Overview
Targeting criteria allow you to restrict the delivery of the insertion to certain criteria. The defined targeting criteria are combined with AND; for instance, if you target an insertion to the Platform Desktop and to the Country France, the insertion will only be served to users who are using a desktop computer AND who are located in France.
You can define the targeting criteria in the Targeting section of your insertion.
Available targeting criteria
| Targeting criterion | Description |
|---|
| Geography > Geographical areas | The geographical area (continents, countries, regions, states, cities). Note that the exclusion of continents is not possible. However, you can include a continent and exclude a country located on the targeted continent.
You can also use the indirect search feature (also known as "extended search") by selecting a more granular entity from the dropdown menu and searching for a less granular entity in the search field. For instance, you can select the more granular entity "City" and search for the less granular entity "Ohio" (a state in the USA). The list of search results will start with all cities containing the string "Ohio" (direct search results), followed by all cities located in the state of Ohio (indirect search results).
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Special case United States
Target DMAs in the United States as follows:
- To include DMAs, select the desired DMAs as usual. For instance, select "DMA: New York" to deliver only in the New York area.
- To exclude DMAs, select "Country: US" and the desired DMAs. To exclude the DMAs, switch the Include/Exclude toggle to the Exclude position (red color). For instance, include "Country: US" and exclude "DMA: New York" to deliver everywhere in the US, except in the New York area.
Do not combine DMA inclusions and exclusions at the same time.
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| Geography > Postal code | The postal code; targeting a Country under Geographical areas is mandatory to be able to use postal code targeting, because the same postal code can occur in multiple countries.
Paste either one postal code per row or paste all postal codes in a single row, separated by commas. Comma-separated postal codes will be split into a list automatically, with each postal code in a separate row.
Note that the exclusion of postal codes is not possible. |
| Platform | The platform the device belongs to (Desktop, Tablet, Smartphone etc.).
Some iPad/iOS versions have the Safari setting "Request Desktop Website" enabled by default, which means that Safari requests websites with the user agent (UA) of a desktop computer rather than with the UA of a tablet; since Equativ's platform targeting is based on user agents, the platform targeting feature may not work as expected in these cases |
| Audience | The audience segment (see Equativ Data Marketplace - Audience targeting / Audience targeting (first party data)). |
| Contextual | The contextual (semantic) segment (see Equativ Data Marketplace - Semantic contextual targeting). |
| IP addresses | The option "Limiting delivery of this insertion to browsers that accept cookies" targets the insertions to users who accept cookies from Equativ.
The field "IP addresses" is used to paste IP addresses or IP address ranges (in format a.b.c.*); only one IP address per line; maximum: 13 IP addresses/IP address ranges
The link "Add my IP" pastes your own current IP address; this can be useful to test an insertion live on a website (targeting to your own computer only). |
| Keyword groups | The keyword group (pre-defined keywords for reuse in insertions – see Keyword targeting). |
| Keywords | The keyword/key=value (see Keyword targeting). |
| Operating system | The operating system of the device (Android, iOS, macOS etc.). |
| Browser | The browser used on the device (Edge, Chrome, Opera etc.). |
| Content metadata | The metadata describing the content where the ad is shown (see Video content metadata); for out-stream/in-stream video insertions only. |
Combinations of targeting criteria
Combination limit
Targeting criteria belonging to different targeting types are connected with AND (e. g. Firefox AND Mac OS X). Targeting criteria belonging to the same targeting type are connected with OR (e. g. Chrome OR Firefox).
From a given targeting phrase, Equativ generates and stores combinations; for instance the targeting phrase “Chrome OR Firefox AND Mac OS” results in 2 combinations: “Chrome AND Mac OS” and “Firefox AND Mac OS”.
The number of possible combinations is limited to 50,000 per insertion. If you need more, copy your insertion and apply a maximum of 50,000 targeting criteria per copied insertion; finally, assign a group volume as a shared goal of all copied insertions.
Combinations of nested targeting criteria
Some targeting criteria are nested; e. g. Continents > Countries > States > Cities; when you target criteria on a lower level (e. g. some cities of a state), Equativ will store the combinations as follows:
- if the targeted items (e. g. some cities of a state) represent less than 50% of all items (e.g. less than 50% of all cities of that state), then Equativ stores combinations of each item as explained in section "Combination limit" above
- if the targeted items represent more than 50% of all items, then Equativ targets the complete higher level (e. g. the entire state) and excludes the items that are not targeted at the lower level (e. g. the cities of the state that were not targeted); for excluded items, Equativ creates a second set of combinations that are added to the combinations with included items; note that such exclusions are not visible directly in the UI - you can only find out about them by checking if more or less than 50% of all items are being targeted; this may produce seemingly counter-intuitive effects: even an insertion with seemingly less targeted items than some other insertion may reach the maximum of 50,000 targeting combinations mentioned in section "Combination limit" above.
