Overview
Video targeting gives customers powerful functionality to target videos. Users can be creative and flexible in choosing how to target videos. Organizations can target videos to viewers at specific times and countries. For example an instructional sales or training video, meetings, town hall gatherings, post-live events recordings etc.
Publishers can target their content including branded content and employ monetization tactics.
Implementation of this functionality allows decision-makers to target content to specific audiences by defining when content is played back, to which geographical location, to which devices and the pace at which viewers will see the content.
The Video Targeting function operates as a "Positive" function only. This means you can specify when and where the video will be played by including certain devices or countries. Exclusions are not possible; you can only include specific criteria for video playback.
Users require proper security privileges to see and use this functionality both on the account and user-level. Please contact your Customer Success Manager to enable this feature on your account.
Setup
Video Targeting functionality is accessed by selecting a specific video in the Studio.
The Targeting tab is one of the various tabs that appear after selecting a specific Video.
In order to target content, follow these steps:
Choose whether to apply "Budget Control" to your targeting rules. If enabled, relevant budget-related columns will be added to the table, allowing you to set budget limitations. If not enabled, there will be no budget limitations, and the targeting rules will only include date, device, and geographical criteria.
Click the Add button shown on the right-hand side of the Targeting tab. Define the timeframe in which targeted video delivery should run by choosing the Start/End Date and time:
Select the devices and geographical region you are targeting. By default, all devices are selected. If no specific geographical location is needed, choose "All Countries" option.
In case "Budget Control" was enabled, Enter the Budget under the "Budget Views" column. The Budget column indicates the maximum number of times the video can be played back. Values are between 1 and 100,000,000.
The next targeting line columns are explained in the table below.
Targeting Line Actions and Read-Only Values
Label | Description |
Delivered Views | The actual number of times the video was played back i.e times delivered. New video delivery lines are assigned the value 0. |
Pacing | The pace at which the videos in the budget is played back. The value is based both on the pre-defined timeframe (Start/End Date) and the View Budget and is calculated automatically by the system to ensure even distribution throughout the video delivery schedule. The default is: "Hourly, even”. Additional pacing options will be added in the future. |
Action | User actions that are possible for targeting-line. Users can click either Play, Pause, Stop, or Delete depending on the targeting line status (see below) |
Note
Users setting up video targeting criteria (lines) can add multiple targeting criteria lines by repeating the steps above. The system will not validate to check if a certain line has overlapping conditions with other lines. For example, line 1 targets the US and line 2 targets the US and Canada, with desktop delivery during overlapping time frames. In such a case both video delivery schedules will deliver impressions.
General Targeting Settings
Besides the "Budget Control" There are two toggles that appear on the left-hand side of the Targeting tab:
Enable Targeting - whether targeting is possible for the selected video
Allow Ad Playback - whether ads can be displayed in the video. When Enabled the Video will be open to Ad playback.
Targeting Line Statuses & Actions
A targeting line always has a specific status and each status determines what action(s) can be taken when the targeting line is in this status. The Action column/options appear on the right-most column of every targeting line. The table below explains each status and the available actions per status
Editing Campaign Lines
The table below lists the possibilities of editing video targeting lines based on their status. To edit a line item (Start/End Date, Device, etc.) simply double-click the value you want to change.
Editing Lines per Status
Line Status | Can be Edited |
Planned | Start/End Date, Device, Geo, Geo Action, View Budget |
Paused | End Date. Changing the End Date will result in a new Views Budget value |
Stopped | None |
Running | None |
Note
There may be a delay (up to two hours) when trying to view changes in the player and with respect to the display of delivered impressions.
Changes to a Budget will always take effect starting from the next whole hour. For example - if a change was made at 14.12 then the new hourly budget will take effect from 15.00.
Filtering for Targeted Videos
Using the main video filtering functionality accessed from the Video Library, users can filter for videos that have one or more targeting lines according to the targeting line status:
Indicating Targeted Videos
If targeting is enabled for a video the icon of targeting appears in Video Search and Playlists on the bottom left corner of the video thumbnail.
