Meta started rolling out Value Rules, and I’m mostly excited about it. They give advertisers back some control when everything is trending towards automation.

But I worry about how some advertisers will use them. Let me explain…

What are Value Rules?

Value Rules allow you to tell Meta to bid more or less on the most valuable people. You’re able to raise your bids on people by gender, age group, location, or mobile operating system.

It makes sense in theory, but I worry about people using this by default without considering why they may or may not be necessary. Let’s consider a potential scenario.

Scenario

You determine that your ideal customer is a woman between the ages of 25 and 44. So the natural inclination is to create a Value Rule to increase your bid on that group. You think that this will help the algorithm focus on the right people.

But you may not need them. You should only use Value Rules if they solve a specific problem. Your costs will go up when you use them, but the hope is that the added costs are worthwhile.

Raising Costs

I worry that advertisers will intentionally raise their costs unnecessarily. Don’t activate this feature blindly. Advertisers need to understand when and why they should use Value Rules.

And I’ll cover that in my next video.