Overview
The Trade Desk is a global digital advertising platform that allows platforms like Feathr to buy ad space on our customer's behalf across a massive network of websites, apps, and other digital channels. It's one of the largest and most widely used demand-side platforms (DSPs) in the digital advertising industry. We have always utilized The Trade Desk's network to help serve your ads to specific audience members that Feathr is able to identify.
Effective July 1, 2026, The Trade Desk updated its microtargeting policy to require a minimum of 1,500 Active IDs per ad group. Feathr now must recommend a minimum audience size of 2,000 persons to stay within compliance. Campaigns that fall below this threshold will stop serving on July 1st, and new campaigns published after that date will not serve impressions until the audience requirement is met.
What does this mean for Feathr Customers?
At this time, your campaigns in Feathr must have a targeted audience that exceeds the limits imposed by The Trade Desk. We recommend a minimum audience size of 2000 persons to avoid falling out of compliance with The Trade Desk’s microtargeting policy.
This will mostly affect customers that are new to Feathr and have not yet built a significant number of known audience members in their Feathr Community, as well as any Feathr customer that is attempting to target small, specific groups of audience members, such as with a cart abandonment campaign.
How do I adjust the audience size for my campaigns?
In campaigns that utilize first party data (from your Community database), consider broadening your groups by adding additional filters. For instance, if you're struggling to find a large enough audience for a cart abandonment campaign, consider adding additional filters that target audience members that visited event web pages. You will reach the audience members that left your cart page, as well as other potentially valuable people.
Pixl Plus audience numbers can be bolstered by choosing any of the growth objectives, such as Build Reach and Awareness, and then adding 3rd party audiences through Lookalikes or Affinity style audiences.
You should consider consolidating your desired Geofencing locations into fewer campaigns, utilizing multiple Places in a single campaign. You can choose multiple locations on the Geofencing maps, as shown below:
When building Search Keyword lists, provide at least 100 keywords and phrases. Brainstorm with your colleagues or prompt an AI to generate words and phrases relating to your advertising needs. The more words and phrases you add to your list, your audience size will increase. Check out this article for help generating search keyword lists.
Here is an article that walks you through adjusting an audience on a published campaign.
How do Geofilters affect my audience size?
Adding Geofilters to any campaign will almost certainly lessen the number of audience members your campaign can reach. For example, if your target group contains 3,000 reachable people, but you add a geofilter such as "Florida - Region", you will end up displaying campaign ads to any of the 3,000 people that are within Florida during the time your campaign is running. The campaign wizard will not be able to predict who in your target group will be in Florida during that time, and so the campaign is allowed to publish. However, you may receive an error after publication, warning you that the size of your reachable audience does not meet the requirements of the microtargeting policy by The Trade Desk.
How might this benefit my marketing efforts?
Campaigns with smaller audiences are harder to deliver efficiently. With a 1500 minimum ID threshold, ads will have enough reach to compete and be served more consistently.
Larger audiences will produce more statistically meaningful results.
Campaigns stuck by trying to reach a smaller audience often are an inefficient use of your budget. This change protects your budget by preventing campaigns that are unlikely to perform from running at all.
Does this affect Email Marketing campaigns?
No. The Trade Desk's microtargeting policy and the new minimum audience thresholds apply only to display advertising served through The Trade Desk's network. Feathr Email Marketing campaigns are not affected by this change.
You can continue to email smaller, targeted groups within your Community including highly specific segments like recent cart abandoners, event registrants, or lapsed donors, without needing to meet the 2,000-person minimum. That threshold applies solely to paid display ad audiences, not to email audiences.
Want to expand who you can reach by email?
We recommend using Feathr Forms to collect emails from your site visitors. Submissions are added directly to your Community database, growing the pool of contacts you can reach by email.
Still have questions?
If you run into any issues or need help adjusting your audience, your Customer Success team is available to help. Reach out to them at customersuccess@feathr.co.