to run the rule: daily, weekly or monthly etc. along with the chosen day and hour (if applicable) and when to use the data from, which allows you to specify how much data should be considered by the requirements that you’ve selected.
To find out more about How to create Automated Rules visit https://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=190516
