Automated rules in Meta Ads Manager: how to set them up and what they can do
Automated rules watch your Meta campaigns, ad sets and ads and act when the numbers hit a level you set: turn something off, change a budget or bid, or just tell you. This guide covers how to create one, which conditions and actions exist, how often rules run, the limits and how to see what a rule did.
This guide is built from the Meta Business Help Center, checked on 10 November 2026: About automated rules, Create an automated rule, Available conditions for automated rules, About actions for automated rules and Limits to automated rules, plus the smaller pages linked in each section. The one rule most advertisers start with, turning off an ad set when frequency gets too high, is covered step by step in our Meta ads frequency guide, so it isn't repeated here.
What an automated rule does
Meta describes automated rules as checks that "automatically check your campaigns, ad sets and ads, and then update or notify you of any changes." Every rule has three parts:
- Conditions: the criteria that trigger the rule, for example cost per result above a number.
- Action: what the rule does when the conditions are met, for example turn off the ad set or send a notification.
- What it applies to: the active campaigns, ad sets or ads it watches.
Rules belong to the ad account, not to a person, so Meta notes they "work when anyone in your team makes ads." Meta's own examples of good candidates are the checks you already do by hand: pausing an ad that hits a metric, raising a budget when enough people click, raising a bid when daily spend is low, or turning a campaign off every Friday. Meta also says you should still watch overall performance, because a rule only does what you told it to.
Creating a rule
There are two places to start, and the choice decides what the rule covers. Per Meta's steps, use the Campaigns table for a rule on specific campaigns, ad sets or ads, and the Automated rules page for a rule on all of them.
- In Ads Manager, tick the campaign, ad set or ad, open the More dropdown and choose Create a new rule. (Or open the Automated rules page and click + Create rule.)
- Choose Custom rule to build your own, or one of the two templates described below.
- Give the rule a name and pick what to Apply rule to.
- Pick the Action.
- Set the Conditions and click Add; use + for more conditions.
- Adjust the Time range and Schedule.
- Optionally add a Subscriber who gets the notifications. That person must have admin permissions on the ad account and full control of the owning business portfolio.
- Click Create. The rule is active straight away.
Conditions
A condition is a metric or setting plus a value. Meta lists four logical expressions: is greater than, is smaller than, is between and is not between. The available conditions fall into a few groups:
| Group | Examples from Meta's list |
|---|---|
| Cost | Cost per result, cost per purchase, cost per lead, cost per add to cart, cost per checkout initiated, cost per app install, CPM |
| Delivery | Results, impressions, reach, frequency, website content views, audience reached % |
| Budget and bid | Daily budget, lifetime budget, budget type, spend cap, bid amount, estimated budget spending % |
| Time | Hours since creation, start time, stop time, active time in seconds, current time |
| Setup | Campaign name (partial or full match), objective, buying type, optimisation goal, billing event, placement |
Three rules shape how conditions combine:
- All conditions must be true at once. Meta's conditions page says the campaign, ad set or ad "must meet all conditions to trigger the rule." There is no "either/or" inside one rule; if you want the same action on any one of several triggers, build one rule per trigger.
- You can add each condition only once per rule.
- Each condition can have its own time range or look at the parent object, through Meta's "Additional Filter Options".
Meta's multiple conditions example turns off an ad set when cost per purchase (Meta Pixel) is greater than $10 and purchases are above 500. The second condition stops the rule from acting on a handful of early, expensive purchases. Two other condition types are worth knowing. Campaign name contains lets one rule cover every campaign with a word in its name, so a consistent naming habit pays off. Hours since creation can turn a campaign off after a set time; the clock starts at creation, so time spent paused still counts.
Actions
Each rule has one action. Meta's list of actions:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Turn off campaigns / ad sets / ads | Turns the item off |
| Turn on campaigns / ad sets / ads | Turns the item on |
| Send notification only | Changes nothing; tells you or others on the ad account |
| Adjust budget | Raises or lowers an ad set's daily or lifetime budget |
| Adjust manual bid | Raises or lowers an ad set's bid; only works with manual bids |
| Scale budget / bid | Adjusts budget or bid toward a target field, such as a cost per app install |
For budget and bid rules you can change the amount by a percentage or a fixed amount, and set a maximum or minimum so a rule that runs again and again can't push the budget or bid past a limit. Which strategies use a bid you set yourself is covered in our Meta bid strategies guide.
