Help Center Manage Your Account Ad Targeting using Restrictions

Audience Session Targeting

You can retarget, or limit ad serving to, audience that meet certain conditions in their viewing session/history. This ad retargeting feature checks for ads recently viewed or clicked by this visitor. This feature uses cookies set by our own ad server to determine the ads that were viewed or clicked within the same browser's session. Cookie data only contains numeric ad IDs and does not contain any personal information. Cookie data is not shared with or sold to any third-party and it is only used exclusively by our own ad server.

Syntax

All ad IDs and group IDs are in numeric format and they must be valid IDs within your account. Viewed or clicked ads are ads that were viewed/clicked by this visitor within this session. This does not include ads viewed/clicked in older sessions and is not available if the cookie is reset or disabled.

viewed_ad=123 passes only when the visitor viewed ad #123
viewed_ad!=456 passes only when the visitor has not viewed ad #456
clicked_ad=456 passes only when the visitor clicked on ad #456
viewed_ad=one_in_this passes only when the visitor viewed one of this group's ads
clicked_ad=one_in_this passes only when the visitor clicked on one of this group's ads
viewed_ad!=one_in_group#1234 passes only when the visitor has not viewed ads of group #1234
viewed_ad=this_or_group#1234 is used when you want the visitor to view only ads from this group or only ads from group #1234 (mutually exclusive)
viewed_ad=123,456 passes only when the visitor viewed ad #123 or #456
viewed_ad=123+456 passes only when the visitor viewed ad #123 and #456

Example - Conflicting Ads

You can disallow an ad to show if a visitor already saw some other ads. For example: ad #123 should not display if visitor already viewed ad #456 or ad #789. For this setup, add this audience targeting to ad #123: "Don't show to audience that meets this condition viewed_ad=456,789". This is a shortcut for viewed_ad=456 OR viewed_ad=789.

Example - Audience Segmentation

You can set visitors to view ads from one group or ads from another group but do not mix ads between the two groups. This is usually desirable when your advertiser wants to perform A/B testing on 2 sets of ads to see which one performs better.

For example: Group "BlackShirts" #123 with 3 ads for black shirts and group "WhiteShirts" #456 with 3 ads for white shirts. Group "BlackShirts" #123 has this condition for audience targeting: "viewed_ad=this_or_group#456". This is a shortcut for "viewed_ad=one_in_this OR viewed_ad!=one_in_group#456". Similarly, group "WhiteShirts" #456 has this condition for audience targeting: "viewed_ad=this_or_group#123". As the result of this ad targeting, the visitor will only see black shirt ads or white shirt ads. The visitor will not see ads for white shirts mixing with black shirts, even on different pages. For 3 and more groups, the condition string will become viewed_ad=one_in_this OR (viewed_ad!=one_in_group#456 AND viewed_ad!=one_in_group#789).

Example - Sequential Ad Serving

You can have a set of ads shown in a specific sequence, one after another, instead of in a random sequence. For example: ad "First" #123, then ad "Second" #456, then ad "Third" #789.

Ad "First" #123 has "viewed_ad!=456 AND viewed_ad!=789", which means it can be shown only when the visitor has not yet seen ad "Second" and ad "Third"
Ad "Second" #456 has "viewed_ad=123 AND viewed_ad!=789", which means it can be shown only when the visitor already saw ad "First" and has not yet seen ad "Third"
Ad "Third" #789 has "viewed_ad=123 AND viewed_ad=456", which means it can be shown only when the visitor already saw both ad "First" and ad "Second"