Offer eligibility is the determination of whether a commercial offer may be returned for a particular request under the applicable serving rules and the context the requester can accurately supply.
In AON, deterministic category and targeting conditions are applied separately from semantic relevance. Passing offer eligibility means the offer can proceed to ranking and possible presentation; it does not confirm final price, inventory, legal eligibility, purchase authorization, or acceptance at merchant checkout.
Offer eligibility in AON
AON evaluates the current intent, supported constraints, and applicable eligibility rules before unsuitable candidates are returned. A successful query may therefore contain an empty offers array when no candidate remains eligible and suitable.
How offer eligibility works
Retrieve candidate offers
The offer system identifies supply that could plausibly address the request.
Read supported request context
The selected Query contract supplies explicit constraints and supported viewer context without inferred private attributes.
Apply deterministic rules
Category constraints and active targeting dimensions determine which candidates may continue.
Rank the eligible set
Semantic relevance and other ranking signals order only the candidates that passed the eligibility gate.
Four decisions that should not be conflated
A commerce system can make several different decisions about the same item or offer, and each answers a different question.
| Concept | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Candidate retrieval | Was a potentially relevant offer found in available supply? |
| Offer eligibility | May the candidate be served for the supported request context? |
| Relevance ranking | How well does an eligible candidate fit the expressed intent? |
| Checkout verification | Will the merchant accept the current transaction under authoritative price, inventory, policy, and buyer information? |
- AON targeting supports offer selection; it is not a substitute for legal, identity, payment, or merchant compliance checks.
- Publishers should not invent location, age, device, or other context to make an offer pass an eligibility rule.
Offer eligibility vs intent matching
Offer eligibility applies deterministic rules that decide whether a candidate may be served. Intent matching estimates how relevant the remaining candidates are to the user’s expressed request. A highly relevant candidate can still be ineligible, and an eligible candidate can still rank poorly. See the Intent matching definition.
Example in practice
A travel assistant finds several accommodation offers related to a Tokyo request. One candidate does not meet the active integration's eligibility rules, so it is removed before ranking. The remaining offers may be ranked by fit, while the merchant still confirms dates, inventory, price, and booking requirements at checkout.
Common questions about offer eligibility
If a product matches the query, is its offer necessarily eligible?
No. Product or candidate retrieval establishes only that something potentially relevant was found. Serving rules can still remove its commercial offer before ranking or presentation. For an AON query, supported category constraints and other active-integration eligibility rules are evaluated before eligible candidates are ranked.
Is offer eligibility the same as relevance?
No. Eligibility is a serving gate, while relevance estimates fit among the candidates that passed that gate.
Does an eligible offer guarantee that the user can buy it?
No. Merchant checkout remains responsible for current inventory, price, transaction rules, required verification, and acceptance.
What should happen when every candidate is ineligible?
The query can succeed with an empty offers array. The AI product should continue serving the user without forcing an unsuitable commercial result. An AON integration should treat this as a valid no-offer response, not replace it with an unrelated commercial result.
Sources
- AON Offer Query APIAON documentation
- AgentOffer Protocol sourceAON specification
- AON category taxonomyAON documentation