The Intermediate level set the rule: automated rules are there to alert and to act as a safety net, not to optimise. This tutorial creates the six that any account deserves, with their exact setup.
Where and how
Tools → Rules → + → choose the level (campaign, ad group, keyword, ad…) → Action (send email, pause, enable, change budget/bid…) → Conditions (metric, operator, value) → Frequency (once, daily, weekly, monthly; time of day) → Data range (today, yesterday, last 7 days…) → Email (when changes occur / every time / when errors occur) → Name → Save. Every run is recorded in the rule's log.
Rule 1 · Runaway daily spend (alert)
- Level: Campaigns (all enabled).
- Action: Send email.
- Condition: Cost > 2.5 × the daily budget (the rule cannot reference the budget directly: use an absolute value per band of campaigns, or create one rule per budget group; e.g. campaigns on €50/day → Cost > €125).
- Frequency: daily, 08:00; range: yesterday.
- Email: when the condition is met.
Rule 2 · Zero conversions with clicks (alert)
- Level: Campaigns. Action: email.
- Condition: Clicks > 50 AND Conversions = 0.
- Frequency: daily, 08:00; range: yesterday (or the last 2 days for lower-volume campaigns).
- Note: with a long conversion delay, use "last 3 days".
Rule 3 · CPA out of range (alert)
- Level: Campaigns. Action: email.
- Condition: Cost/conv. > 1.5 × the target (as an absolute value) AND Conversions ≥ 5.
- Frequency: weekly, Mondays; range: last 7 days.
- Works for campaigns with similar targets; use several rules if they differ.
Rule 4 · Keywords with no impressions (alert)
- Level: Keywords (enabled).
- Condition: Impressions < 10.
- Frequency: weekly; range: last 7 days.
- The email arrives with the list: candidates to pause, to review for QS/threshold issues, or to merge.
Rule 5 · Disapproved ads (alert)
- Level: Ads. Condition: Approval status = Disapproved.
- Frequency: daily; range: today.
- It backs up Google's own notification (which sometimes goes astray).
Rule 6 · Safety: pause if account spend is absurd (acts)
The only one that acts on its own, as a firewall against a mistake (a budget with an extra zero, a new campaign set up badly):
- Level: Campaigns. Action: Pause campaigns.
- Condition: Cost > an absurd ceiling per campaign (e.g. 5 × the highest budget in the account, as an absolute value).
- Frequency: hourly (rules do support an hourly frequency); range: today.
- Email: every time it acts.
- Review the ceiling whenever budgets change. It should never fire; the day it does, it will have prevented a disaster.
Rules you should NOT create
- "If CPA > X, cut the bid/target by 20%": it reacts to daily noise and fights Smart Bidding.
- "If IS < X, raise the budget by 20%": with no eye on the CPA or the marginal return.
- "Pause keywords with CPA > X" on thin data: it kills on noise.
- Rules that change budgets every day: they reset the daily average.
If you genuinely want something to act with judgement (windows, minimum volume, step sizes, safeguards), that is a script with a judge, not a rule.
Reviewing the log
Tools → Rules → each rule → View log: when it ran, what met the condition, what it did. Monthly review: rules that never fire (wrong threshold?), rules that fire every day (noise: raise the threshold or turn it into a report), and forgotten rules from another era (delete them).
Common mistakes
- Absolute values that nobody updates when budgets or targets change.
- Range "today" at 08:00: half an hour of data.
- Email set to "every time": alert fatigue; use "when the condition is met".
- Action rules inherited from a previous manager (change history with "automated rule" as the author).
- A safety ceiling set too low: it pauses legitimate campaigns on a peak day.
💡 Ninja trick: those five alert rules are the context-free version of what Guardian does: it compares against each campaign's real budget (not an absolute value), against its target, against the average of the previous 30 days and against the latency, it deduplicates the alerts and it scales the thresholds by currency. If you have no scripts, these six rules are the minimum; if you do have them, keep only the safety one.
What to remember
- Six rules: runaway spend, zero conversions, CPA out of range, keywords with no impressions, disapproved ads (alerts) and a spend ceiling (pause).
- Setup: level, condition with an absolute value, coherent frequency and range, email set to "when the condition is met".
- No rule that optimises bids or budgets.
- Monthly log review: adjust thresholds, delete the forgotten ones.