Pacing and Boost
The Budget Group pacing and boost feature is a powerful tool that allows AdRules to make automated changes on your behalf as a response to spending too fast or slow on a given day. Any qualifying Budget Group changes happen one time per hour at the top of the hour. This is done to minimize changes in Facebook.
For example, if your spend is pacing too slowly for the current day, you can automatically boost budgets and bids, and optionally loosen rules, in order to achieve the spend goal. Conversely, if you’re spending too quickly for the current day, you can reduce your budgets, bids, and rule criteria. These settings are all defined in your boost rules, and you don’t have to present while AdRules makes the changes on your behalf.
To find these settings, go to Budget Groups, select a specific budget group, click on Actions, and then Settings.
You’ll find a chart (below) that shows today’s spend, as well as spend levels at the same hour from previous days. The red line indicates where your spend should be for the given time of day. Within each bar you’ll see indicated the percent above or below your target your spend currently is.
What To Do
Set up rules for both below- and above-pace situations. When pacing below, you’ll want to use positive numbers for boosting. For rules when pacing above, use negative numbers.
There are three sections: Budgets, Bids and Pausing. Each field within these sections corresponds to the field of the same name within your Ad Set Group rules settings. For example, in the Budgets section, Tier corresponds with the Budget Tier and Starting Budget values from your Ad Set Group rules. Rule values correspond to the metric values used within the rules themselves. You may wish to boost only the Tier independently of the other values. Boosting Rule Value and Min Spend have the effect of loosening your rules.
Some general guidelines:
- We recommend starting adjustments after 4am or 5am to allow enough data to make decisions.
- Don’t set any rules for pacing less than 5% below or above your spend goal.
- When pacing only slightly above or below your goal, put the boost on your budget fields only. This will allow budget growth or contraction and should have avoid Facebook having to re-enter the learning stage for your ads.
- If pacing more than slightly above or below, such as more than 10-15%, you apply bid boosting (positive or negative) as well as pause rule boosting (positive or negative).
- As you go further out from the midline of below and above pace, your rule settings should become more aggressive. However, there is only so much that increasing your settings can do. Many times, the best solution is creative and/or audience expansion.
Example scenario:
- When pacing between 5 and 10 percent below, boost Budget Tier by 5%. Leave other fields blank or zero.
- When pacing between 5 and 10 percent above, boost Budget Tier by -5% (negative boost). Leave other fields blank or zero.
- When pacing > 10% below, boost Budget Tier by 10%, Bid Tier by 5%. Boost all Rule Value and Min Spend fields in all sections by 5%, to loosen up your rules and allow Ad Sets to advance into higher budgets and bids.
- When pacing > 10% above, boost Budget Tier by -10%, Bid Tier by -5%. Boost all Rule Value and Min Spend fields in all sections by -5%, to tighten up your rules and allow Ad Sets to fall into lower budgets and bids and improve cost.
The picture below shows an example with Budget boost only.
Budget Controls
- Tiers: from your Ad Set Budget Rules, are the amounts defined by your rules.
- Rule Value: from your Ad Set Budget Rules, the amount the metric you choose must achieve before a budget change will occur.
- Minimum Spend: from your Ad Set Budget Rules, the minimum spend amount the metric you choose must achieve before a budget change will occur.
Bid Controls
- Tiers: from your Bid Controls, are the amounts defined by your rules.
- Rule Value: from your Bid Controls, the amount the metric you choose must achieve before a bid change will occur.
- Minimum Spend: From your Bid Controls, the minimum spend amount the metric you choose must achieve before a bid change will occur.
Pausing Controls
- Rule Value: from your Pause Rules, the amount the metric you choose must achieve before an Ad will be paused.
- Minimum Spend: from your Pause Rules, the minimum spend amount the metric you choose must achieve before an Ad will be paused.
Additional Features
- Show Chart For allows you recall what pacing looked like at times the system made changed. The system will take snapshots of what your spend looked like at the time a boost rule went into effect.
- Try To Hit Budget allows you to tell AdRules what time of day you would like AdRules to hit your budget. You can fine-tune this setting to be more aggressive, or to try to spend more quickly, if you want to achieve your spend goal earlier in the day. The chart will be modified based on your changes.
- Start Making Changes At allows you to tell AdRules when to start evaluating if your pacing is slow or fast. For example, it may be useful to start at 6am so there is some daily spend occurring before the system makes adjustments.
- Don’t Make Changers After allows you to tell AdRules when to stop making changes. For example, if you are -20% for the day and it is 10pm, chances are you will not close the spend gap and efforts to increase volume may result in expensive traffic.
Ad Set Group Selection
You must specify which Ad Set Groups are eligible to be included in the boost process. This is because you may have ads that are new, such as those in a “starter” Ad Set Group, which you want to avoid increasing budgets or bids on until the ads prove successful.
In the example below, we’ve elected to boost only "Android oCPM USA", and not others.
