Interest / Behavioral Targeting

Check out our UserDB Interest Quickstart to see how to get this tested quickly

Preferred Method: Segment Targeting

Segment targeting using Kevel Audience or a synced external system (like a CDP) is the recommended approach for targeting interest and behavioral user groups. It enables centralized audience management, simplifies campaign setup, and scales cleanly across use cases.

Overview

With Interest Targeting, you could let Advertisers target specific interest-based segments (and charge a premium for doing so). Such as:

To help with terminology on this page:

(1) [Flight Categories](https://dev.kevel.co/v1.0/reference/flight-categories-1#create-flight-categories)'** or **categories** = the interests you want to target. (2) **interests` = the UserDB name for a category

UserDB UserKeys

Kevel saves a user's interests in UserDB, a data management platform for storing user-level data (more info here). All data is tied to a UserKey, which is the persistent key field in UserDB, and is located in the interests field in UserDB.

Creating Interest Categories

Interests (or Flight Categories) are created during the Flight creation process, or by pinging the Create Flight Categories endpoint.

Add a User to an Interest Category

This happens in one of two ways:

Setting Up Behavioral Tracking - API

Many clients create Interest Segments by tying an Interest to a specific Flight and then, when a user clicks/converts on an Ad from that Flight, automatically updating the user's UserDB record to indicate he/she should be in that segment.

For instance, if you are showing ads for the NBA, if a user clicks on those ads, that user could be added to the "Sports Fan" interest category.

To do this, you need to first Create a Flight with Interest Tracking enabled and THEN map an Interest to it (using the Flight's ID from the Create Flight Response).

1. Create a Flight And Enable Tracking

You'll use the BehavioralTargeting object in the Create Flight or Update Flight endpoint to enable Interest Tracking.

Within that are two other objects: onClick and onConvert. These refer to whether you want to add an Interest to a user based on whether they clicked on the ad, or both clicked AND converted (ex: made a purchase).

Then, you'll want to mark the boolean field of storeCategoriesFromFlightAsInterest as true for onClick or onConvert.

For example, here's enabling it on click:

{
  "Name":"Nike Christmas Flight - iPhones",
  "StartDateISO":"2017-05-01T00:00:00.00.0000000",
  "EndDateISO":"2017-12-31T00:00:00.00.0000000",
  "CampaignId":1234,
  "PriorityId":1234,
  "GoalType": 1,
  "BehavioralTargeting": {
    "onClick": {
      "storeCategoriesFromFlightAsInterest": true
    }
  }
}

Here's enabling it on Conversion:

{
  "Name":"Nike Christmas Flight - iPhones",
  "StartDateISO":"2017-05-01T00:00:00.00.0000000",
  "EndDateISO":"2017-12-31T00:00:00.00.0000000",
  "CampaignId":1234,
  "PriorityId":1234,
  "GoalType": 1,
  "BehavioralTargeting": {
    "onConvert": {
      "storeCategoriesFromFlightAsInterest": true
    }
  }
}

2. Create and Map an Interest to a Flight

Once the Flight is created, store the id in the Response. This is the Flight's ID.

Then, you'll use the Create Flight Categories endpoint to add an Interest to the Flight. If the Interest isn't already created in Kevel, it will create it.

{
  "Id":123456,
  "Name":"Sports"
}

id here is the Flight's ID. Pinging this endpoint will add the Interest to the Flight.

How To Target An Interest Segment

An Interest Segment refers to all the users who are now associated with a specific Interest, either through behavioral click tracking or directly updating UserDB.

You can target this segment with either the UI or API. It requires the use of Custom Targeting, UserDB Reserved Keys, and Zerkel Queries.

Here's an example Create Flight API request to set-up a Flight targeting the "Sport Lovers" interest:

{
  "CampaignId":1234,
  "PriorityId":1325,
  "Name":"Adidas - New Basketball Shoes",
  "StartDateISO":"2017-05-01T00:00:00.00.0000000",
  "GoalType": 1,
  "CustomTargeting":"$user.interests CONTAINS \"Sports Lovers\""
}

In this example, Kevel's Ad Decision Engine will show an Ad from this Flight ONLY if the user's UserDB record shows them tied to the "Sports" interest.

Reporting on Interests

Kevel's reporting does not break down custom targeting. However, you could create Flights that target just one category, which will let you see the performance that way.