As part of setting up a Web site that delivers dynamic, personalized content, you can create three types of targeting items, which work together to allow you to target specific content to different users:
User segments are groups of users with similar requirements for targeted content, for example “people whose interests include hiking” or “people who live in New York.”
Targeters are the business rules that define the content you show to each user segment and the time to display it. For example, “On every Monday of the month, show article X to people who live in New York.”
Content groups are used to group similar content items together so that you can manage targeting more easily. For example, you could set up a content group that contains all articles related to hiking, and then write a targeter that displays them in rotation to the appropriate user segment.
Targeting items are referenced by the pages on your Web site and need to be accessible to those pages. For this reason, any segments, targeters, or content groups you create must be published to your live site along with any other items necessary for the site, such as individual content items, images, style sheets, and the Web pages themselves. As mentioned earlier, the process of publishing assets such as targeting items from a development environment to the live site is managed by ATG Content Administration.
In a multisite environment, you can make personalization items site aware by creating site-specific rules and rule sets. See Multisite Personalization and Targeting.
