Matching rules and network defaults: fields and settings

Reference for Matching rules and network defaults.

The rule form

Field	What it does
Name	Required, capped at 128 characters — checked by the form and again by the server. Shown in the grid and in every account user’s rule picker, so name it for what it selects, not for the ticket that asked for it.
Type	Campaign Rule or Inventory Rule. Defaults to Campaign Rule. Each option describes itself in the open dropdown (there is no help paragraph under the closed picker). Changing it clears the chosen categories.
Active	Off for a new rule. Inactive rules stay in the grid and keep every attachment, but they are dropped from the ad cache and so stop being enforced. The account-side picker also hides them until the user ticks its Show inactive box.
Apply automatically to	Three checkboxes matching the type — All sites / All zones / All placements for a Campaign rule, All advertisers / All campaigns / All banners for an Inventory rule. See Make a rule apply automatically.
Conditions	Zero or more condition rows, ANDed together and separated by an And divider. Nothing requires you to add one — and a rule saved with no conditions matches everything on the other side, so attaching it widens rather than narrows.

Type	Tests	Attach it to	So it controls
Campaign Rule	advertising categories + labels (demand)	sites, zones, placements	which demand may serve on that inventory
Inventory Rule	inventory categories + labels (supply)	advertisers, campaigns, banners	where that demand may serve

A condition

Control	What it does
include / exclude	include keeps the entities that satisfy the condition; exclude keeps the ones that fail it. It inverts this condition’s test — it is not the same operation as the include/exclude on the account-side rule group.
Operator	AND requires every selected category and every selected label to be present. OR requires any one selection, across categories and labels together.
Category	Advertising categories for a Campaign rule, inventory categories for an Inventory rule. Type to filter; pick as many as you like.
Label	Labels, for either type. Empty on a network that has no labels defined.

The categories and labels a rule reads are not necessarily the ones on the entity you attached it to. Inventory categories come from the site, labels from the placement; advertising categories come from the advertiser, labels from the banner plus its campaign. The full matrix is in Attach matching rules to an entity.

The rules grid

ID, Name, Type, Details (the condition count, e.g. 1 match(es)), Status (Active or not active) and Default for (badges for the levels the rule auto-applies to). No search box; the toolbar is Add, Edit, Delete, Activate, Deactivate. Edit lights up only when exactly one row is ticked; the other three accept a multi-row selection. Double-clicking a row opens it.

Re-saving a rule rebuilds all of its conditions from scratch: the stored condition rows are discarded and replaced with new ones, so anything keyed on a condition’s identity — an audit trail, an external reference — will not survive an edit. The rule’s own id is stable.

Inventory & campaigns settings

Almost every card is an independent form with its own Save button — no page-level save, and saving one card leaves the others untouched. Site revenue share preferences and Site pricing preferences have an on/off switch in the heading (turning it off asks for confirmation and deletes the bindings or per-country rates) and a table whose rows you Add and Delete one by one, with no card-level Save. Default VAST tracking events is two blocks, each with its own Save. A Done toast confirms a save; Site default status says Default site status changed.

Defaults that shape new objects only

Changing any of these leaves existing objects exactly as they are.

Card	What it sets	Applied when
Site default status	The network approval status a new site is given — Approved, Pending or Rejected. Not an active/inactive switch: ad serving does not read the approval status, so a Pending site’s placements serve while it waits for review.	A new site is created. Bypassed to Approved when the creator holds the sites-approval permission (a network administrator switched into a publisher creates with the publisher’s permissions). The setting only bites for publishers creating their own sites.
Site revenue share preferences	A template of advertiser/campaign → revenue-share-% bindings, copied onto each new site. Turning the card off deletes every binding.	A new site is created. Ad serving reads each site’s own copy, never this template. See Pricing.
Site pricing preferences	A template of the global rate plus per-country CPM/CPC rates, copied onto each new site. Turning the card off loses the per-country rates.	A new site is created.
Advertiser default status	Whether new advertisers, campaigns and banners are created active or inactive.	Each of those three is created.
Piggybacks default status	Whether a new piggyback row starts active (field label Default Status of Piggyback for Inventory/Advertiser). Governs the status of rows you add in the piggyback grids on sites, placements and campaigns — see Piggybacks.	A new piggyback row is opened.
Rules panel default status	Six On/Off selects — Site card, Zone card, Placement card, Advertiser card, Campaign card, Banner card. Each decides whether a new object of that kind is created with its Matching rules card switched on and the Apply automatically to rules attached.	That kind of object is created. Ships Off for all six.
Daisy chaining lookup depth	The hop count copied into a placement’s daisy-chaining config when that config has none yet. Ad serving reads the per-placement value, not this one. Range-checked in the browser only (1–100); a value sent by other means is stored unvalidated. See Daisy chaining and passback.	A placement’s daisy chaining is first configured.
Default VPAID framework	The framework pre-selected on the create form for a new video banner. It never rewrites an existing banner. The picker is populated by the VPAID-frameworks admin endpoint, guarded by its own permission: an administrator who holds Inventory & campaigns settings but not VPAID framework management sees an empty dropdown rather than an error. See Video banners.	The banner create form is opened.
Default VAST tracking events	Which VAST playback events (quartiles, complete, mute, viewability…) are already switched on when a video placement or video banner is created — two independent sets, New video placements and New video banners, each with its own Save. Copied once, at creation: changing the defaults never touches entities that already exist, a copied placement or banner keeps its source’s events rather than the defaults, OpenRTB banners are skipped (no VAST tracking card), auto-placements are not covered.	A video placement or video banner is created.
Placement domain as default channel	One Active/Inactive select, Default value of domain as default channel for new placements: whether a new placement is created with its domain used as the default channel. See Create a placement.	A placement is created.

