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A schedule controls when an automation rule looks for matches and which report data it evaluates. Choose it around the time your traffic needs to produce an outcome. A lead that arrives several hours after a click can make fresh traffic look unproductive. Excluding recent data reduces that problem, while a longer time frame gives low-volume placements more evidence to accumulate.

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Separate the three decisions

Changing frequency does not turn the rule into a real-time trigger. Saving a rule schedules future evaluation. It does not immediately tag every row that currently matches.

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Start with the conversion delay

For a campaign whose useful leads usually arrive within an hour, a reasonable starting point is a 1-day time frame, a 2-hour frequency, and a 1-hour recent exclusion. Evaluate whether the resulting tags identify useful review candidates, then adjust based on observed delay and traffic volume. For a new, low-volume campaign, increasing frequency alone gives you repeated checks of the same small sample. A longer time frame and a minimum-volume or minimum-cost condition are usually more useful. Edit the rule in Automation Rules, set Time frame, choose an offered Frequency, then choose Ignore recent and save. The available choices depend on the time frame.

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Understand the hour boundaries

Rules evaluate UTC hourly report buckets. This matters when comparing a rule with a report that uses a different timezone or an exact minute range. With Ignore recent set to zero, the current partial hour is eligible. With a positive exclusion, Metricanic stops before the hour containing the cutoff time. It then counts backward by the selected time frame. For example, a run at 14:40 UTC, with a 3-hour time frame and 30-minute recent exclusion, has a cutoff at 14:10. The 14:00 bucket is excluded, so the rule evaluates 11:00 through 13:59:59 UTC. That result is intentionally different from a minute-by-minute 11:10 to 14:10 window. Match the eligible hour buckets when checking why a row received a tag.

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Available combinations

All values below are minutes except the time-frame labels. The shortest frequency is 30 minutes. A 15-minute recent exclusion is available for some windows, but a 15-minute execution frequency is not. If a tag arrives later than expected, check that the rule is enabled and that the chosen window contains matching data. The scheduler and report processing are asynchronous, so a frequency is not a promise of execution at an exact wall-clock minute. Existing tags also persist after a row stops matching, as explained in Create automation rules.