Creating a Target Group

You use the Target Group module to bundle together several expressions in order to display an ad or discount to a group of users. You can specify whether certain users are required for or excluded from the group. For example, in a target group consisting of animal owners, you can specify that cat owners are included, but dog owners are excluded by applying actions to the target expressions. You define target groups to create business rules that determine to which groups of users you display your ads or discounts.

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:

Action	Description
Target	The target action can be used in situations that have a limited population of the property available, but the user wants to buy many requests. 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.
Sponsor	The ad associated with the target group will be exclusively displayed on the site. 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.)
Require	The group of users in the target expression will be included in the target group. If the expression evaluates to "True," the content is eligible for delivery; if it is "False," the content is not eligible for delivery.
Exclude	The group of users in the target expression will be excluded from the target group. If the expression evaluates to "True," the content is not eligible for delivery; if it is "False," the content is eligible for delivery.

To create a new target group

1. In Campaigns, click Target Group.

2. In the Target Group screen, click on the toolbar.

3. In the Target Group: New screen, do the following:

   Use this	To do this
   Target group name	Type a name for the new target group.
   Expression	Select the expression to use to create the new target group from the drop-down list. If you want to create a new expression, click Create New Expression . For information about creating new target expressions, see Creating a Target Expression.
   Action	Select the action for the new target group from the drop-down list. The available actions are: Target Sponsor Require Exclude

   Caution

   • The Require and Exclude actions prevent an ad from being displayed to users with the excluded property. Additionally, if a user does not have the required or excluded property defined, they will not receive the ad. For example, if you create a target group that excludes hotmail users, the target group will also exclude users that do not have an e-mail account defined. Therefore, all users that have e-mail accounts defined and do not have hotmail accounts will see the ad.

4. Click Accept.

5. To save the target group and return to the Target Group screen, click on the toolbar.

The new target group is saved in the list of available target groups. You can now use the target group to target your ads or discounts.

See Also

Creating an Ad

Creating a Discount

Creating Campaign Expressions

Creating a Target Expression

Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.