How to Setup Google Ads Automated Rules [Full Guide]

Google Ads has become a vital promotional platform for advertisers, helping businesses reach potential customers with targeted, cost-effective, and measurable ads across various online channels.

Yet, manually running Google Ads can be time-consuming, inefficient, and prone to errors. Thankfully, Google Ads automated rules perform routine elements of your campaign automatically, liberating you from click-intensive, menial tasks.

You can control campaign budgets, dynamically adjust bids according to the time, day, or season, or even set up notifications for when certain targets are met.

So, read on and find out more about Google Ads automated rules and how to set them up!

What Are Google Ads Automated Rules?

Google Ads automated rules are a feature in Google Ads that allows you to arrange specific instructions for how an ad campaign should run. Once set, they happen automatically, in the background, and can be customised to occur only when certain conditions are met. This way, you don’t have to keep attending to particular aspects of your campaign.

You can use automated rules for things such as adjusting bids, pausing underperforming ads, refining targeting, or triggering email notifications at crucial points in the cycle. And because they proceed automatically, they will always run accurately and efficiently. 

Ultimately, automated rules are smart and efficient functions that take the hassle out of ad management, allowing you and your team to focus on the fundamentals of your campaign.

Google Ads Automated Rules vs. Google Ads Scripts

While Google Ads Automated Rules and Google Ads Scripts may seem similar, and both can be used effectively to automate tasks within ad campaigns, there are key variations between them.

Depending on your specific needs and skills, you may find one more appropriate for the task at hand. See the table below for the main differences between the two:

Google Automated Ads	Google Ad Scripts
Perfect for most common campaign tasks such as pausing ads, adjusting bids, or sending notifications.	Optimised for more detailed operations like complex calculations, scraping data from outside sources, and generating custom reports.
Easy to use, built into the app, and requires no knowledge of coding or programming.	More complicated and time-consuming, requiring some knowledge of coding.
Limited in terms of the functions and the level of customisation possible.	More flexible, allowing you to write highly-specific tasks for your campaign.

4 Benefits of Using Google Ads Automated Rules

#1. Saving Time

Setting up Google Ads to run a few automated rules means you can avoid wasting time on what would otherwise be repetitive and menial tasks. This lets you reduce the need to constantly monitor your campaigns. 

By allowing automated rules to handle operations such as ad scheduling, bid adjustment, and budget management, you’ll have more time to spend on more strategic aspects of your campaign.

#2. Efficiency

With Google Ads automated rules, optimisations and adjustments are performed much faster than they could be manually. This allows you to dynamically respond to changes in the campaign’s performance or within the market in an instant. For example, you can automatically increase or decrease budgets based on performance metrics or turn off ads during low-converting hours.

#3. Consistency

Automated rules can execute tasks at the same time every day, ensuring that tasks are performed on time, regardless of whether you are available to monitor your account. And, by making data-driven decisions, automated rules avoid the potential of subjective biases, giving you peace of mind that your campaign will always be managed consistently.

#4. Accuracy

Automated rules can quickly process large amounts of data without the potential for human error. This allows for decisions and actions to be taken dynamically with a higher degree of accuracy than you could achieve manually.

How to Set Up Google Ads Automated Rules

Here are the basic steps you’ll need for setting up Google Ads automated rules:

1. First, sign in to your Google Ads account.

2. Then, click on the Tools and settings button.

3. After that, click on the Rules button in the Bulk Actions section.

4. Next, click on the blue plus button to create a new automated rule and choose the type of automated rule you’d like to use.

Next, we’ll delve into all 14 types of Google Ads automated rules to help you choose the right one for what you’re trying to achieve.

14 Types of Google Ads Automated Rules

So, now that you know how to set up Google Ads automated rules, here’s a list of some of the different types of rules and what they are used for:

#1. Account Rules

Account rules allow you to automate the management of your entire Google Ads account by implementing rules that apply across multiple campaigns or ad groups rather than creating individual rules for each campaign or ad group. 

With account rules, you can automate various tasks such as budget adjustments, ad scheduling, campaign pausing and enabling, and more.

#2. Campaign Rules

Campaign Rules help you manage your individual campaigns within your Google Ads account and will only apply to a specific campaign or ad group rather than your entire account. 

As with account rules, you can set up campaign rules to run on a schedule or based on specific conditions, such as when the campaign spend hits a certain amount.

#3. Ad Group Rules

Ad group rules are for automating the management of your ad groups within your Google Ads campaigns. They are applied to a specific ad group rather than the entire campaign or account. 

These rules help you save time, ensure consistency, and improve your ad group management efficiency. 

#4. Keyword Rules

Keyword rules are used for automating tasks based on keywords in your campaign. For example, if you notice that certain keywords perform well on certain days, you may want to set up a rule to increase bids at these times to make conversions more likely. 

Or perhaps you want to pause keywords that have a low click-through rate to help utilise your campaign budget more effectively.

#5. Ad Rules

Ad rules are used to manage specific ads in your campaign. They can perform a range of tasks, including pausing low performing ads, adjusting ad schedules, and adjusting bids based on specific conditions. For instance, if an ad performs better in a certain search position or at a particular time of day.

#6. Display Keyword Rules

Display keyword rules are used for the management of your display keyword targeting within your campaigns. 

