Unrecognised Targeting Rules
Every rule in an audience has to be one A vs B knows how to check. Occasionally an audience holds a rule that is not: it was written through the public API with a targeting type we do not have, or it was saved a while ago, before A vs B started refusing rules it cannot read.
An audience like that used to look completely normal on screen. Now it says so.
The Not usable badge
Open Audiences and any affected audience carries an amber Not usable badge next to its name. Click the badge and a small panel opens with everything you need:
- The Not usable badge sits right next to the audience's name in the list.
- Clicking it opens a panel naming the rule's stored type, exactly as it was saved (for example
SOCIAL_MEDIA), so you can match it against what you meant to set up. - Below that, three plain sentences: what is wrong, what it means for your traffic, and what to do about it.
The three sentences read exactly like this:
- What is wrong: "This audience uses a targeting rule we do not recognise."
- What it means: "A rule we cannot read never matches anyone, so this audience is not reaching the people it was set up for. An experiment using it will get less traffic than expected, or none at all."
- What to do: "Open this audience, then remove or replace the rule."
The badge is a warning and nothing more. It does not change the audience, it does not stop you saving, and it does not stop you launching. Press Escape or click elsewhere to close the panel.
How much traffic you lose depends on where the rule sits. If the audience says "on mobile AND from the US" and the second rule is unreadable, nobody matches at all. If it says "on mobile OR from the US", the mobile half still matches and only the US half is lost. Either way the audience is no longer describing the people you chose, which is why it is worth fixing rather than working around.
Where else you will see it
The same warning follows the audience to every place it can affect a decision.
- Choosing an audience for an experiment. The badge appears on the pick list as well as on what you have already selected, so you see the problem before you choose rather than after.
- The experiment's targeting step, before launch. A warning reads "Check this audience before you launch", names the audience, and tells you to remove or replace the rule first.
- The results page, while the experiment is live. The same warning reads "Getting no traffic? Check this audience." This is the one that matters. An experiment with an unreadable rule shows a flat, empty chart that looks exactly like a test nobody is interested in, and this line is what tells you it is not.
How to fix it
Open the audience
Go to Audiences, find the row with the badge, and choose Edit from the three-dot menu at the end of it.
Find the Unrecognised row
The rule we cannot read appears as its own row, tagged Unrecognised, with its stored name quoted in the message. There is no operator or value to edit on it, because there is nothing here that knows how to read it.
Replace it, or remove it
Add the condition you actually meant from the sidebar on the right and set it up, then remove the unrecognised row with the X on its right.
Save
Click Save. The badge disappears as soon as no unreadable rule is left.
Check the traffic again
If an experiment was already running on this audience, saving publishes the change to your site for you. Visitors start matching again within a minute or two, as browsers pick it up. Then give it as long as your normal traffic needs before reading anything into the numbers.
An audience with no conditions left matches every visitor, on purpose. So if the unreadable rule was the only rule, deleting it does not make the audience narrow again, it makes it wide. Replace it with the condition you meant before you save, or take the audience off the experiment.
Why it cannot happen again
A vs B now refuses to save a targeting rule it does not recognise. That applies wherever the rule comes from: the audience builder, the public API, and the Assistant. A rule that would not have worked is turned away at the point you try to save it, with a message naming the targeting options that are available, instead of being stored and quietly matching nobody.
The badge exists for audiences saved before that check was in place.
If you build audiences over the API, the Targeting rule types table lists every accepted type with its operators and value shape. Types are upper case, so DEVICE works and device is refused.