How to target campaigns by time zone, hour, or day of week

Digioh native campaign conditions support targeting of display based on the user's local time zone. If you have campaigns that need to start and stop at a specific global time, e.g., at midnight Eastern Time, then you'll need to use a Digioh Extension.

This guide shows you how to target a Campaign by a visitor's time zone, a specific hour of the day, or a specific day of the week, including the new weekday and weekend Display Rules added in version 8 of the Precision Date Targeting extension.

What you'll learn

• How to install the Precision Date Targeting extension

• How to target a Campaign by hour of day in a visitor's local time zone, UTC, or a specific US time zone

• How to target a Campaign by day of week, including weekday-only and weekend-only Display Rules

• How to set up a Monday-through-Friday campaign without manual UTC offset calculations

Install the Precision Date Targeting extension

1. Open the profile menu in the top right corner and select Extensions.
   
2. Find Precision Date Targeting under the Display Rules section and click Install.
   

Display Rules available with this extension

The extension adds the following Display Rules, grouped by what they target:

Exact date and time

• Visitor Local Time: target based on a specific date and time in the visitor's local time zone. Use the calendar picker to choose a date, then choose an hour from the time dropdown (24-hour format).
• Universal Time (Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC): target based on a specific date and time in UTC. Use the calendar picker to choose a date, then choose a minute from the time dropdown (24-hour format).
• US Eastern Time, US Central Time, US Mountain Time, US Pacific Time: target based on a specific date and hour in the named US time zone. 
• Day of Month: target based on the day of the month. For example, set the rule to equal 15 to display on the 15th of every month, or less than 8 to display during the first seven days of the month. The day starts and ends based on the visitor's local time zone.

Recurring hour range

• Local Hour Only, Eastern Hour Only, Central Hour Only, Mountain Hour Only, Pacific Hour Only, UTC Hour Only: target based on the hour only (0 to 23), in the visitor's local time or the named US time zone or UTC. Combine Greater or Equal and Less or Equal conditions to define a time range, for example, to show a campaign only between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  
  • Note: These rules evaluate against the whole hour number. For example, Less than 17 would display until 16:59, and Less or Equal 17 would display until 17:59 

Day of week (new in version 8)

• Is Weekday (Local): true when the visitor's local day is Monday through Friday. Use this to show a campaign only on weekdays, based on the visitor's own browser time zone.
• Day of Week (Local): returns a three-letter abbreviation (sun, mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat) for the visitor's current local day. Combine two does not equal conditions, for example, not sat and not sun, to target Monday through Friday.
• Day of Week (Eastern), Day of Week (Central), Day of Week (Mountain), Day of Week (Pacific): returns a three-letter day abbreviation for the current day in the named US time zone, regardless of the visitor's own location. Use this when the campaign schedule should follow that time zone rather than the visitor's.
• Day of Week (UTC): returns a three-letter day abbreviation for the current day in UTC. Use this when the campaign schedule should follow a single global cutoff, independent of any US time zone.
• Is Weekend (Local): true when the visitor's local day is Saturday or Sunday. Use this to exclude a campaign on weekends, or to show a weekend-only campaign.

Set up a Monday-through-Friday campaign

You can exclude weekends using either of the following approaches.

Option 1: Custom Conditions with AND logic

1. Add a Custom Conditions rule for Day of Week (Local) set to does not equal sat.
2. Add a second Custom Conditions rule for Day of Week (Local) set to does not equal sun.
3. Add both rules within the same rule group (using Add New Rule) so they combine with AND logic; only use OR if you want either condition alone to trigger the campaign.
    

Option 2: Use the built-in weekday rule

1. Add Is Weekday (Local) as a Display Rule.

That's it, your campaign is ready to target visitors by time zone, hour, or day of the week. Need a hand? Reach out to support@digioh.com.