Sequence Rules

20 min

Who is this for: Partners and integration engineers who need fine-grained control over which offers appear in specific positions within a Moments response.

Outcome: Create whitelist and blacklist sequence rules scoped to individual placements to ensure the right offers appear at each position in the offer sequence.

Overview

Sequence Rules let you control which offers appear at each position in a Moments response. Using whitelists and blacklists, you can define exactly which offers, offer types, goal types, or offer groups are eligible to serve at positions 1 through 5 in the offer sequence.

Rules are scoped to individual placements. A rule assigned to one placement has no effect on any other placement, and rules from different placements are never combined in a single request.

Core Concepts

Positions

Moments responses return up to five offers in order. Sequence Rules target one or more of these positions to control what appears there.

When creating a rule, you choose how positions are targeted:

All Positions: The rule applies uniformly across positions 1 through 5

Selected Positions: The rule applies only to the positions you choose (any combination of 1–5)

Rule Types

Each rule is either an inclusion (whitelist) or an exclusion (blacklist):

When both inclusion and exclusion rules apply to the same placement, exclusion rules are evaluated first.

Filters

Filters define which offers a rule targets. Each rule can use one or more of the following filter dimensions:

You can combine multiple filter dimensions in a single rule. How they combine depends on the filter logic you select.

Offer tags are not a sequence rule filter. Tags move matching offers earlier in the delivery order when they match values in your payload. Tags are assigned to offers from the Partner Dashboard. For instructions on managing offer tags, see Offer Tags.

Filter Logic

When a rule includes more than one filter dimension, filter logic controls whether an offer must match any one criterion or all of them:

Always Apply and Weight

Weights are not part of the rule. They are set on each placement the rule is mapped to, so the same rule can carry a different share on different placements. On a placement, a rule is either Always Apply (it runs on every request) or weighted (whole number 1 or higher). Weighted rules share requests in proportion to their weight. You can see each rule's Always Apply and Weight values on Tools > Placements. To change them, contact your Account Manager.

How Rules Are Applied

Priority Ordering

When multiple rules apply to a placement, MomentScience evaluates them in this order:

All-position rules: every Always Apply rule runs and an offer must pass all of them. If there are weighted all-position rules, one is picked in proportion to its weight and applied.

Position rules, for each position that has rules: Always Apply exclusions remove matching offers, then Always Apply inclusions keep only offers that match all of them. If there are weighted rules for that position, one is picked by weight and applied.

Positions that have rules are filled first, starting with the one that has the fewest eligible offers. Each offer fills at most one position. A position with no eligible offer is dropped and the remaining offers move up.

Multiple Rules on a Placement

When a placement has more than one Always Apply rule, an offer must satisfy all of them to be eligible.

For example, if Rule A (Always Apply) allows only Demand offers and Rule B (Always Apply) blocks Offer B, the eligible set contains every Demand offer except Offer B. Two Always Apply inclusions for different offer types at the same position, such as one for Demand offers and one for Direct offers, leave nothing eligible, so use weights to alternate between them instead.

Weighted rules work differently. If Rule C (weight 70) includes Direct offers at position 1 and Rule D (weight 30) includes Demand offers at position 1, position 1 shows a Direct offer on about 70% of requests and a Demand offer on about 30%. In the same way, a rule weighted 50 that puts Offers A, B and C first and another weighted 50 that puts Offers F, A and E first each run on about half of the requests.

Placement Scoping

Sequence rules are scoped to the placement they are assigned to. A rule on one placement never affects any other placement. How rules resolve depends on whether a placement value is included in the request:

For details on configuring placements and assigning rules to them, see Managing Placements.

Your Sequence Rules Dashboard

If Sequence Rules are enabled on your account, you can access them from your dashboard at Tools > Sequence Rules.

This page is read-only. Use it to see every active sequence rule on your account and understand how offer sequencing is configured across your placements. You can check which positions each rule targets, what filters are applied, and which specific offers are eligible at each position.

You can view your sequence rules here, but you cannot create or edit them directly. To add, modify, or disable a rule, contact your account manager.

Viewing Offers per Rule

Each row in the table includes a View icon (eye icon). Clicking it opens a panel that shows the specific offers eligible at each position based on that rule's filter configuration. Use this to confirm that the correct offers are being targeted for each position in your Moments unit.

No Rules Configured

If no rules have been set up for your account, the page will show a message indicating that there's no sequence rules have been configured for this account yet. Contact your account manager to get started.

Users with the Analyst role cannot see this section in the dashboard. Admins and Managers can.

Examples

Example 1: Whitelist CPA offers at position 1

Configure position 1 to serve only CPA goal-type offers, leaving positions 2–5 unrestricted.

Positions: Selected, position 1 only

Rule type: Inclusion

Filter: Goal Type = CPA

Result: Position 1 serves only CPA offers. All other positions are unaffected.

Example 2: Block third-party offers at positions 2 and 3

Prevent third-party offers from appearing at the second and third positions in the sequence.

Positions: Selected, positions 2 and 3

Rule type: Exclusion

Filter: Offer Type = Third Party

Result: Positions 2 and 3 never serve third-party offers. Direct Sold and Partner Offers remain eligible at those positions.

Example 3: Serve CPC offers or Offer Group A at all positions (OR logic)

Restrict all five positions to a combination of goal type and offer group, accepting a match on either criterion.

Positions: All positions

Rule type: Inclusion

Filter logic: OR

Filters: Goal Type = CPC · Offer Groups = Group A

Result: All five positions serve offers that are CPC, in Group A, or both. Offers matching neither filter are excluded.

Example 4: Serve only CPA offers in Offer Group B at position 3 (AND logic)

Pin position 3 to a precise intersection of goal type and offer group. Both conditions must be true.

Positions: Selected, position 3 only

Rule type: Inclusion

Filter logic: AND

Filters: Goal Type = CPA · Offer Groups = Group B

Result: Position 3 serves only offers that are both CPA and in Group B. An offer that is CPA but not in Group B, or in Group B but not CPA, is excluded.

Assigning Rules to Placements

Sequence rules are created at the account level and then assigned to individual placements. To assign a rule to a placement, navigate to Tools > Placements and use the Select Sequence Rule(s) dropdown on any placement row.

For full details on creating placements, configuring a default, and managing rule assignments, see Managing Placements.

If you need help configuring Sequence Rules or enabling the feature for your account, contact us at [email protected].