Set default content

When a person viewing your ad does not meet any of the targeting criteria, they'll be served a default row of content. It's best to design this content with the rest of your campaign targeting. Follow these steps to include default content in your feed for a good fallback experience.

The most common reason you'll need to serve default content is due to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which applies to users in the European Economic Area (EEA). Google's EU user consent policy requires end user consent to serve personalized ads. If an end user in the EEA has not consented to personalized ads, targeting criteria that relies on Floodlight, audience lists, or remarketing lists will not apply, and only the non-personalized default content may be eligible to serve. This doesn't affect non-personalized targeting criteria, such as geo-targeting, publisher context, scheduled dates, or creative dimension filtering.

Step 1: Feed setup

1. Add a column to the feed (typically called "Default").
2. Each cell in the Default column can have a value of "TRUE" or "FALSE". Find the row of content you want to serve as your default, and enter "TRUE" in that cell.
3. As a best practice, leave the targeting column blank in the default row. Targeting values are disregarded for default columns, so leaving it blank helps make it clear that the feed value isn't used.
4. (Optional) You can also set multiple rows in the feed as defaults. If you mark more than one row as the default, the default row is selected based on the rotation settings applied in Step 3: Manage Rules of the Dynamic workflow.

The column designated as the default cannot be named “default” (with a lower case d) because this is a value used by JavaScript. We recommend calling the default column “Default” or “is_default”.

Step 2: Profile setup

After uploading your feed to Studio in Step 2: Manage Data of the Dynamic workflow, select the name of the column designated as the default column in the Default drop-down.

Any time targeting criteria isn't met, your default content will serve instead.

There's no need to set up a default rule in Step 3: Manage Rules. The only steps needed to serve a default are:

1. Include a Default column in your feed
2. Set at least 1 row of that column to TRUE
3. Select the Default column in Step 2: Manage Data