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Key/Value Targeting

Written by Roy
Sep 18, 2020 • 4 min read
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Key/Value Targeting is a powerful method to fine-tune delivery of your campaigns. An ad will only be shown if a key matches the value as defined by the campaign's targeting rules. AdGlare's ad serving engines will automatically check if the key is present in a cookie or in the global JavaScript scope.

Contrary to Keyword Targeting you can use numeric, string and boolean operators to set up your expressions. Here's an example of such a configuration in AdGlare.

String Operators

OperatorExampleMatches
equalscategory=carcarnew carcartoonnew cartoon
does not equalcategory!=carcarnew carcartoonnew cartoon
containscategory=%car%carnew carcartoonnew cartoon
does not containcategory!=%car%carnew carcartoonnew cartoon
begins withcategory=car%carnew carcartoonnew cartoon
does not begin withcategory!=car%carnew carcartoonnew cartoon
ends withcategory=%carcarnew carcartoonnew cartoon
does not end withcategory!=%carcarnew carcartoonnew cartoon
is emptycategory=nullcarnew carcartoonnew cartoon
is not emptycategory!=nullcarnew carcartoonnew cartoon

Numerical Operators

OperatorExampleMatches
equalsval=1091011369
less thanval<1091011369
less than or equalsval<=1091011369
greater thanval>1091011369
greater than or equalsval>=1091011369

Boolean Operators

OperatorExampleMatches
truebool=truetruefalse
falsebool=falsetruefalse
not truebool!=truetruefalse
not falsebool!=falsetruefalse

AND / OR Operators

Use a , to separate your OR statements. Each new line is considered an AND operator. For example:

x>100, x=null
upgraded=false

...can be read as: ((x > 100 || x == null) && upgraded == false)

Do I have to change my ad tags?

For Display Ads you don't have to modify the ad tag whatsoever: it works out of the box. However, for VAST and Native Ads you have to add the key/values to the URL. Keys have to be prepended with kv_. Here's an example:

https://try.engine.adglare.net/?736482736&kv_key1=val1&kv_key2=val2

How does AdGlare retrieve my key/value pairs?

The ad server engines will first check if a cookie is set containing your key. If not, we'll check if your key is found in a global JavaScript variable on the web page by determining:

window[key] !== undefined. If that fails too, the GET parameter will be used as per the example above.

How can I test my configuration?

Keys found as a JavaScript global variable override cookie keys. To test your configuration, you can consider defining those key/value pairs on your web page before loading the ad tag. Alternatively, you can add the key/value pairs to your ad tag as described above.

Good to know...

  • Allowable characters for both keys and values are limited to letters (a-z), digits (0-9), underscores (_) and dashes (-).
  • Operations are case-insensitive.
  • Values should contain no more than 40 characters.
  • If you're targeting user-generated search queries, replace spaces by dashes. For example: q = q.replace(/ /g,'-').replace(/[^0-9a-z-]/gi,'');


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