How to set up a Boosted Campaign

What is a Boosted Campaign?

A Boosted Campaign lets you control which products get priority in your Web, Email, or Site Search recommendation modules for a set period, so you can run brand campaigns, move stock, sell sponsored placements to suppliers, or prioritize high-margin products, all while keeping recommendations personalized and relevant. For the concepts behind Merchandising as a whole, see Introduction to Merchandising.

Prerequisites

One or more existing Web, Email, or Site Search recommendation modules.
An active product feed connected to Merchandising, with at least a Product ID and Image URL for each product. See Setting up a Product Catalog for Merchandising if this isn't set up yet.

How Boosted Campaigns work

Merchandising uses your recommendation modules as advertising space, letting you put specific products in front of customers while keeping recommendations relevant. Each Web and Email recommendation module holds a candidate set of 50 product candidates chosen for relevance to that specific customer, and this set updates dynamically as the customer behaves on site. Merchandising can only boost products that are already in this candidate set, which keeps boosted recommendations relevant even though their ranking has been influenced.

Merchandising automatically tracks each campaign's performance, so you can see what resonates with customers.

How to set up a Boosted Campaign

The Boosted Campaign builder walks you through seven steps. You can jump between them at any time using the step indicators in the top right corner.

Step 1: Schedule the campaign

Name your campaign.
Set a start time. This defaults to the present moment.
Set an end date, or check No end date to leave the campaign running until you stop it manually.

Step 2: Attach Audiences (optional)

Select one or more Audiences from the CDP to target specific visitors.
Check the Activations column to confirm an audience is linked to a Merchandising activation. An audience must be attached to a Merchandising activation to be used effectively in a campaign.

💡In multi‑account environments, campaigns automatically resolve audiences from the appropriate CDP account within the account group.

Step 3: Search and select Products

This is the most involved step: you're choosing exactly which products the campaign features. There are three ways to do it.

Select a feed or Dataflow: choose a Product Feed, or a Dataflow set up with Merchandising as its destination, from the dropdown. Using a Dataflow gives you an already curated product selection.
Search manually: search by Product ID, Name, Category Name, or price range. Enter a comma-separated list to search for multiple products at once. Products stay selected even if you run another search.
Use Advanced Product Filtering: build a custom filter, for example BrandName Contains Adidas, to boost every matching product at once. This is the fastest way to boost a large slice of your catalog. Add more conditions to narrow the results; conditions are combined with "and" logic, so only products meeting every condition are selected.

Product Search (Condition selection) - Step 3.2 B – 111

🔍 Note: Filter options come from the product feed you selected. This includes any Custom Fields set up on that feed. Check the Feeds section under Integrations to see which Custom Fields your feed uses.

Once your filter or search is set the way you want, validate it. Whatever it finds becomes your campaign's product list.

Step 4: Select modules

Choose one or more Modules to boost your products in, grouped by Web, Email, or Search. You must select at least one

🔍 Note: A module can only be active in one campaign at a time. If the module you want is already in use, pick a different module or adjust your campaign's timing.

Step 5: Choose boosting level

Choose a boosting level: High places products near the top of the module; Medium and Low leave more room for the module's own personalization logic.
Optionally, choose Suppress instead, to actively push selected products to the bottom of the ranking. Suppressed products still appear in the candidate set but are rarely shown to the customer. This is useful for keeping low-margin products out of prominent spots, for example in search results.

🔍Note: Not every recommendation module supports Suppress. If you pick a module that doesn't support it, you won't be able to save the campaign. In general, only newer modules support Suppress.

👀 Use case: These levels set the same underlying boosting factor described in Merchandise boosting. If you need something the campaign builder doesn't offer, like a different weight per product category, you can set that boosting factor directly through the Control Panel or the API instead.

Step 6: Sister Accounts (optional)

If your account has Sister Accounts, choose whether to run the campaign on any of them as well. Skip this step if you don't have Sister Accounts, or only want the campaign on this account.

⚠️ Warning: Cloning to Sister Accounts is currently disabled for manually selected products, due to a technical limitation. Use Advanced Product Filtering instead if you need the campaign to apply across Sister Accounts.

Step 7: Review the summary

Review the complete overview of your campaign's settings.
Use the step indicators in the top right corner to jump back and adjust any step.

Viewing your campaigns

Open Boosted Campaigns in the menu to see all your campaigns as cards, each showing its period, audiences, modules, products, and boost level.

The Active tab shows campaigns that are Running or Paused.
The Completed tab shows campaigns that have finished or been stopped manually.

🔍Note: Hover over a campaign's title to see its title and description in full.

Each card also shows two performance metrics:

Clicks: the number of clicks on products featured in the campaign.
Total campaign revenue: total revenue generated during the campaign period by products featured in the campaign.

Click Reporting on a campaign card for a detailed breakdown. See Introduction to Merchandising Reporting for more on what's included.