Keyword Targeting

Written by Roy

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1. Passing on keywords to the Ad Tag

2. Next: Targeting campaigns to those Keywords

3. Negative Keywords

4. Wildcards, partial-matches

5. No exclusivity by default

6. Serving Keyword Targeted Campaigns First

Keyword Targeting allows you to show certain campaigns only if they match the keywords passed in the ad code. This type of targeting can be used in a wide range of cases. It will help you to deliver the message to an audience who may likely be interest in the ad. This will drive conversions and increase CTR.

For example, you can fine-tune delivery:

in articles about cars (contextual)
to upgraded members only
based on the visitor's search query

Below we'll discuss how to set up keyword targeting in your AdGlare Ad Server.

Passing on keywords to the Ad Tag

Append your keywords to the ad tag via the key/value pair &keywords=... Separate multiple keywords by commas. Here's an example:

Please note that:

Allowable characters are limited to letters (a-z), digits (0-9) and underscores.
Keywords are case-insensitive.
Keywords should contains at least 3 characters.
Spaces are ignored (Tip: replace them with underscores).

Next: Targeting campaigns to those Keywords

In your AdGlare ad server, browse to Campaigns arrow_forwardTargeting Rules and scroll down to the section Keyword Targeting. The rules that you can define here can contain logical OR and AND operators by writing a comma or a new line accordingly. Let me give you a few examples.

We'd like to target the campaign to the keywords 'cars' OR 'motors'. We then write:

cars, motors

Now, if we want to target the campaign to the keywords 'cars' AND 'audi', we write:

cars
audi

Imagine we'd like to elaborate further on this by only showing the campaign when the keywords 'cars' OR 'motors' are present AND the visit came from a member upgraded to a silver membership:

cars, motors
upgraded_silver

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords can be targeted by adding the ! sign before the word. Let's take the last example, but now I'd like to target the campaign when the member is NOT upgraded to a silver membership.

cars, motors
!upgraded_silver

Wildcards, partial-matches

Instead of an exact match, you can specify partial matches by using the % sign. Here it goes:

%juice targets juice, apple_juice, but NOT juice_bottle

juice% targets juice, juice_bottle, but NOT apple_juice

%juice% targets juice, juice_bottle, apple_juice, apple_juice_bottle and juicer

No exclusivity by default

If you add keywords to your ad tag, that doesn't mean that only campaigns with Keyword Targeting enabled are served. Campaigns with Keyword Targeting disabled are still eligible to be displayed.

Serving Keyword Targeted Campaigns First

If you pass on keywords to your ad code, you may want to show campaigns that matches those keywords first. To set this up, simply add your Keyword Targeted campaigns to a higher campaign tier than non-targeted campaigns. The engines will evaluate all campaigns in higher tiers first. If none are eligible, campaigns in lower tiers are checked.

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External Resources

Wikipedia: Keyword Advertising

Google Emphasizes Responsive Ads for Mobile