Constant matching

Constant matching is a strategy that allows filtering based on an exact match of a pre-designated value. You can use constant matching to determine which rows in your feed should be served before other rows or mark specific rows which belong to a certain category, city, or merchant. Constant matching can also be used to implement a default row when there is actually no default column in your feed (e.g. CSV).

Use cases

Remarketing and backfilling products

Imagine you are running a dynamic remarketing campaign where your creative has a product carousel with 3 product slots. In the event that the viewer has only looked at a single product on your site, you want to also serve products from your feed that are of higher value to you. You can setup an additional column in your feed that indicates the value of each product. You'll then use prioritized rules to order the strategies: 1) rows with a match in the remarketing column (i.e. remarketed values), 2) rows with a specific value match in the constant matching column, and so on.

Default content

If your feed is generated automatically, you may not have a column that indicates default rows of content. No problem! Use constant matching to look for certain values in an already existing column and serve those if all else fails. For example, say you're an auto advertiser, filtering by Placement ID. In the event, there is no match on Placement ID, you can use the car model name column and designate a certain value to act as the default. Again, you'll use prioritized rules: 1) rows with a match on Placement ID, 2) rows with a specific value match in the car model name column.

Feed setup

To use constant matching, there must be a separate column in your feed that contains the constant matching values. The constant matching column can contain text or numeric values.

Constant matching can also be used with other dynamic strategies in your feed. For example, check out this sample feed that illustrates the "Remarketing and backfilling products" use case above. You have both a column for remarketing and a column for constant matching, called product ranking. You can then setup prioritized rules to indicate in which order the two strategies should be used, as well as which value Studio should match on. 

Studio profile setup

After uploading the feed to the Studio profile, follow the below steps that are specific to constant matching:

1. Navigate to Step 2: Manage Data. In the "Data types and filters" section, select the appropriate field type for each of the columns in the feed. For the constant matching column, select List of values as the field type. Make sure the filterable box is checked, and display is toggled to YES.

2. Navigate to Step 3: Manage Rules. Confirm that the "Type" drop-down is set to Prioritized. 

3. Click Manage and begin setting up your prioritized rules. Let's use the remarketing example mentioned above to illustrate an example.

   1. Rule #1: Your first rule is remarketing. Toggle the Auto-filter switch to YES for the remarketing column and enter the remarketing key.

   2. Rule #2: When there is no match on Product SKU, look for an exact match in the Ranking column where the value equals 1. Toggle the Auto-filter switch to YES for the ranking column. Click the radio button for "Constant matching" and enter the exact value to match on (e.g. 1).

   3. Rule #3: When there is no match on Product SKU or ranking = 1, look for an exact match in the Ranking column where the value equals 2. Repeat the setup process for Rule #2... and so on for additional rankings.

      If necessary, you can include comma-separated values in the constant matching field. For example, if products with a ranking of 2 and 3 are given equal value, then you can input "2,3" in the constant matching field. Please note combining values does NOT control the order in which they are served. If you want to control the order in which rows are displayed in your creative, you must create separate rules for each individual ranking value like in the example above (i.e. Rule #1 = remarketing; Rule #2 = constant matching value 1; Rule #3 = constant matching value 2).

4. In Step 4: Generate Code, the dynamic code is generated. Follow these steps to incorporate the dynamic code into the creative asset files and upload the final assets to Studio.

5. In Step 5: Preview, preview the creative by entering the appropriate remarketing values in the preview and clicking the Apply button. There are no additional parameters needed for constant matching.

6. Publish!