Share via

Microsoft Invest - Segment modifier

  • Article

Segment Modifier allows you to adjust a campaign's bid at the time of the auction using data you have about your users. This is achieved by associating a modifier segment with an audience segment. The campaign is then able to use this information to modify the bid when one of your users is present. There are two ways the campaign can modify the bid:

  • User Bid Price: Determine what absolute price you will bid for the impression. This option is best for short campaigns with high budgets. Due to their short flight dates, they may not generate enough data to train our optimization engine effectively.
  • User Bid Modifier: Modify the bid determined by our optimization engine by a specified amount. This option is best for campaigns with medium-to-high budgets, with long or repeating flight dates, that use click-conversion performance metrics.

Note

In this document, "an impression" is used to refer to an impression involving a user in one of your audience segments, where that audience segment is associated with a modifier segment.

Step 1: Upload your audience and modifier segments to the batch segment API

Upload both your audience and modifier segments using the Batch Segment Service. You'll then associate each modifier segment with a campaign using the procedure defined in Step 2. Note that each modifier segment may only be associated with a single audience segment, whereas a single audience segment can be part of more than one modifier segment.

The user bid price and user bid modifier need to be decimal values (e.g., floating-point numbers). Unfortunately, the segment data file format only accepts integers in the VALUE field where you define your user bid price or user bid modifier. Therefore you'll need to multiply your desired bid price or bid modifier by 1000. For example, to specify a user bid price of $0.75, write the integer 750 into the VALUE field of the segment data file. For a complete description of the file format, see Batch Segment Service - File Format.

Step 2: Associate a modifier segment with your campaign via the API

Using the Campaign Service, you'll need to associate a modifier segment ID with your campaign; when creating or updating your campaign via the API, pass in the ID of the modifier segment you uploaded in one or both of the following subfields of the campaign_modifiers array:

  • segment_modifier_id: Set this field if you want to apply a User Bid Modifier on an impression.
  • segment_price_id: Set this field if you want to apply a User Bid Price on an impression.

You can determine how your campaign should weight the modifier segment's VALUE on an impression using the segment_modifier_weight value. It works by multiplying VALUE from the segment data file by the amount in this field based on the presence of the audience segment defined in segment_modifier_id or segment_price_id. This should be an integer between 0 and 2000, corresponding to a decimal number between 0 and 2.

Here's an example of a campaign object using this format:

{
  "campaign": {
    "id": 123,
    "name": "ModifiedCampaign",
    "campaign_modifiers": [
      {
        "type": "segment_modifier_id",
        "value": 456
      },
      {
        "type": "segment_price_id",
        "value": 789
      },
      {
        "type": "segment_modifier_weight",
        "value": 1200
      }
    ]
  }
}

To achieve complete overlap, all of the cookies in your target audience (across one or all audience segments) should have a modifier value in the modifier segment.

Note

There are very few use cases requiring both a segment_price_id and segment_modifier_id on the same campaign.

Step 3: Set your optimization levers

Finally, the Campaign Service provides another optimization lever you can pull in addition to the user bid price or user bid modifier:

userprice_default_modifier: If a user in one of your audience segments is present on an impression, but their audience segment is not associated with a modifier segment, you can still modify the bid using the value in this field.

Put another way, if no modifier segment is associated with the audience segment on an impression (or if no VALUE is set for the modifier segment), we will modify the bid based on the value of this field. It defaults to 1, but can be changed to any floating-point value between 0 and 1. For example, you can set this value to 0.5 to multiply our optimization engine's calculated bid by 0.5. To refrain from bidding when no VALUE has been set on the modifier segment (or when no modifier segment is associated with the audience segment), set this field to 0.

Segment Modifier Testing Guidelines