1. What is a segment in Piano Audience?
A segment is a group of users defined by criteria you set. Each segment has two parts:
-
The definition: the rules or conditions that describe who belongs in the segment.
-
The audience: the users who match those rules.
Segments power a wide range of use cases, including analytics, reporting, on-site targeting in Composer, and activation in ad servers and third-party systems. Piano Audience is designed to gather publisher data into one place so you can create segments from it, with tools such as the segment builder, analytics reporting, and a connectivity hub for downstream integrations.
2. How does Piano Audience evaluate segments?
Piano Audience supports real-time segmentation. As soon as a user meets the criteria for a segment, that user is included, so you can create a segment and start using it for targeting almost immediately.
The platform is optimized for high throughput, performance, and availability rather than strict consistency. In practice, you may see brief delays in segment membership being reflected across interfaces or downstream integrations. These inconsistencies are temporary and usually clear up quickly.
3. What segment types are available for targeting?
Piano Audience commonly uses two segment types for targeting:
3.1 Traffic segments
Traffic segments use filters that match a subset of the total events in Piano Audience. The users who produce those matching events make up the segment.
In practice, traffic segments are usually built in the basic settings mode of the segment builder and are most often based on page view events. They are a good fit for simpler use cases driven by criteria such as visited pages, referrers, or device and browser attributes.
3.2 Piano Audience segments (advanced/JSON)
For more complex segmentation needs, you can create segments using advanced settings, where conditions are defined in JSON.
Piano Audience segments built this way are designed to capture behavior and attributes beyond page views, such as clicks and other custom interactions. Depending on your implementation, these events may be collected server-side or client-side. In either case, your segment criteria must reference the underlying Piano Audience event data or datasets in the JSON definition.
3.3 Lookalike segments
Lookalike segments are built by taking a base segment (typically a traffic segment) and asking Piano Audience to find users who behave similarly to the users in that base. The platform uses machine learning to identify the closest matches and groups them into a new segment.
Lookalike segments are useful for extending high-value audiences, such as subscribers, buyers, or engaged readers, to a larger group of likely matches. For details on how this works, see section 6, What is lookalike modeling?, below.
3.4 Conversion segments
Conversion segments are built from conversion events, such as completed registrations, purchases, or other goal completions you've instrumented. They are useful when you want to target users based on whether they have completed (or have not completed) a specific business outcome, rather than on page view or content signals alone.
4. What data sources can I use to build segments?
You can filter on any of the following to build a custom segment:
-
Page view events.
-
Conversion or interaction events, including custom events (server-side or client-side, depending on your implementation).
-
First-party datasets, such as registration data or other user attributes tied to a user ID.
-
Survey data collected as Piano Audience events. This is useful when you want to target only confirmed responses.
-
Content profiles, including IAB and NLP-derived classification signals (see the next section).
5. How does content classification and IAB-based segmentation work?
Piano Audience can generate automated audience inputs based on IAB audiences and categories. Natural Language Processing (NLP) analyzes articles and produces content profiles that include a classification group, identifying topics aligned with the IAB Tech Lab Content Taxonomy.
You can build segments using criteria such as:
-
Site content > Classification
Piano may also provide default User Interest segments aligned with top-level categories of the IAB v2 taxonomy. These can typically be enabled at the site group level. You can still create additional custom segments for more granular needs, such as parent and child category combinations, which generally requires manual setup in the segment builder.
6. What is lookalike modeling?
Lookalike modeling expands a segment with similar users. You select an existing segment and ask the lookalike model to produce a new segment containing users who behave similarly to the users in the original. Lookalike segments are useful for extending high-value audiences, such as subscribers or buyers, to a larger group of likely matches. For details, see the Lookalike Modeling support article.
7. How do I use segments in Composer and external systems?
Segments built in Piano Audience can be used in Composer, ad servers, and third-party systems for targeting and activation.
For a segment to be targetable in Composer, it must be exposed through the correct segment group configuration so it appears in Composer's segment selection UI. This setup matters most when working with:
-
Piano Audience segments created in advanced (JSON) mode.
-
Audience extension or modeled segments, such as lookalikes.
8. How does Piano Audience handle multi-site setups?
If your organization runs multiple sites, many segmentation capabilities — especially those based on content profiling and classification — operate at the site group level. This lets you segment across all sites within a group, but you still need to create the segments explicitly in the segment builder.
If you do not see the segments or criteria you expect, confirm you are viewing the correct site group in the Piano Audience interface.
9. What do the emd- and sdgs- segment prefixes mean?
Some segments exist for internal platform operations and are not intended for client activation. The two prefixes you are most likely to encounter are listed below.
|
Prefix |
Purpose |
Client-usable? |
|---|---|---|
|
|
Internal segments used by Piano Audience platform operations. |
No |
|
|
Survey-based segments. Useful when building segments from survey or Piano Audience event criteria. |
Yes |
If you want to target only confirmed survey responses, create a segment that references only the relevant survey event criteria, excluding other inferred or extended signals.
10. Why is my segment missing from where I expect it?
If a segment is not visible in the segment builder, a site group view, or Composer targeting, the most common causes are:
-
Wrong site group selected in the Piano Audience interface. Segments and defaults can be site-group scoped.
-
Segment group not configured for Composer, so the segment is not exposed in Composer's UI.
-
Permissions or access: your user role may not have access to all segment sets or segment management features.
-
Temporary propagation delay due to the platform's performance-first architecture. Brief inconsistencies can occur even with real-time evaluation.