Choose which overlapping audience comes out on top

Choose which message a visitor sees when they match more than one audience. The campaign editor flags overlapping changes and lets you put the audiences in the order you want.

Understand what counts as an overlap

An overlap needs both of these things:

• A visitor can match both audiences' targeting rules.
• The audiences change the same part of an element on the open page.

That part could be its content, visibility, a style property, a CSS class, or an attribute such as a link destination. Two audiences changing different elements don't usually overlap. A content replacement on a surrounding element can also overlap a change inside it, because replacing the surrounding content affects what's inside.

For example, WorkForge (opens in a new tab) could replace a headline for agency owners and replace that same headline for existing customers. A customer who runs an agency can match both audiences, so their order matters.

Different choices in a group that allows only one matching segment can't overlap: a visitor can't belong to both choices at once. Audiences from different groups can overlap, as can audiences in a group that allows multiple matching segments. Two audiences targeting the same segment can also overlap.

These notices check audiences within the current campaign only. They don't compare changes across separate campaigns.

Find the overlap notice

In Edit, select an affected element. The element editor shows a compact notice such as 1 other audience also changes this, with a Review link.

The left panel also shows a notice such as 1 overlap to review when overlapping changes are found on the open page. Click that notice or Review to open Overlapping audiences.

The dialog lists the affected elements and audiences, with their group names and a content sample when available.

Choose the higher audience

For two overlapping audiences:

1. Find the affected element in Overlapping audiences.
2. Under Which audience comes out on top?, select the audience you want to apply last.
3. Click Done to save the order.

For three or more audiences, drag them into order with the highest first. You can also use the up and down buttons beside each audience. Click Done when the order is right.

This changes the audience order for the campaign, not just that element. The same order applies wherever those audiences overlap. It doesn't stop lower audiences from making their other changes.

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Overlapping audiences dialog showing audience order and which headline winsOriginalOriginal

Know what the higher audience does

Higher audiences apply last. What happens depends on the kind of change:

• A full content replacement overwrites the content from lower audiences.
• A find-and-replace change edits the content already there, including content from lower audiences. It only changes text that matches what it's looking for.
• For another shared property, such as a button color, the higher audience's setting takes precedence.

For example, a lower audience might replace a headline with “Plan every client project.” A higher audience that finds “client” and replaces it with “agency” produces “Plan every agency project.” If the higher audience instead replaces the whole headline, its full headline is what the visitor sees.

You can also avoid an unwanted overlap by changing an audience's targeting rules or having it change a different element.

Check the combined page

Switch to Preview and choose segments that match the overlapping audiences. Check the final wording, visibility, and styling together, then check each audience on its own.

Preview personalization by audience explains the pickers and on-site check. When the combined page shows the intended content, the overlap order is doing its job.