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Chapter 6: Pretargeting Configuration

Audience: media buyers, campaign managers

Pretargeting configs are your primary lever for controlling what Google sends to your bidder. This chapter covers how to manage them safely in Cat-Scan.

What a pretargeting config controls

Each config is a set of rules that tells Google: "only send me bid requests that match these criteria." You get 10 configs per seat.

Field What it filters
State Active (receiving traffic) or Suspended (paused).
Max QPS Upper limit on queries per second this config accepts.
Geos (included) Countries, regions, or cities to receive traffic from.
Geos (excluded) Geographies to block even if they match inclusions.
Sizes (included) Ad sizes to accept (e.g., 300x250, 728x90).
Formats Creative types: VIDEO, DISPLAY_IMAGE, DISPLAY_HTML, NATIVE.
Platforms Device types: DESKTOP, MOBILE_APP, MOBILE_WEB, CONNECTED_TV.
Publishers Allow/deny lists for specific publisher domains or apps.

Reading a config card

On the home page and in the settings, each config appears as a card showing its current state.

Pretargeting config cards showing active and paused states

Key things to look at:

  • Active + high max QPS + broad geos = this config is catching a lot of traffic. If it's also high-waste, it's your biggest optimization target.
  • Suspended = not receiving traffic. Useful for staging changes before going live.
  • Included sizes: (all) = accepting every ad size Google sends. For fixed-size display, this is almost certainly wasteful.

Making changes

The dry-run workflow

  1. Navigate to the config you want to change (home page or /settings/system).
  2. Select a field to modify (e.g., excluded geos, included sizes).
  3. Enter your new values.
  4. Click Preview (dry-run). Cat-Scan shows you exactly what will change without applying it.
  5. If the preview looks correct, click Apply.
  6. The change is recorded in the history with a timestamp and your identity.

Publisher allow/deny editor

For publisher-level blocking, Cat-Scan provides a dedicated editor per config. You can: - Search publishers by domain name - Block individual domains or apps - Allow specific domains that override broader blocks - Apply changes in bulk

This is significantly simpler than managing publishers through the Authorized Buyers UI.

Change history (/history)

Every pretargeting change is recorded in a timeline at /history.

Change history timeline with filters and export

For each entry, you see: - When: timestamp of the change - Who: the user who made it - What: field name, old value, new value - Type: the kind of change (add, remove, update)

Rollback

If a change causes problems (e.g., waste increases, win rate drops), you can roll it back:

  1. Go to /history.
  2. Find the change you want to undo.
  3. Click Preview rollback. This shows a dry-run of reverting to the previous state.
  4. Optionally add a reason for the rollback.
  5. Click Confirm rollback.

The rollback itself is recorded as a new entry in the history, so you have a complete audit trail.