Time range and schedule
Two settings decide when a rule acts and on what data:
- Time range: "the number of days worth of data you'd like to apply your rule to." A cost per result over one day is noisy; over several days it is steadier.
- Schedule: how often the rule is checked. Meta says it checks "all rules at least once every 30 minutes." A custom schedule limits checks to the days and times you pick.
A custom schedule plus a turn-off action is how you pause ads at set hours. Meta's campaign name example turns off ad sets in "summer" campaigns from 12:00 AM to 5:00 AM, and notes that you need a second rule to turn them back on in the morning. A rule only does what it says; nothing switches back by itself.
Rule templates
Besides custom rules, the create window offers two templates that apply across the whole ad account. Each can make the change or only send a notification:
- Reduce audience fragmentation: combines ad sets whose audiences are split too thinly. Meta keeps the best performing ad set, adds the other audiences and budgets to it and turns the others off. Audiences are added together, so the result can be wider than before: United States men plus Canada women becomes United States and Canada, men and women. Duplicate ad creative is deleted.
- Reduce auction overlap: turns off overlapping ad sets that compete but don't get results, and raises the budget of the ones left. Overlapping ad sets that all perform well are not paused.
Meta says both can help ad sets exit the learning phase sooner. Because the combine option changes targeting and removes creative, start it on Send notification only and decide yourself.
Limits
From Meta's limits page and its cost-conditions page:
- Up to 250 rules per ad account, active and inactive together.
- One of each condition per rule.
- One level per rule: a rule can cover 3 campaigns or 3 ad sets, not both. Make one rule per level.
- No rules on ads about social issues, elections or politics; those must be edited by verified people.
- Rules can't pause reservation campaigns.
- With a campaign budget, rules with cost conditions can't turn ads or ad sets on or off or send a notification. Meta's reason: turning them off by cost can hurt performance and restart the learning phase. Put the rule on the campaign instead, use another action on the ad sets, or use it on ad sets without a campaign budget.
Checking what a rule did
On the Automated rules page, the Manage rules table has a toggle per rule (blue on, gray off). Activity shows each rule's results: no action, notification sent, items turned off, budgets or manual bids raised or lowered. From the Campaigns table you can also tick items and choose More > View active rules; the rules view shows each rule's status, what it applies to, its action and condition, when it runs and who created it, with Preview, Edit, Run and Delete.
Meta also sends business notifications when a scheduled rule turns items on or off, changes a budget or bid, or fails to make a change it should have made. If an ad set turned off and no rule matches, look elsewhere: Meta notes ad sets also stop when they spend their budget, reach their end date or under-deliver. To read the numbers a rule acted on, see our Meta ads reporting guide.
How we use rules
This is our own practice, not Meta guidance:
- Every new rule starts as Send notification only for a week or two. If the alerts are the ones we would have acted on, we switch the action.
- Turn-off rules always have a volume condition (results, impressions or spend) next to the cost condition, so a few early results can't kill an ad set.
- Budget rules have a maximum, and raises are small, so a run of good days can't spend a month's budget.
- We name rules for what they do ("Ad sets: off if CPL > target, 7 days") and keep a short list of them with the client's account notes.
- Rules support the weekly review; they don't replace it. The same thinking applies to Google Ads automated rules.
Frequently asked questions
Where are automated rules in Meta Ads Manager?
Open the Automated rules page in Ads Manager to see and create rules for the whole account, or tick items in the Campaigns table and choose More, then Create a new rule, for a rule on just those items.
How often do Meta automated rules run?
Meta says it checks all rules at least once every 30 minutes. You can set a custom schedule so a rule is only checked on the days and at the times you choose.
Can one rule use OR between conditions?
No. An item must meet all of a rule's conditions to trigger it. To act on any one of several triggers, create a separate rule for each.
How many automated rules can an ad account have?
Up to 250, counting active and inactive rules. Each rule works on one level, campaigns, ad sets or ads, and can use each condition only once.
Why can't I use a cost condition to turn off ad sets?
When the campaign uses a campaign budget, Meta blocks cost-related conditions that turn ads or ad sets on or off or send a notification, because it can hurt performance and restart learning. Apply the rule to the campaign or use another action.
For more on Meta ads, see our guides to Meta ads basics, Meta ads frequency, A/B testing in Meta ads and automated rules in Google Ads.