Advertiser and vertical block rules

Manage allowed advertisers and verticals

Network controls set boundaries around the advertisers that can appear on your Rokt layout. You can use network controls to determine which advertisers are eligible to show offers on a layout and which are excluded.

There are two ways to restrict the advertisers and offers that can appear:

1. Industry verticals and sub-verticals: Standard categories that define the type of product or service an advertiser sells. Every advertiser on the Rokt platform is categorized by industry vertical and sub-vertical.
2. Brand domains: Ecommerce advertisers that market to customers on Rokt partner sites, identified by their website domain.

Configuring which advertisers are allowed to show on a layout requires balancing the value of a competitive network with the need to prevent unsuitable or competitor offers from appearing on your site.

Allow or block verticals

Allowing a vertical makes offers from advertisers within that vertical eligible to appear on associated layouts. Blocking a vertical excludes those offers.

For example, an ecommerce company in the travel industry may want to prevent competitor offers from appearing on its site. It can do this by blocking all advertisers in the Travel & Tourism vertical.

Alternatively, it can block only the sub-verticals representing its direct competitors, such as Airlines or Hotel / Accommodation. Other travel advertisers remain eligible to show offers on the layout.

See Advertiser verticals and subverticals for the complete list.

Allow or block a specific advertiser

You can exclude a specific advertiser when its offer is unsuitable for your brand or for the page where the offer would appear.

Adding a brand domain to a network control list and setting it to blocked excludes that advertiser, even if its industry vertical is allowed. Similarly, allowing a brand domain overrides a block rule for that advertiser's industry vertical.

Enter the brand's website domain without the protocol or path, for example, examplebrand.com.

For example, you may block the Travel & Tourism vertical to prevent competitor offers but have a strategic partnership with a specific airline. Adding that airline's brand domain to the allowed advertisers lets its offers appear while offers from other travel advertisers remain blocked.

Apply network controls to a layout

Network control lists are reusable configurations of allow and block rules associated with layouts. Rokt provides a default network control list with every account, containing standard rules for the industry verticals and sub-verticals in the Rokt Network.

You can create additional lists for different layout objectives. Every new layout inherits the default list, but you can associate it with any network control list in the account.