Targeting Conditions
You can use targets to fire tags on your site based on number of different criteria without contacting your IT team to change the code. A target is a set of conditions in a schedule that determine whether a tag is fired. The conditions in the target are based on the first-party categories in the user's anonymous profile or on the page. For example, you can either create an "Autos" site target that enables you to fire a tag every time a page view registers on an Autos page, or you can create an "Autos" user target that fires a tag anytime a user has been previously tagged as an Autos browser.
Target types
Target types specify the manner in which the targeted attribute was obtained. There are two target types: Site and User.
- Site: "I want to fire a tag because of an attribute that is [picked up] on this page."
This setting indicates the target condition will be satisfied if the current page contains the category specified in the target. - User: "I want to fire a tag because of an attribute that a user in an audience came to this page with, or that is [picked up] on this page."
This setting indicates the target condition will be satisfied if the user's cookie contains the category specified in the target. Categories attributed to the user's cookie on the current page view will satisfy an "User" target condition for that page view, meaning "User" is a super set of the "Site". For example, setting "User = CatA & Site = CatA" is the same as setting "User = CatA".
Target use cases
You can use targets to fire a tag in the following cases:
- On your home page
- On every page except my checkout page
- On every women's shoes page but not men's shoe pages
- On your Black Friday or your Cyber Monday promo pages
- On every page-view if the user has visited your Black Friday promo
- If your DMP flagged the user as in-market for a specific type of shoe
Using tag frequency targeting
After specifying your target by selecting the specific categories you want to include in your segments and audience, you can further identify your target audience by specifying a threshold that those users must meet to be part of your targeted audience. The count begins when the user is first tagged.
Note: Frequency targeting is different than frequency capping, which is a term commonly associated with media buys in which the advertiser targets the number of times a user should be exposed to an ad or creative.
When targeting by frequency:
- The frequency targeting number is available for each segment in your audience and each segment can have its own frequency targeting number. Segment 1 might have a target of 4 and segment 2 might have a target of Any.
- The frequency targeting number is applied to all the categories in the segment. For example, segment 1 contains two categories (In-Market > Lexus or In-Market > BMW). The frequency targeting is 5. The user needs to be tagged for either Lexus five times OR BMW five times.
- The frequency targeting number can be a range, including a lower and upper frequency setting. Using the previous example, if the frequency targeting is a range of 2-10. The user needs to be tagged for either Lexus OR BMW between 2 and 10 times.
- If you do not set a frequency targeting number, the setting defaults to Any and the user will be part of your audience regardless of the number of times the user qualifies for the category in the segment.
- The frequency and the ad recency settings do NOT intersect. The time counting used to compare against the frequency setting starts when user is first tagged. It is not within the recency setting window.
Adding targets to schedules
After you create a target, you can add it to any of the schedules in the tag management service. When the schedule is active, your tags will be fired only when the conditions set in your targets are met. For details, see scheduling tags.