Settings read live

These take effect for everything on the network, including objects created long ago.

Card	What it sets	Read at
Rules management	Two selects — Publishers tab (All campaigns rules / None of campaigns rules) and Advertisers tab (All inventory rules / None of inventory rules). They decide what an entity with the Matching rules card on and no rules attached matches: All… means it pairs with everything on the other side, None… means it drops out of rule matching. The entity’s card prints the answer in its own empty state. Needs the Rules permission as well as Inventory & Campaigns Settings.	Every ad-cache rebuild, and every entity edit page.
Banner approval obligatory fields	Which of Advertiser category, Pricing, Targeting, Limits must be filled before a banner can be submitted for approval. The Pricing, Targeting and Limits checks are additionally skipped for a user who lacks the matching permission (Manage Pricing, Manage Demand Targeting, Manage Capping & Limitations); the Advertiser category check applies to everyone.	Every submit-for-approval. Tightening it immediately blocks submissions for banners that already exist.
Banner approval moderation fields	Which field changes on an edit send a creative back to moderation — three checkboxes, URL for local/external banner type, Banner Creative for Local/External File Banner Type and Code for HTML code banner type. It does not decide whether new banners are moderated: a banner created by a user who holds Banners Moderation With Deactivation or Soft Banners Moderation (and not Banners Approval) starts pending whatever this card says, and the card is never consulted for a brand-new banner. See Moderate banners, sites and traffic quality.	Every banner save.
Accounting period management	Three sets of share types (Is Owner, Can Edit, Can View), labelled Sharing type requirement for preliminary confirming / confirming / finalizing. The report page enables the matching accounting-period buttons only when the user’s share on every selected row is in the set; an empty set means any share qualifies. See Finances, fees and referral billing.	Every analytics page load.
Macros accessibility	Two Active/Inactive selects — publisher-side entity names ($$PLACEMENT_NAME$$, $$ZONE_NAME$$, $$PUBLISHER_NAME$$ and their _ESC variants) and advertiser-side ones ($$ADVERTISER_NAME$$, $$CAMPAIGN_NAME$$, $$BANNER_NAME$$). Switching a side off strips those macros from the served markup rather than leaving them unresolved, and removes them from the macro reference lists in the UI. See Macros reference.	Every macro substitution, i.e. every ad served.

Over the API

Any signed-in user can read the three defaults that shape their own creates: GET /rest-api/network/settings.do returns newEntities.active (Advertiser default status), newEntities.siteApprovalStatus (Site default status, only for a user who may create sites) and newEntities.piggybackActive.

Where the vocabularies live

Screen	Where it is documented
Categories & labels → Advertising categories / Inventory categories	Manage category taxonomies — the two vocabularies a rule’s Category field draws on.
Creatives & tags → Custom ad units & sizes	Other admin tools — the size catalogue every placement and creative picks from.
Categories & labels → Labels	Manage categories and labels — free-form values attachable to banners, campaigns and placements, and matchable by a rule’s Label field.
Categories & labels → Custom country groups	Not yet documented. Named country sets reusable in geo targeting — edit the group once and every targeting rule using it follows.

Per-role notes

• Admin with Rules only — can author rules but not set Rules panel default status, so Apply automatically to never reaches new entities until someone with Inventory & Campaigns Settings turns the card on. Grant the two together.
• Admin with Inventory & Campaigns Settings only — sees and saves Rules panel default status, but not the Rules management card, which needs the Rules permission as well.
• Network manager — never sees these screens; works with the Matching rules card (active rules of the opposite type only) and Matched banners / Matched placements.
• Publisher, advertiser — no Matching rules card; rules apply to them unseen.

Related

• Matching rules and network defaults
• Attach matching rules to an entity
• Manage category taxonomies