Tired of manually checking your campaigns every morning to adjust bids and budgets? Rule-Based Optimization lets you set the conditions once — like a target ACOS or a click threshold — and TrackIQ will automatically raise, lower, or pause bids and budgets for you, on a schedule you control.
Follow these steps to create your first rule:
Step 1: Accessing Rules
On the left-hand sidebar, click on Automations to expand the menu.
Select Rules.
You'll land on the Rules page. Here you can see two tabs — Rules and Rule Groups — along with a Change log button (to review past rule edits) and a + Create Rule button, both in the top-right corner. The table lists every rule you've created, along with its Name, Rule Type, Status, and Created date.
Step 2: Choosing a Rule Type
Click + Create Rule to open the "What should this rule manage?" dialog. On the left, you'll see two categories of rules:
Advertising: Targeting and Campaign are currently available. Placement, Adgroup, and Audience are marked with a dot, meaning they're not yet available.
Harvest: Harvest Keywords, Harvest Product Targetings, and Negative Targeting are also marked as not yet available.
Selecting Targeting shows a Targeting Rule, which adjusts bids or pauses keywords and product targets based on performance (Bid / Pause targeting).
Selecting Campaign instead shows a Campaign Rule, which adjusts budgets or pauses entire campaigns based on performance (Budget / Pause campaign).
Both rule types show an Example of what the rule does in plain English (e.g. "Every day at 09:00 — if ACOS > 40% and clicks ≥ 10, lower the bid 15%"), plus a Quick Start section with ready-made recipes such as Hit my Target ACOS, Cut wasted ad spend, or Pause bleeding campaigns. You can either apply one of these recipes as-is, or click Start blank [Targeting/Campaign] Rule to build your own from scratch.
Step 3: Starting from a Quick-Start Recipe
Click on a recipe to expand it and preview its logic before applying it. For example, expanding Hit my Target ACOS shows its full IF / ELSE IF logic:
IF ACOS is greater than 25% and Clicks ≥ 10 and Orders ≥ 1 → set the bid to hit your Target ACOS.
ELSE IF Clicks ≥ 15 and Orders = 0 → lower the bid by 20% (cut spend on targets that aren't converting).
ELSE IF ACOS is less than 18% and Orders ≥ 2 and Clicks ≥ 10 → raise the bid by 8% (scale up targets that are performing well).
In short, this recipe automatically pulls bids down toward your target ACOS, cuts bids sharply on targets that spend without converting, and raises bids on efficient winners — all in a single daily rule.
Once you've reviewed the logic, click Use this recipe.
Step 4: Selecting Where the Rule Runs
A "Where should it run?" dialog will appear. Select one or more existing rule groups (a saved collection of campaigns) from the dropdown, or click + New rule group to create one on the spot. Click Continue once you've made your selection.
Step 5: Reviewing & Customizing the Rule
You'll now land on the full rule setup page. At the top, the "Your rule, in plain English" banner summarizes the entire rule as a single readable sentence, updating live as you make changes.
This page is broken into numbered sections:
Basics: the rule's Name, Status (e.g. Paused/Active), and what it Applies to (e.g. Keywords & targets).
Scope: which rule group(s) — and therefore which campaigns — this rule runs on. You can see the assigned group's name and how many campaigns it covers (e.g. "27 campaigns"), and attach or create additional rule groups here.
Cadence & Guardrails — Schedule: how often the rule runs. You can pick a preset (Daily · 9 AM, Mon–Fri · 9 AM, etc.) or set a custom recurrence, start date, and time. A "Next 3 runs" preview shows exactly when the rule will fire next.
Scrolling further down the same section, you'll find:
Lookback: the window of past performance data the rule reads (e.g. last 30 days), and how many of the most recent days to ignore to account for attribution lag.
Profitability Goal: your Target ACOS, which the "Set bid to hit Target ACOS" action uses to calculate each new bid (revenue per click × Target ACOS).
Bounds & Change Cap: safety limits — the maximum percentage a bid can change per run, plus an absolute minimum and maximum bid, so the rule can never push a bid too far in one go.
IF / ELSE IF Branches: the actual rule logic. Branches are evaluated in order, and only the first matching branch fires for each keyword or target. In the example shown, IF · 1 ("Over target — recalculate bid") checks ACOS, Clicks, and Orders, and if all conditions match, sets the bid using the Target ACOS formula.
Continuing down, you can see the remaining branches:
ELSE IF · 2 ("Spending, not converting") lowers the bid by a fixed 20% when a target has enough clicks but no orders.
ELSE IF · 3 ("Well under target — scale up") raises the bid by 8% when ACOS is comfortably below target and the target is converting well.
You can click + Add Branch to add more conditions, or adjust any existing branch's conditions and action. Once you're happy with the setup, click Create Rule at the bottom of the page.
Step 6: Creating a Rule Group
Rule groups let you save a set of campaigns once and reuse them across multiple rules. To create one, click + New rule group (available wherever you're asked to select a rule group).
In the dialog, you can see:
Group Details: a Name and optional Description for the group.
Campaigns: a searchable list of Available campaigns on the left, which you can filter by product, ad type (SP, SB, SD), or state (Enabled, Paused, All). Click the + icon next to a campaign to move it to the Assigned list on the right — this becomes the set of campaigns the rule group applies to.
Once you've added your campaigns, click Create group.
That's it! With Rule-Based Optimization, you can set your bidding and budget logic once and let TrackIQ apply it automatically on the schedule you define — no more manual daily check-ins.