The targeting items enable you to display dynamic, personalized content to Web site visitors. A targeter defines product items to display to site visitors who meet the targeter’s criteria. The targeter also specifies the times and conditions under which to issue the display.
The three types of targeting items work together:
User segments are groups of users who have similar interests or requirements that make them good candidates for targeted content. For example, certain items may appeal to “people whose interests include hiking” or “people who live in New York.”
Content groups are items that share some characteristics that may be of interest to a group of users. For example, you could set up a content group that contains products that are related to hiking, and then configure a targeter that displays the products, in rotation, to the appropriate user segment.
Targeters are the business rules that specify what content to show, what visitors to show the content to, and under what conditions to show it. For example, “Show article X to people who live in New York on every Monday of the month.”
When an environment has one or more registered sites, the user interface displays extensions to the rule configuration for these targeting items. The additional configuration makes these items site-aware. See Multisite Targeting Rules.
Because targeting items are referenced by the pages on your Web site, they must be accessible to those pages. All user segments, targeters, or content groups that you create must be published to your live sites, along with the other items that are necessary, such as individual content items, images, style sheets, and the Web pages themselves. ATG Content Administration manages the process of publishing assets such as targeting items from a development environment to the live site.