For example, you could use this rule to increase bids for display keywords that have a high conversion rate. You can also pause and display keywords that have low search volume and may be unlikely to generate significant traffic. 

Or, if a broad match display keyword is generating a lot of irrelevant clicks, you can also use the display keyword rule to change it to a phrase or exact match.

#7. Topic Rules

Topic rules help you manage your campaigns based on topic-related criteria, ensuring you’re focusing on the right topics in your campaign. 

For instance, you may want to increase bids for the best-performing topics that have a high conversion rate. This way, your top-performing topics continue to receive as much exposure as possible. Conversely, you may wish to set a rule to pause bids on topics that are underperforming, making sure you’re reaching potential customers.

#8. Placement Rules

Placement rules allow you to automate the management of your ad placements within your campaigns and can be used to pause or enable placements and adjust targeting based on specific conditions. 

For example, you could set up a rule to pause placements that have a low click-through rate or a high cost per click. This conserves your budget and ensures that you’re only targeting placements that are likely to drive results, ultimately improving both targeting precision and overall performance.

#9. Audience Rules

Audience rules are used to manage the targeting of audiences in your campaign and can be used to identify high-performing audiences and allocate your budget toward them for maximum impact. 

You can also use these rules to exclude audiences that have low engagement or visitors that have already converted after seeing your ads. This helps you avoid wasting ad spend on audiences that are unlikely to add value.

#10. Age Range Rules

These rules are designed to optimise your campaign with regards to the age of your potential customers. You can use age range rules to increase the focus on or exclude certain age brackets. 

In addition to increasing bids for performing age ranges, you can also adjust bids based on specific times of the day or days of the week for different age groups. 

For example, if you notice that users between the ages of 18 and 24 tend to be more active on weekends, you can increase their bids towards this age range at this time. This maximises the potential reach and improves the overall accuracy of your targeting.

#11. Gender Rules

Gender rules focus your campaign according to the gender of your potential customers. For example, a clothing retailer might want to increase bids for female users when promoting their women’s collection while decreasing bids for male users. 

Or you may want to set a rule to target specific copy towards male customers, making your campaign targeting more efficient and cost-effective.

#12. Parental Status Rules

These rules are for specific instances where you must target or exclude parents from a campaign. 

For example, you may want to run ads during times when parents are most likely to be searching for activities to do with their children. Creating a parental status rule that schedules ads to run when parents are more likely to be searching will increase the likelihood of your ads being seen by this target audience. 

In contrast, if you are aiming to target single men with no children, you could set a parental status rule to exclude parents, increasing the accuracy of your campaign.

#13. Income Range Rules

With income range rules, you can set targets based on specific income brackets. 

For instance, a luxury interior brand might want to increase bids for users in the high-income range while decreasing bids for users in lower-income brackets. 

Or conversely, a discount retailer might focus their attention toward middle- or lower-income brackets, ensuring bids are not wasted on those who are less likely to convert.

#14. Asset Group Rules

Asset group rules allow you to automatically manage and optimise how a particular group of assets, such as images or videos, are used in your ad campaign. As with the other rules, you can set up rules based on performance, pausing or enabling certain assets based on their effectiveness.

4 Best Practices For Implementing Google Ads Automated Rules

While knowing how to set up Google Ads Automated Rules is important, understanding how to implement them most effectively is even more crucial! Here are a few tips to help you along the way:

#1. Set Clear Goals For Campaigns

Before using any automated rules, spend some time defining what you want to achieve from your campaign. The clearer you are about the metrics most relevant to your business, the easier it will be to set up effective rules to help you reach your objectives.

#2. Decide What Rules Are Best For Your Company

Once you are sure what you are trying to achieve, explore the various options available within Google Ads and think about the rules that might fit your campaign and your core aims.

#3. Do Tests Before Implementing The Rules

It’s a good idea to test your strategies before fully implementing them. Consider starting off with some of the more basic automated rules. Then, gradually build up to more complex set-ups. 

This helps you get accustomed to the tool and avoid making mistakes that eat into your budget.

#4. Monitor Results

Automated rules ultimately help you avoid having to constantly monitor the performance of your ads. Stiil, you may find it useful to keep a close eye on your campaigns at first, especially when trying an automated rule for the first time.

If things are not going as expected, experiment with making adjustments until you start to see more positive results.

How Acuto Can Help With Automating Google Ads?

If you find that you or your team are spending hours on click-intensive campaign tasks every week and you are not quite sure about the best way to streamline your campaign workflow for your particular needs, you may benefit from developing a more bespoke solution. 

Acuto understands that every agency faces unique challenges, so we offer a number of services. We can write more efficient custom scripts for Google Ads or even full blown web apps for marketing agencies to elevate your PPC strategies beyond what standard automated rules can do. 

Book a call with our team of experts and see what we have to offer!

Key Takeaways

• By automating repetitive tasks, automated rules can save you time you could be spending on more strategic elements of your campaign.
• Automated rules are easier to set up compared to Ad Scripts and require no prior knowledge of coding, although they are more limited in terms of customisation.
• They can be used for a variety of different tasks including pausing and enabling bids based on performance, scheduling ads for specific times, etc.
• By reacting dynamically and instantaneously, automated rules can ensure your targeting is as accurate as possible.
• Before you implement Google Ad automated rules, you should set clear goals for campaigns, do some tests, and then monitor the results.