Custom Signals

Custom signals supplement built-in sensor data, improving decision-making and optimization for your use case.

What are custom signals?

Custom signals allow you to provide additional context when capturing user interactions. ContextSDK processes more than 300 built-in signals, but you can enhance its predictions by including app-specific data — such as in-game progress, friend count, or prior interactions like ad views or feature usage. Any past event that may influence a user’s decision-making process is valuable to include.

Important: Never send personally identifiable information (PII) to the SDK. See Privacy Considerations to learn more.

Why add custom signals?

By adding custom signals, you can:

• Provide additional context when making upsell or engagement decisions to improve the precision of ML models.

• Optimize monetization and user experience based on real-time behavioral data.

Despite that, it's worth noting that adding custom signals is optional. Not all apps and businesses have environment- or user-specific signals that would make a significant difference when deciding whether to show an upsell offer or not.

How to add custom signals

You can define custom signals at two levels:

Global Signals

Global signals apply to all context evaluations and persist across different flows. Use them for app-wide metrics, such as total session count or the number of purchases made. Usage example:

iOS

ContextManager.setGlobalCustomSignal(id: "number_of_levels_completed", value: 21)

Android

Flutter

Unity

React Native

To update a signal, call setGlobalCustomSignal(id:value:) with the same ID and a new value. To remove a global signal, pass a null-like value.

Flow-Specific Signals

Use flow-specific signals when a signal is relevant only to a particular flow. These signals are passed as parameters when capturing a context. Usage example:

iOS

let customSignals: [CustomSignal] = [
    CustomSignalBool(id: "watched_ad", value: true),
    CustomSignalFloat(id: "percentage_onboarding_finished", value: 0.3),
    CustomSignalString(id: "upsell_copy_button_used", value: "Purchase Premium"),
]
ContextManager.fetchContext(flowName: "onboarding_upsell", customSignals: customSignals) { context in
    // Handle context evaluation
}

Android

Flutter

Unity

React Native

Flow-specific signals ensure that only relevant data is included in decision-making for a particular flow.

Privacy Considerations

When using custom signals, ensure that no personally identifiable information (PII) is included. ContextSDK does not process sensitive data, such as:

• User IDs

• Email addresses or phone numbers

• IP addresses

• Exact locations

• Date of birth or age

• Gender

You are responsible for ensuring that you have the necessary rights to provide data to ContextSDK.

By leveraging custom signals, you can refine ContextSDK’s predictions and optimize monetization strategies — all while maintaining user privacy and security.