A trigger is a weather scenario which, when ‘true’, will activate your action. This weather scenario is made up of several factors, including the weather condition, its amount or intensity, when it should occur (time range), its frequency or duration, as well as some others.

Trigger Examples:

The condition is the weather type (or other data type) that you would like to use as the basis for your trigger. Standard conditions are available as past, current or forecast datasets. Probability based conditions are only available as forecasts (I.E. the probability of occurrence). Additional data types including pollen count, pollution levels, flu index and normalized climate data, will be made available soon. Learn more about available trigger types.

This setting lets you select the amount or intensity of the weather condition (e.g. heavy rain).

The trigger type specifies whether you would like to trigger your action based on past, current, or forecast conditions. In other words, would you like your action to turn on before, during, or after the weather event?

Current:

The ‘current’ trigger monitors live weather conditions, which are updated in real-time. This setting will switch on your action the moment the weather condition occurs, and turn it off when it elapses (assuming you have not checked the ‘sustain action’ option). This trigger type is used for ‘in-the-moment’ targeting, where your action is synchronized with the weather event.

Forecast:

The ‘forecast’ trigger type checks forecast data for any prediction of the weather event. The forecast data is available for up to 7 days ahead, and is updated hourly. Use the ‘forecast’ option to trigger your action before the weather event happens.

Past:

The ‘past’ trigger type checks latest historical data for recent occurrences of your condition. WeatherAds is able to check up to 7 days of historical data. This dataset is updated every hour. Use the ‘past’ option to trigger your action after the weather event has occurred.

The time range option applies to ‘past’ or ‘forecast’ triggers. This option lets you specify how far ahead into the forecast, or how far back into the past to query the weather data.

Forecast - ‘Within the next’

This checks the latest forecast data, looking a specified number of hours or days ahead from the current hour. For example, ‘within the next 2 days’ would check the weather forecast for the remainder of the current day plus the next 2 days. ‘Within the next’ is the default and most commonly used setting for the forecast trigger.

Note: ‘0 days’ is today. 1 day is tomorrow (00:00 – 23:59), ‘2 days’ is the day after tomorrow, and so on)

Forecast - ‘In exactly’

This specifies the exact hour or day in the future when your weather scenario should happen. For example, ‘in exactly 1 day’ would only look at the next day's forecast, ignoring the remainder of the current day. Use this setting if you would like to check the forecast for X days ahead whilst ignoring the current day.

Past - ‘Within the past’

‘Within the past’ setting checks recent past weather data, spanning a specified number of hours or days back from the present moment. For example, ‘within the past 2 days’ would check past weather for the current day (up to the current hour) plus for the previous 2 days.

Past - ‘Exactly [X] hours/ days ago'

This specifies the exact hour or day in the past when your weather scenario should happen. For example, ‘exactly 1 day ago’ would check the previous day's weather, but would ignore the current day’s weather. Use this setting if you would like to check past conditions for X days ahead whilst ignoring the current day.

Days

A day is a defined in the standard way as a 24 hour period, from midnight to midnight (12:00 - 23:59). When using the past or forecast trigger type, day 0 is always counted as the present day.

Example:

Hours

Hours allow you to go more granular than days in terms of timescale. For example, you may want to pick ‘within the next 6 hours’ if you want a rolling 6 hour timeframe.

This setting lets you control how long the weather event goes on for, or how often it occurs over your selected time range. (e.g. two instances of rain in the past 24 hours)

A ‘timeframe’ is an hourly snapshot of the weather. Picture a standard weather app; it will typically have the day broken down into 24 hour segments, with weather information shown for each hourly segment. Each segment is one ‘timeframe’.

Note: A weather condition does not necessarily need to last an entire hour to be registered across one timeframe. For example, five minutes of rain within a 24 hour period would still register as an occurrence over one timeframe (IE it occurred during one of the 24 hourly segments).

X Timeframes

The number of instances of the weather event over your selected time range. E.g. over 2 timeframes means there has to be two instances of the weather event over your specified time range.

‘X timeframes each day’

The number of instances of the weather event each day over your selected time range. E.g. over 2 timeframes each day means there has to be two instances of the weather event on each of the days across your specified time range.

‘X consecutive timeframes’

The number of consecutive instances of the weather event over your selected time range. E.g. 2 consecutive timeframes means there has to be two instances of the weather event over your specified time range.

‘Consecutive timeframes each day’

The number of consecutive instances of the weather event each day over your selected time range. E.g. 2 consecutive timeframes each day means there has to be two instances of the weather event on each of the days over your specified time range.

Continuously means there has to be an instance of your weather condition for every timeframe over your specified the time range. E.G. heavy rain continuously over 6 hours – means it would need to rain heavily at least once every hour for 6 hours straight.

This lets you specify the hours of the day when the weather condition should occur. For example, you can create a rain trigger for only the daytime, but not night time.

Note: Hours of the day relates to when the weather condition should happen, not when your ads should show. For the ‘current’ trigger, these are both the same thing. But for past and forecast triggers, they are two different things. If you would like your ads to show during specific times of the day, we recommend using the dayparting feature within the native ad platform.

This lets you select the days of the week when you would like the weather condition to happen. For example, you can create a rule to activate your ads if it’s forecast to be sunny over the weekend.

Note: This setting works in tandem with the ‘time range’ option. The logic works as follows; First, it checks if the selected days fall within the allotted time range (e.g. is next Saturday & Sunday within the next 3 days?) If the answer is yes, it checks if the weather data for those days matches your parameters.

Example 1:

Example 2: