Meta Ads Value Rules: The Most Underused Targeting Feature in 2026
Meta's algorithm optimizes for the cheapest conversions — not necessarily the most valuable ones. Value Rules let you fix that without restricting your targeting. Here's how they work, when to use them, and what most advertisers get wrong.
The Algorithm Doesn't Know What You Actually Want
Meta's delivery system is extraordinarily good at one thing: finding the cheapest path to your stated objective. If you optimize for purchases, it will find the people most likely to buy at the lowest cost per acquisition.
The problem? "Cheapest" and "most valuable" are rarely the same thing. A $12 impulse buy from a one-time shopper counts exactly the same as a $200 order from a repeat customer in your core demographic. The algorithm treats both equally — because you haven't told it otherwise.
This is the fundamental tension in Meta advertising. Your campaign objective tells Meta what action to optimize for, but it says nothing about which users delivering that action are most valuable to your business.
Value Rules are Meta's answer to this gap — and almost nobody uses them.
What Are Value Rules?
Value Rules let you tell Meta's algorithm how much more (or less) certain audiences, placements, and conversion locations are worth to your business. Instead of treating every conversion identically, you assign bid adjustment multipliers — up to +1000% or down to -90% — based on specific criteria.
Think of it as a weighting layer on top of your optimization. You're not restricting who sees the ad — you're telling Meta to adjust its bids for certain segments. People outside your value rules still receive a non-adjusted bid.
Important context: Advertisers currently using bid multipliers will be required to migrate to Value Rules by 2027. If you're on bid multipliers today, start replacing them now.
How to Create Value Rules
Value Rules are created as rule sets in your account's Advertising Settings — not inside individual campaigns.
Applying Value Rules to a Campaign
Priority matters: If rules have overlapping criteria, Meta only applies the first matching rule. Example: Rule 1 bids +20% for women in California, Rule 2 bids +50% for women on iOS. A woman in California on iOS gets the +20% bid (Rule 1), not +50%. Arrange your highest-priority rules first.
Available criteria: age, gender, location, operating system, device platform, and select placements and conversion locations. Note: for Special Ad Category campaigns, age, gender, and certain locations (city, DMA) are restricted.
The Delivery Problem Value Rules Solve
Left to its own devices, Meta's algorithm naturally skews delivery toward the cheapest conversions. This creates a predictable pattern: your ads over-index on segments that are easy to convert but may not represent your ideal customer.
Common delivery skew scenarios:
- A premium skincare brand finding that 70% of delivery goes to 18-24 year-olds, despite the core customer being 30-45
- A national retailer where 80% of spend concentrates in 3-4 low-CPM metros, ignoring higher-LTV markets
- A B2B SaaS company where Instagram Stories drive most conversions but those leads rarely close
- A DTC brand where male users convert cheaply but female users have 3x the lifetime value
If you're seeing performance numbers that look good on the surface but aren't translating to real business results, delivery skew is often the culprit. This is one of the first things to investigate when diagnosing why performance metrics don't match business outcomes.
The traditional fix — narrowing your targeting — forces you to sacrifice reach and raises CPMs. Value Rules offer a better approach: keep the broad targeting that gives Meta's algorithm room to work, but guide it toward the segments that actually matter to your business.
Value Rules Capabilities: The Full Toolkit
Value Rules are more versatile than most advertisers realize. Here's everything you can control.
Demographics: Age & Gender
Increase bids up to +1000% or decrease by up to -90% for specific age ranges and gender segments. You can combine both criteria in a single rule (e.g., men aged 25-44).
Example: Men 25-44 have 60% higher LTV? Increase bids +60% for that segment. Women 25-44 have 20% lower LTV? Decrease bids -20%. Everyone else gets a non-adjusted bid. This is particularly powerful when you're running creative tailored to specific demographics and want delivery to match the creative's intended audience.
Placement, OS & Device Platform
Adjust bids for select placements, conversion locations, operating systems, and device platforms. This lets you steer delivery toward surfaces where conversions are higher quality — or deprioritize low-quality inventory — without turning anything off entirely.
Example: If Feed conversions have 2x the average order value compared to Audience Network, increase bids for Feed placements. Or if iOS users have higher LTV than Android, boost bids for iOS. You can combine two criteria per rule — e.g., "iOS + Feed" gets +40%.
Geography
Weight delivery toward specific regions, states, or DMAs. Invaluable for brands with regional presence, varying shipping costs, or location-dependent margins.
Example: A restaurant chain expanding into the Southeast can boost value for Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas without excluding other states. Conversions from target markets get weighted higher in Meta's optimization, naturally shifting delivery without killing reach. This matters for CPM efficiency — you avoid the CPM inflation that comes from restricting geo targeting too tightly.
Negative Value Rules: The Power Move Nobody Talks About
Value Rules aren't just for boosting segments — you can decrease bids by up to 90% for segments you want to de-prioritize. This is arguably the more powerful application.
Instead of telling Meta "these users are worth more," you tell it "these users are worth less." The algorithm naturally shifts delivery away from those segments without hard-excluding them. People outside of any value rule still receive a non-adjusted bid.
