Targeting Rules

Targeting rules define which users see your content. Rules are organized into a tree structure of groups and conditions, evaluated by the targeting engine at runtime.

Rule Tree Structure

A rule tree consists of rule groups and rule nodes:

• Rule group -- a container with a logical operator (AND or OR) and one or more child rules or nested groups.
• Rule node -- a leaf condition that compares a single user attribute against a value using a comparison operator.

Groups can be nested to express complex logic. An empty group evaluates to true.

AND Group
  ├── role eq "admin"
  ├── OR Group
  │     ├── country in ["US", "CA"]
  │     └── plan eq "enterprise"
  └── loginCount gte 5

In this example, the user must be an admin and have logged in at least 5 times and be located in the US/CA or on an enterprise plan.

Comparison Operators

The targeting engine supports 15 comparison operators:

Operator	Name	Description	Accepted Types
eq	Equals	Strict equality	Any
neq	Not equals	Strict inequality	Any
gt	Greater than	Field is greater than value	Number
lt	Less than	Field is less than value	Number
gte	Greater than or equal	Field is greater than or equal to value	Number
lte	Less than or equal	Field is less than or equal to value	Number
contains	Contains	String includes substring (case-insensitive), or array includes element	String, Array
not_contains	Does not contain	Inverse of contains	String, Array
in	In array	Field value exists in the provided array	Any (rule value must be Array)
not_in	Not in array	Field value does not exist in the provided array	Any (rule value must be Array)
exists	Exists	Field is not undefined or null	Any
not_exists	Does not exist	Field is undefined or null	Any
regex	Regex match	Field matches a regular expression	String
starts_with	Starts with	Field begins with the given prefix (case-sensitive)	String
ends_with	Ends with	Field ends with the given suffix (case-sensitive)	String

Type Coercion Behavior

The evaluator uses strict typing with no implicit coercion:

• Numeric operators (gt, lt, gte, lte) return false if either the field value or rule value is not a number.
• String operators (contains, regex, starts_with, ends_with) return false if either operand is not a string.
• contains and not_contains on strings use case-insensitive comparison. On arrays, string elements are compared case-insensitively while non-string elements use strict equality.

Client-Side Evaluation

The SDK evaluates targeting rules locally using the user context passed during initialization. The context object includes attributes such as userId, email, role, custom properties, and page URL. Rules are downloaded once on SDK initialization and re-evaluated when the user context changes.

Priority When Multiple Audiences Match

When a user matches more than one audience, content delivery follows these rules:

1. Explicit priority -- audiences with a higher priority value take precedence.
2. Specificity -- audiences with more matching rules are preferred when priorities are equal.
3. First match -- if priority and specificity are identical, the first audience in creation order wins.

Only one variant of a given content item is shown to a user at any time.