Overview
Open Tools → Automation in your dashboard. The page has three parts: your Rules list, the New Rule form, and a Recent Firings log of everything that has triggered.
A rule is a single sentence: "when this metric goes above/below this number over this window, do this." Affclix evaluates every active rule every 10 minutes against your live click and conversion data, campaign by campaign.
A rule scoped to 20 campaigns is 20 independent checks. One campaign breaching the threshold does not affect the other 19.
Metrics You Can Watch
| Metric | What is measured | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks | Clicks recorded on the campaign in the window. | Spot traffic that has stopped, or a sudden flood. |
| Conversions | Conversions in the window, excluding rejected ones. | Catch a broken postback before the day is lost. |
| Conversion Rate (%) | Conversions ÷ clicks × 100. | Pause campaigns that are burning traffic without converting. |
| Payout | Sum of payout on non-rejected conversions. | Budget control — flag a campaign spending faster than planned. |
Conversion counts follow the same status rules as your reports: a conversion whose status has been overridden to REJECTED is excluded from both the conversion count and the payout total.
If your campaigns pay out in more than one currency, scope payout rules to campaigns sharing a single currency, or the threshold will not mean what you expect.
Creating a Rule
Name the rule
Use something you will recognise in a notification at 3am — "Pause dead CPI campaigns" beats "Rule 4".
Pick the metric and condition
Choose a metric, then whether it must fall below (<) or rise above (>) your Threshold. Conversion Rate is entered as a percentage —
0.2means 0.2%, not 20%.Choose the window
Last 1 hour, Last 6 hours or Last 24 hours. This is a rolling window ending at evaluation time, not a calendar period. Short windows react faster but are noisier; 6 to 24 hours is the safe default for anything that pauses a campaign.
Set the guards
Min Clicks Guard and Cooldown stop a rule from firing on noise or firing repeatedly. See Volume Guard & Cooldown below.
Choose the action
Alert only notifies you and nothing else. Pause campaign + alert also stops the campaign. Leave Email me too on Yes to receive email alongside the in-app notification.
Scope it, then save
Optionally restrict the rule to specific campaigns, then click Create Rule. It becomes active immediately and is evaluated within 10 minutes.
Scoping to Campaigns
The Campaigns picker at the bottom of the form decides which campaigns the rule applies to.
- Leave it empty — the rule is evaluated against every active campaign in your account, including ones you create later. This is usually what you want for account-wide health alerts.
- Pick specific campaigns — the rule only ever looks at those. Useful when a threshold only makes sense for one advertiser, vertical or payout model.
The picker is a type-ahead: start typing and it searches your catalogue after two characters. You can search by campaign name or by campaign ID — results are labelled #ID — Campaign name so identically named campaigns stay distinguishable. Selected campaigns appear as removable chips; scroll the dropdown to page through longer result sets.
Paused, ended and draft campaigns are skipped even if they are named in the rule's scope — so a pause rule can never re-fire on a campaign it already stopped.
Volume Guard & Cooldown
Min Clicks Guard
A campaign with three clicks in the window has a 0% conversion rate — but that is not evidence of anything. The Min Clicks Guard makes a campaign invisible to the rule until it has at least that many clicks in the window.
The guard applies to Conversion Rate rules and to every "falls below" rule, regardless of metric. It does not apply to "rises above" rules on other metrics, where low volume cannot cause a false positive.
With no guard, every quiet campaign reads as zero conversions and gets paused on the next sweep. 50 to 100 clicks is a sensible floor for a 6-hour window.
Cooldown
After a rule fires for a campaign, that rule + campaign pair is muted for the cooldown period (minimum 30 minutes, default 6 hours). Other campaigns under the same rule are unaffected.
Set the cooldown longer than the evaluation window for alert rules, otherwise the same underlying breach will notify you repeatedly as the window rolls forward.
What Happens on a Firing
The firing is logged
A row appears in Recent Firings with the timestamp, the rule, the campaign, the measured value against the threshold, and the action taken.
You are notified
Every firing raises an in-app notification. If Email me too is set to Yes, the account organiser also receives an email.
The campaign is paused — pause rules only
The campaign moves to ENDED, exactly as if it had been ended from the campaign list. Affiliate traffic stops arriving within roughly five minutes as the tracker's campaign cache refreshes.
Once a rule ends a campaign, restarting it is a manual decision — reactivate it from the campaign list after you have fixed the cause.
Managing Existing Rules
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Edit | Loads the rule into the form, including its campaign scope. Save with Update Rule, or click Cancel to return the form to create mode. |
| Pause | The rule stops being evaluated. Its history is kept and it can be reactivated at any time. |
| Activate | Returns a paused rule to the evaluation sweep. |
| Delete | Removes the rule and its firing history. Campaigns it already paused stay paused. |
Creating, editing, pausing and deleting rules requires the same permission as bulk campaign actions, because a pause rule can change campaign status exactly as that action does. Viewing the page requires only campaign view access.
Recipes
| Goal | Rule |
|---|---|
| Stop wasting traffic on a dead campaign | Conversion Rate falls below0.2 over last 6 hours, min clicks 100, action Pause + alert, cooldown 360 |
| Catch a broken postback | Conversions falls below1 over last 6 hours, min clicks 200, action Alert only, cooldown 720 |
| Know when a campaign takes off | Clicks rises above10000 over last 1 hour, action Alert only, cooldown 60 |
| Keep daily payout under control | Payout rises above your daily cap over last 24 hours, action Pause + alert, cooldown 1440 |
FAQ
How soon after saving does a rule run?
Within 10 minutes. The evaluator sweeps every active rule on a 10-minute cycle; there is no way to force an immediate run from the UI.
Why has my rule never fired?
The three usual causes: no campaign in scope is currently active; the Min Clicks Guard is filtering every campaign out; or the rule fired earlier and that campaign is still inside its cooldown. Check Recent Firings first.
Can a rule reactivate a campaign?
No. Rules only alert or pause. Reactivation is always manual.
Does a paused rule keep its history?
Yes. Pausing only removes it from the evaluation sweep. Deleting the rule is what discards its firings.
Do rules apply to campaigns created after the rule?
Only if the rule's campaign scope is left empty. A rule pinned to a specific list of campaigns never widens on its own.
Can one campaign be covered by several rules?
Yes, and each is evaluated independently with its own cooldown. If two pause rules breach in the same sweep, the campaign is paused once and both firings are logged.