Offer groups are a robust feature that redirects a user to the most relevant offer in the group based on geo-location and device information. This is especially useful when you can redirect users who don’t speak the same language or use the same device type as the offer they would typically reach. Unlike offer categories, offer groups let you set up a pool of offers where users can be redirected if they don’t match the targeting rules of the tracking link they originally clicked on.
For example, if a user clicks through a tracking link from Germany, but your offer only targets traffic from Canada, then the user would normally be sent to a blank page due to the geotargeting settings. With offer groups, if the offer were added to a group along with an offer that was targeted to Germany, then the user would be redirected to the German offer.
This article outlines setting up offer groups and the redirect logic behind them.
Creating an Offer Group
To start, you have to create offer groups so you can add offers to them. Go to Offers > Offer Groups. At the top of the table, click Add Offer Group. Give the group a name, and click Create to add the offer group to the list:
Adding Offers to an Offer Group
Now that the group has been created, you can add offers to this group. There are two ways you can do this:
- On the offer group page, add additional offers by clicking Add Offer at the top. On the next page, select the offer from a dropdown and click Add to add it to the group.
- On the offer page, add the offer to one or more offer groups simultaneously. To do this, go to the Targeting panel of the offer and click Edit. At the top of the page, select one or more offer groups to add the offer to. Hold Ctrl/Command when clicking to select more than one group at a time. Once you’re finished, click Save.
Offer Group Logic
Offer groups act as a redirect pool between offers in that group, so users are sent to the offer that best matches their location and device. Users who match the targeting rules of the first offer reached are not redirected.
Note: Only offers with an “Active” status redirect users to other offers in a group. Offers with other statuses instead use the Redirect Offer setting or the Default Redirect URL Platform-wide setting. For information on the offer redirect flow when offer caps are involved, see our Conversion & Budget Caps article.
Geotargeting
When a user is redirected through a tracking link, the ad server looks at the offer’s settings to see if geotargeting is set and enforced. If the user’s IP address matches the countries in the offer, then the user is redirected to the offer normally.
If the user doesn’t match the offer's geotargeting, then the ad server checks to see if the offer is part of an offer group containing an offer that matches the geotargeting. If so, the user is redirected to that offer’s landing page, and the click is counted for the offer the user successfully redirects to:
The ad server gives redirect preference to offers that have set geotargeting over those with no targeting set. So, if there is an offer that matches the user’s country and another offer that isn’t targeted, the user redirects to the offer with matching geotargeting.
Some possible targeting scenarios and their corresponding redirect outcomes are listed below:
User meets offer targeting for offer:
The user is redirected to the offer as intended.
User doesn’t meet offer targeting, but a valid targeted offer is in group:
The user is redirected to the offer in the group that their country IP matches with.
User doesn’t meet offer targeting, but multiple valid offers are in group:
If multiple offers in the group match the targeting of the user, then the ad server selects a valid offer at random to redirect to.
User doesn’t meet offer targeting, and a non-targeted offer is in group:
If the user doesn’t match the offer targeting, and no other offers are targeted to the user, then the ad server looks for non-targeted offers to redirect them to. We recommend always having one non-targeted offer in an offer group as a catch-all offer in case the user does not match any other offer.
User doesn’t meet offer targeting, no other offers match targeting, and no non-targeted offers are in group:
Since the user does not match targeting for any offers in the group, and there are no non-targeted offers to fall back on, the user is directed to a blank page.
Advanced Targeting
With advanced targeting, instead of using the ‘hard-enforce’ method that involves sending the user to a blank page if they do not meet the targeting requirements for the offer or other offers in an offer group, the advanced targeting uses a more flexible ‘soft-enforce’ option. If the user does not meet the device/session targeting requirements, instead of sending the user to a blank page, they are redirected to the original offer landing page.
With offer groups, you can still pool offers using advanced targeting, and they will use the same logic as geotargeting in selecting what offer to redirect to in the group. The only difference is when they fail to match any offer, and there are no non-targeted offers to redirect to. In that case, they will redirect to the original offer tracking link because the nature of advanced targeting does not redirect users to blank pages.