User Matching: Maximizing Accuracy for Targeting and Attribution

Effective advertising on Nextdoor hinges on our ability to accurately match user actions on your website or app with Nextdoor users. This process, known as User Matching, is fundamental for precise ad targeting, campaign optimization, and reliable performance measurement. By connecting user events (like page views or purchases) with specific user profiles, we help you understand your campaign's impact and reach the right audience.

Our latest updates, powered by Advanced Event Matching, significantly enhance this capability by allowing for a more granular and accurate identification of users through an expanded set of attributes.

How User Matching Works

User matching relies on various identifiers passed from your website or app (via Nextdoor Pixel) and directly from your server (via Conversions API - CAPI). When a user interacts with your content, these identifiers are sent to Nextdoor. We then use this information to connect the event back to a known Nextdoor user. The more comprehensive and accurate the identifiers you send, the higher our match rates, leading to more effective campaigns.

Advanced Event Matching: Elevating Accuracy

Advanced Event Matching is designed to improve user identification by receiving a richer set of user attributes through both the Nextdoor Pixel and CAPI. This enhanced data collection allows Nextdoor to more precisely attribute conversions and optimize your ad delivery to the most relevant audiences, ultimately boosting your return on ad spend. By providing more user details, you enable our system to find stronger matches, even in scenarios where traditional identifiers might be limited.

The Role of Click ID Matching

Click ID matching remains a vital component of our user matching strategy. When a user clicks on a Nextdoor ad, a unique click_id is generated and appended to your landing page URL. If this click_id is then captured by your website and sent back to Nextdoor via Pixel or CAPI, it provides a highly reliable way to attribute the conversion back to the specific ad click. While click_id is a powerful direct match, Advanced Event Matching complements it by providing additional signals when a click_id might not be available or sufficient.

New Attributes for Enhanced Matching via CAPI

To unlock the full potential of Advanced Event Matching, CAPI will now collect the following comprehensive list of new user attributes:

email
click_id
phone_number
first_name
last_name
date_of_birth
gender
street_address
city
state
zip_code
country
external_id
client_ip_address
client_user_agent

For CAPI, advertisers will need to cooperate in passing these new attributes with each event. This ensures that Nextdoor receives the necessary data points for optimal matching.

Updated Customer Object Structure for CAPI

The customer object structure within your CAPI payload has been updated to include these new fields. It is critical that advertisers adjust their CAPI setup to incorporate these attributes, adhering to specific hashing requirements and normalization formats where indicated.

Important Deprecation Notice:
Please note that the following fields are deprecated and should be removed from your CAPI implementation and any related documentation: event_time, client_id, and pixel_id (now known as data_source_id).

**Simple Example Customer Object **(Illustrative - refer to the conversions/track section for complete CAPI parameter details, hashing requirements, and examples):

{
  "customer": {
    "email": "HASHED_EMAIL_ADDRESS", // Hashed using SHA256, normalized (lowercase, no leading/trailing spaces)
    "phone_number": "HASHED_PHONE_NUMBER", // Hashed using SHA256, normalized (E.164 format)
    "first_name": "HASHED_FIRST_NAME", // Hashed using SHA256, normalized (lowercase, no spaces)
    "last_name": "HASHED_LAST_NAME", // Hashed using SHA256, normalized (lowercase, no spaces)
    "date_of_birth": "YYYYMMDD", // e.g., "19900115"
    "gender": "f", // 'f' for female, 'm' for male
    "street_address": "HASHED_STREET_ADDRESS", // Hashed using SHA256, normalized
    "city": "HASHED_CITY", // Hashed using SHA256, normalized
    "state": "STATE_CODE", // e.g., "CA"
    "zip_code": "ZIP_CODE", // e.g., "90210"
    "country": "COUNTRY_CODE", // e.g., "US"
    "external_id": "YOUR_UNIQUE_USER_ID", // Your internal unique identifier for the user
    "client_ip_address": "192.168.1.1", // Raw IP address of the client
    "client_user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36..." // Raw user agent string
  },
  // ... other event parameters like event_name, event_time_epoch, etc.
}

User Matching and Attribution Workflow

The enhanced user matching capabilities directly feed into your campaign attribution and optimization. Once events are matched to Nextdoor users, they become valuable signals for:

Attribution Modeling: Accurately credit your Nextdoor campaigns for driving conversions, allowing you to understand the true impact of your advertising spend.
Audience Building: Create more precise custom audiences for retargeting and prospecting based on actual user behavior and characteristics.
Campaign Optimization: Our ad delivery system leverages this enriched event data to identify and reach users most likely to convert, dynamically optimizing your campaigns for better performance. This means your ads are shown to the right people, at the right time, leading to higher conversion rates and a better return on your ad investment.

By diligently implementing these updates, you empower Nextdoor to provide more accurate attribution, deliver more relevant ads, and ultimately drive superior results for your advertising campaigns.