Exclusions

Create an exclusion in Adobe Target Recommendations to prevent products or content from being recommended to visitors. An exclusion is a subset of products or content that should not be recommended to visitors.

Exclusions are available across the entire account. Unlike collections, where you specify a specific collection for each experience as you create a Recommendations activity, exclusions apply to all activities across the account. There is no option to assign an exclusion group during activity creation.

Some examples of times you would use exclusions include:

• Products that have been discontinued.
• The Fall and Winter catalog is now the only catalog that should be present online. Any item from the Summer catalog is no longer available for purchase.
• Items that might be inappropriate to recommend on most pages or screens (adult products, NC-17 movies, and so forth).
• Products with incomplete metadata fields (missing thumbnail, price, or other important metadata).
• Products that should never be recommended (maybe a SKU exists in the system for something but it isn’t a purchasable item. Or maybe it is a fake SKU for the QA team to simulate a purchase without actually ordering something, and so forth).

Create an exclusion

1. Click Recommendations > Exclusions to display the list of existing exclusions.

   The “Number of Items” reported for each exclusion on the Exclusions list view is the number of products matching the rules for that exclusion within the configured default Recommendations host group (environment). See Plan and implement Recommendations in the Adobe Target Developer Guide for information about how to change the default host group.

2. (Conditional) Click the Show Filters icon ( ), then choose the desired environment from the Environment drop-down list while creating (or updating) an exclusion to preview the contents of the exclusion in that environment. By default, results from the default host group are displayed.

3. Click Create Exclusion.

4. Type an exclusion Name and enter an optional description.

5. Use the rule builder to create your exclusions.

   Select a parameter in the Rules list, select an operator, and then enter one or more values to identify the products. Separate multiple values with commas.

6. Click Create.

Edit, copy, or delete an exclusion

Click the More Actions icon ( ) next to the desired exclusion in the list, then click the appropriate icon: Edit, Copy, or Delete.

You can copy an existing exclusion to create a duplicate exclusion that you can then modify. This option lets you create a similar exclusion with less effort.

Be aware that exclusions are available across the entire account. Ensure that you consider this caveat before deleting an exclusion. Deleted exclusions cannot be recovered.

Training video: Create collections and exclusions in Recommendations (7:05)

This video contains the following information:

• Create a collection
• Create an exclusion