Expression-Based Targeting

Article
11/12/2009

Expression-based targeting is the process of creating expressions that define the users or context you want to target and the content you want to deliver. An expression is a condition that is evaluated against profiles to determine whether to deliver content, or to perform another action. For example, an expression might be user.totalvisit > 100. If this expression evaluates to "True," then a specific piece of content is displayed to the user.

You use the Campaigns modules in Business Desk to create expressions, and then combine the expressions with the action you want to perform after the expression is evaluated. You can create two types of expressions:

Target expressions. Identify where, when, and to whom content should be displayed. For example, you can target content to users who have specific profile properties. You can also target content to specific sections of a Web site, called page groups. For example, you can create a target expression that will display certain ads only on sports pages.
Catalog expressions. Specify the products in a catalog that a discount can be applied to. For example, a catalog expression might be Product.price = 20.00. If this expression evaluates to "True" for a particular product, then a discount of 10 percent is applied to the price of that product when users add it to their shopping baskets.

After you have created target expressions, you can combine them to form a target group. A target group is a collection of expressions and actions. For example, you might create one expression to show a specific piece of content to users who have visited the site 10 times, and another expression to show content to users who have purchased a soccer shirt. You can combine the two expressions in a target group with AND or OR statements. For example:

If the user has visited the site 10 times AND the user has purchased a soccer shirt,

Display an advertisement for a soccer product.

In a target group you combine expressions by specifying the action to be taken when each expression evaluates to "True." Each action has two multipliers: a multiplier to apply if the expression is true, and a multiplier to apply if the expression is false. When the multiplier is applied, the expression is given a score, which affects whether the content is eligible for delivery. You can specify the following actions:

Target. If the expression evaluates to "True," the score is increased, as is the probability the content will be shown. If the expression evaluates to "False," the score is not changed. In both scenarios, the content is eligible for delivery.
Require. If the expression evaluates to "True," the content is eligible for delivery; if it is "False," the content is not eligible for delivery.
Exclude. If the expression evaluates to "True," the content is not eligible for delivery; if it is "False," the content is eligible for delivery.
Sponsor. If the expression evaluates to "True," the content is eligible for delivery and no other content is eligible unless it too has an expression with action = Sponsor. (Sponsor has only one multiplier.) For example, if Microsoft sponsors an advertisement on a home page, only Microsoft advertisements are displayed; however, if there are more advertisements from other companies sponsoring the home page, those advertisements would also be eligible for display.

A site developer can change the values of the multipliers provided with Commerce Server. You might want to do this to give expressions with one action type a higher priority than expressions with a different action type.

Expression-Based Targeting

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