Example: If your data shows that conversions from users under 21 have a 60% refund rate, decrease bids by 70-90% for that age segment. You're not losing those conversions entirely — but Meta will only deliver to them when it's extremely cheap, reserving most of your budget for segments with higher net value.
When to Use Value Rules
Value Rules aren't a universal tool — they're most effective in specific scenarios where delivery skew is costing you money.
Brand Campaigns With a Defined Core Audience
When your brand has a clear target demographic but you want to keep broad reach for discovery. Value Rules ensure the algorithm prioritizes your core demo without the CPM penalty of narrow targeting.
Demographic-Specific Creative
If you've built creative that speaks to a specific age group or gender, Value Rules help ensure that creative actually reaches its intended audience. Without them, Meta may show your "over-40" creative to 22-year-olds because they're cheaper to reach.
Geo-Targeted Promotions
Running a regional promotion, expanding into new markets, or dealing with variable margins by location. Geo value rules let you weight toward priority regions while maintaining national reach for brand building.
High Refund / Low LTV Segments
When post-purchase data reveals that certain segments convert easily but churn quickly or return products at high rates. Negative value rules on those segments shift spend toward more profitable conversions.
Placement Quality Discrepancies
If conversion quality varies dramatically by placement — for instance, Audience Network drives volume but poor downstream metrics — value rules let you deprioritize low-quality placements without losing access to them entirely.
How to Set Up a Value Rules Test
Don't go all-in on Value Rules without validation. Here's a methodical framework for testing them — the same kind of systematic testing approach that should guide any account-level change.
Establish Your Baseline
Before activating Value Rules, pull 30 days of delivery data broken down by the dimension you plan to adjust (age, gender, geo, or placement). Document current delivery distribution, CPA by segment, and downstream value metrics (LTV, AOV, refund rate).
Identify the Skew
Compare delivery distribution against your actual value distribution. Where is Meta over-delivering to low-value segments? Where is it under-delivering to high-value ones? The bigger the gap, the bigger the opportunity.
Start Conservative
Begin with value adjustments of 25-50%. Don't jump to 200% boosts — aggressive adjustments can shock the algorithm and trigger re-learning, which temporarily destabilizes delivery.
Run a Split Test
Use Meta's A/B testing tool or duplicate campaigns. Run one campaign with Value Rules and one without, with identical creative and targeting. Let it run for at least 14 days (7 for learning, 7 for stable comparison).
Measure on Business Outcomes, Not Platform Metrics
The Value Rules campaign might show a higher CPA in Ads Manager — that's expected, because you're optimizing for value, not volume. Evaluate based on revenue per conversion, LTV, refund rate, and ultimately ROAS measured against actual business data.
Common Mistakes With Value Rules
Value Rules are straightforward in concept but easy to misconfigure. Here are the most common pitfalls.
Going Too Aggressive With Percentages
You can increase bids up to 1000% and decrease up to 90% — but you probably shouldn't start there. A 300% boost sounds powerful but severely constrains the algorithm's optimization space. Start at 20-50% and increment. A moderate nudge usually produces better results than a heavy shove, because Meta still has room to find efficient conversions within your preferred segments.
Not Giving Enough Learning Time
Value Rules change the optimization signal Meta receives. This triggers a new learning phase, just like changing your bid strategy or optimization event. Expect 5-7 days of unstable performance. Pulling the plug after 3 days because CPA spiked is the most common mistake — you're evaluating learning noise, not actual performance.
Stacking Too Many Rules Without Understanding Priority
You can create up to 10 rules per rule set — but remember, Meta only applies the first matching rule per user. If you stack overlapping rules (e.g., Rule 1: women in California +20%, Rule 2: women on iOS +50%), a woman in California on iOS only gets +20%. Order matters. Start with 2-3 rules, validate them, then layer more in.
Using Value Rules as a Substitute for Good Targeting
Value Rules are a refinement tool, not a targeting tool. If your overall campaign structure, creative, and audience strategy are broken, Value Rules won't fix them. Get the fundamentals right first — then use Value Rules to optimize delivery within a campaign that already works.
Not Connecting to Downstream Data
Value Rules are only as good as the value signal you're working from. If you don't have clear data on which segments are actually more valuable (LTV, AOV, margin, refund rate by demographic/geo/placement), you're guessing. Build the data foundation first.
SENTRUM Detects Value Rule Opportunities Automatically
The hardest part of Value Rules isn't setting them up — it's knowing when to use them. You need to spot the delivery skew first, correlate it with downstream value data, and identify the specific segments where adjustment would move the needle.
SENTRUM's AI insights engine does this continuously. When it detects strong engagement in specific demographic segments but delivery skewing toward cheaper, lower-value segments, it flags the opportunity: "Campaign X is over-delivering to 18-24 by 40% relative to conversion value. Consider a Value Rule boosting 25-44 by 30-50%."
It also monitors the results after you implement Value Rules — tracking whether delivery distribution shifted, whether downstream metrics improved, and whether the learning phase has stabilized.
No spreadsheets. No manual breakdowns. Just actionable signals tied to your actual business data.
Try SENTRUM free