Deliver contextual feeds with page, user, and location context

Pass what a visitor is looking at, who they are, and where they are to an embed or a placement. Learn how Genuin turns those signals into a ranked feed.

A contextual feed is an ordinary embed or placement whose request carries context. When the request names a page topic and no specific community or group, Genuin searches your videos' descriptions and transcripts for that topic and ranks the matches. The same embed then shows SUV reviews on an SUV listing and loan explainers on a loan guide. Location, time, audience segments, and the viewer's interests narrow or boost the result. There are two ways to send the context, and this page covers both.

Before you begin

Requirement	Detail
An embed or a placement	Context rides on an existing configuration. See Embed your community on your website or Get started with placements in Brand Control Center.
A description of each page	A short phrase or comma-separated keywords, such as SUV listings or AI, LLM, robotics. This is what's matched against your videos.
Videos with text	Matching reads each video's description, the AI-generated description, and the transcript. Videos with none of these never match.

Send context from an embed

The Web SDK takes context in contextualParams when you initialise the embed. The page's URL is sent automatically.

index.html

html

<div id="gen-sdk" class="gen-sdk-class" style="width: 100%; height: 600px"></div>
<script src="https://media.begenuin.com/sdk/<<SDK_VERSION>>/gen_sdk.min.js"></script>
<script>
  window.genuin.init({
    embed_id: '{{EMBED_ID}}',
    api_key: '<<YOUR_API_KEY>>',
    contextualParams: {
      page_context: 'electric SUVs, charging, range',
      geo: { lat: 37.7749, long: -122.4194 },
    },
  })
</script>

For several embeds on one page, give each container the gen-sdk-class class with data-embed-id, data-api-key, and data-page-context attributes, plus data-lat and data-long if you have them, and call window.genuin.init() once. In a single-page app, call window.genuin.update({ contextualParams: { page_context: '...' } }) when the route changes. The embed reloads with the new context. geo needs both lat and long, or it's ignored.

On Android, pass the same keys as a map: BGEmbedView(...).setConfig(contextualParams = hashMapOf("page_context" to "electric SUVs")). On iOS, pass them in the contextualParams dictionary of initializeEmbed.

Send context to a placement

A placement declares which signals it expects. In Brand Control Center, open Grow > On Site > Placement, open the placement, and on Configure > Implement tick each signal your page can supply. The generated code then includes a contextual_params block with a placeholder for each one.

The implementation signals of a placement, which decide what the generated code asks your page for.

Signal	Fields in the init call	What to send
Custom Context	page_context, user_context	A phrase describing the page, and one describing the viewer's current intent
Previous Page Context	previous_page_context	The context of the page the viewer came from
Location	geo: { lat, long, radius_limit }	Coordinates as decimals, and a radius
Place	place: { country, state, city, zipcode }	Named location, used where coordinates aren't available
Time	time	A timestamp, for content scheduled to show at certain times
User Segmentation	user_segments: { age, min_age, max_age, segment, gender, race }	Audience attributes you hold for the viewer
Product Detail Page (PDP) URL	url	The page URL; the Web SDK sends it anyway
Brand ID	brands_ids	Network brand ids whose content the feed can draw from
Community & Group ID	community_ids, loop_ids	Scope the feed to these communities or groups (loop_ids are group ids)
User Interests	user_interests	Interest labels you hold for the viewer
Posted By User	posted_by_user_ids	Show only posts by these members

Two toggles on the same tab change what Genuin gathers itself. On-Page Context Gathering by Crawler lets Genuin read the links and text of the page the placement renders on. Real-time context gathering reads the ads running on the page.

The web code is window.genuin.init({ style_id, placement_id, api_key, contextual_params: { ... } }). On iOS it's GenuinSDK.shared.initializePlacement(placementId:styleId:containerView:viewController:contextualParams:), and on Android BGPlacementView(placementId, styleId).setConfig(contextualParams = map). Copy the generated code from the Implementation Guide panel; it carries your ids and the fields you ticked.

How the feed is built

Feed type. The feed service reads the request. Group ids make it a group feed and community ids a community feed. Otherwise a non-empty page_context makes it a contextual feed, unless the context contains "surprise me", which asks for the default feed on purpose.
Retrieval. The context phrase is matched in OpenSearch against three fields of every video in your brand and the network brands you named. The description carries a weight of 2, the AI-generated description 1.8, and the transcript 1.5. A video needs a match in at least one field, and its best field counts.
Scoring. Each match score is scaled to 0 to 1 across the result set. The final score is 80% that context score and 20% recency, so among equally relevant videos the newer one leads.
Boosts and filters. A placement fills each section from the section's title, description, and keywords, with the style's filters applied. When Genuin enables its recommendation service for your brand, the other signals act on the ranking too. Community, group, and posted-by ids become hard filters, and the remaining signals multiply a video's score when they match. The multipliers are listed in How AI works in Brand Control Center.
Dynamic sections. A placement style of type Dynamic has no fixed sections. On the first request for a page, Genuin derives sections from the page's context and URL, fills each from your videos, and caches the result for 15 minutes.

Request reference

The Web SDK posts to /goservices/feed/embed/home with your API key in the headers. The body fields that carry context:

Field	Type	Notes
page_context	string	Triggers the contextual feed when no community or group ids are set
previous_page_context	string	Context of the previous page
url	string	Sent by the Web SDK as the current page URL
geo	object	lat, long, radius_limit, all numbers
place	object	country, region, city, zip_code
user_context	string	The viewer's current intent
user_segments	object	age, min_age, max_age, gender, user_segments (list), race (list), interests (list)
time	timestamp	For time-scheduled content
posted_by_user_ids	list	Restrict to these members' posts
community_ids, loop_ids	list	Restrict to these communities or groups
brands_ids	list of integers	Network brands to draw from; your own brand is always included
device_id, page_session, last_video_id	string	Set by the SDK for paging and de-duplication

Limitations

Context needs text to match. Videos without a description or transcript are never returned by a contextual query.
Community and group ids override context. A request with either becomes a community or group feed; use a placement's scope fields with care.
Both coordinates or none. geo is dropped unless lat and long are both present.
Fixed recency share. The 80 to 20 split between context and recency isn't configurable per request.
One context per embed instance. To change it without reloading the page, call update.
Dynamic sections are cached for 15 minutes per page context and URL, so a change to your videos takes up to that long to show in a dynamic placement.