5 min read

2021 Kevel Product Updates

MaryLauran Hall
MaryLauran Hall
Updated on
July 2, 2021
Product

We love announcing new products and features, and this piece contains a rolling list of recent improvements we have made to the platform.

June 2021

This month, we’ve continued to improve our UI, added the ability to create and update templates, and introduced our new decision explainer.

Create & Update Creative Templates

Introducing, Kevel Studio, a low-code builder that allows teams to build and update custom creative templates using an UI. Previously, these capabilities were only accessible via API.

This new product is currently in beta with a select number of Kevel customers. If your team wants an easier way to create and/or update creative templates, Studio could be a game-changer. Contact your account manager or support@kevel.co to learn more and gain access to the beta program.

Decision Explainer UI

The new Decision Explainer UI is a standalone debugging tool that will help you answer that age-old question, “Why did this ad serve but not that one?” This tool gives you an easy-to-read explanation of why each ad won, lost or was filtered out by a targeting rule for your ad request. Once you determine the problem, each campaign, flight, etc., has handy links back into the Kevel UI, so can you fix that problem right away.

Decision Explainer UI

For more details, please read the tool documentation. If you want to dive even deeper, then please read the developer docs.

UI Improvements

  • You can now search via campaign IDs, flight IDs, ad IDs, and more!
  • You can now see in the UI the last time an ad was updated. This last-saved time helps identify the most or least recently updated ad when browsing through large numbers of ads.
  • You can now input decimal values for flight budget and cap values.

We’ll continue enhancing our features and launching new products over the coming months to help you innovate your self-serve platform and drive new ad revenue this year.

May 2021

This month, we’ve continued to improve to our SDKs, added more granular user permissions, and moved forward with more advancements on our UI refresh initiative.

More Granular User Permissions

Now you can limit the access users have to your network via our UI. You can choose from read-only, edit, and admin permission levels and set these permissions on a network basis. Having these more granular permissions allows you to ensure that only the appropriate users can make campaign and inventory management changes.

To edit user permissions via the Kevel UI, navigate to the "Manage Users" section under the "Settings" navigation header:

Kevel User Settings

From there, click the pencil icon to bring up the modal to change a user's access level, make the appropriate changes, and then hit "Save" to update the user's access level.

Edit Kevel User

Check out our dev docs to learn more!

New UI Styling

We’ve started to make some subtle changes as part of refreshing our UI. Keep an eye out for more changes, and please let us know what you think.

SDK Improvements

We’re always making updates to our SDKs to support a great developer experience inside Kevel. This month, we’ve improved our SDKs for distance targeting, scheduled reporting, day parting, and more. See more details in the full release notes.

April 2021

New Segment partnership

Kevel is excited to announce our new integration with Segment, one of the leading customer data platforms. Our new integration allows you to leverage the first-party customer data you have in Segment to create user-targeted ads within Kevel.

Segment logo

AdQuery: More user-focused ad serving

Kevel's new AdQuery targeting feature simplifies and speeds up how personalized ads are served — leading to a more relevant user experience.

You can also use AdQuery as part of a new case we now support: “Auction-as-a-service”. This service can help your brand address more easily insert personalized sponsored listings into your search results, thereby helping them drive revenue and improve ad relevance.

A new Decision SDK in Go

We’ve added a Go Decision SDK submitted by Link Sports as our first Community Supported SDK on our Decision SDKs page! Big thanks to Link Sports and our open source community for continuing to expand our developer tools!

March 2021

This month, we’re excited to announce the launch of Single Sign-On and improved report generation. Both will make it easier for our customers to get what they need, when they need it.

SSO has launched!

Users at our customers’ companies can now log into Kevel with their SAML IdP.

Kevel now supports:

  • SSO login through OpenID Connect (OIDC) or SAML IdPs
  • User authentication via IdP configuration (automatic / just-in-time provisioning)
  • Automatic user access to a set of Kevel network(s) that you specify

Contact your Kevel Account Manager or our Support team to learn more!

Reports in record time

We’ve updated New Report generation for all customers. Creating a report in our UI is now faster and more responsive — with fewer browser timeouts.

Beta test responses have been overwhelmingly positive — and we’re still taking feedback! Please share your thoughts with your Account Manager or our Support team.

See our full release notes for more information and details — and watch for more new releases and core product improvements next month! We’re excited to enhance our product and features to help you build and scale your ad platform.

Feb 2021

This month, we’re excited to announce three new features, including the beta launch of our new User-Specified Radius targeting — a popular search functionality for marketplaces.

User-Specified Radius shows promoted listings in proximity

Want to show promotions within your customers’ range or specified location? You can build it with Kevel’s new User-Specified Radius.

Here’s how it works:

  • Contact us to get added to the private beta test.
  • Via the Kevel UI or Management API, add one or more locations to flights using Distance Targeting. Leave “Distance” blank.
  • In your ad decision request, include your customer’s location and the distance they specify as a "radius" parameter.

This feature is currently in a private beta. If you’re interested in joining, please contact your Account Manager or email support@kevel.co!

Finer-grained filtering for sponsored listings with AdQuery

If you use Kevel for sponsored listings, and allow customers to filter the results they see, AdQuery will enable you to filter the ads returned by a decision request using the same criteria — resulting in more user-first ad experiences.

This feature allows you to specify the set of ads that should be considered when making a decision. A decision request can specify a set of criteria for ad selection based on the properties of a creative, as seen below.

Example of Kevel's new AdQuery feature

The ad sets that match those criteria are the input to the normal decision request process. The criteria can include exact matching of a text string, a value within a numeric range, or a value in a set of alternatives.

AdQuery supports the following operators:

  • "eq"
  • "in"
  • "min/max"

Previously, this kind of matching required complex use of keywords and custom targeting to implement, so we’re excited to simplify this matching process!

Reduce your ad volume with SkipFiltering

Want to make an ad decision request that ignores some targeting criteria on ads? You can now skip over geo-targeting, distance, or keyword filters when making an ad decision, so an ad flight can be used in multiple contexts.

For example, suppose you can have a flight configured with both geo-targeting and distance requirements. With SkipFiltering, you can make a request that focuses on geo-targeting — and that ignores distance requirements — on a request-by-request basis.

Example of Kevel's new SkipFiltering feature

Using SkipFiltering simplifies campaign configuration and reduces your ad volume. This feature will soon be extended to support skipping for all targeting criteria, which will also make it a valuable troubleshooting tool.

Jan 2021

This month, we’ve made a number of updates to reflect our rebranding — and added a new Switch Network feature.

New name, new domains

While traffic to our Adzerk domains will be redirected, we’ve updated our sites to reflect our new name:

New Switch Network feature

Those with access to multiple Kevel networks — such as “dev” and “prod” environments — can now easily switch between them without first logging out. It’s a simple improvement, but one that saves time and hassle for our users.

Example of Kevel's new network-switching feature

We’ll continue to enhance our features and launch new products over the coming months to help you innovate your self-serve platform and drive new ad revenue in the new year!

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