What is topic tag targeting on Stack Overflow?

Topic tags maintain precision

Exclusive, real interest-based targeting

• Every question asked on Stack Overflow can have up to five topic tags.
• 60,000 topic tags at last count.
• We target your advertisements based on these Topic Tags giving your advertising precise relevancy.
• Exclusive, interest-based targeting delivers the right message to the right person at the right time.

The origin of a topic tag

Stack Overflow users must designate at least one and up to five Topic Tags that are related to the question content. Currently, we have more than 60,000 active technical Topic Tags, ranging in the spectrum of languages, frameworks, and technologies that modern developers and technologists use in their daily work. Users with a reputation score of 1500 or more are awarded the privilege of creating topic tags. Once a topic tag is created, it’s available for the whole community to use.

Are topic tags similar to hashtags?

You may be wondering if Topic Tags are like the hashtags you use on social media platforms. Yes and no. While both can be used as a way to search content, Stack Overflow isn’t a social media platform and we have specific rules around the creation and use of Topic Tags on our sites, including review by other users and moderators. You won’t see #cutekitten videos, and may be disappointed to not find furballs among the [cat] questions. Topic Tags are based solely on content relevance versus the “trending” topics you’ll see hashtags used for on most social media platforms.

Topic tags provide a contextually relevant advertising experience

We know developers can be skeptical of marketing, and they’ve shared with us in various surveys that ad relevance is important to them. As an advertiser, you can use the Topic Tags on our sites to contextually target your ads, ensuring you reach the right person, with the right message, at the right moment. From [artificial-intelligence] to [devops] and [cloud] to [C#], your ads will appear on question pages that include tags that are relevant to your tool or service. With Topic Tag targeting, you can ensure your advertising campaign builds trust with the developer and technical community and, ultimately, delivers results for your business.

How to pick the best topic tags for your campaign

Make a list of the technologies you mention on your landing pages, in your technical documentation, or in your tutorial videos.

Your Account Executive will use these as a starting point to either recommend a pre-built Topic Tag group or build a custom group for your campaign.