# How to Refine an Audience with AI Insights



<blockquote class="announcement">
  <div class="tip-quote">
    
    <div class="tip-text"><strong>Rudder Lookout</strong> is currently in <strong>Public Beta</strong>. <a href="mailto:product@rudderstack.com" >Contact the Product team</a> if you have any questions.</div>
  </div>
</blockquote>

<p>Picking a number for a rule is guesswork until you can see the data behind it. Is &ldquo;more than 2 orders&rdquo; a tenth of your customers or nine tenths? Is <code>IN</code> really how the country is spelled, or is it <code>India</code>?</p>
<p>Each rule in an audience can show you. Expand a rule and the agent measures that column in your warehouse and draws what it found underneath — a <strong>distribution</strong>, a set of <strong>value pills</strong>, or a set of <strong>segments</strong>, depending on what kind of column it is. Every control is anchored to real counts, and picking on the control edits the rule.</p>
<!-- end-chunk -->
<!-- begin-chunk -->
<h2 id="set-a-number-with-the-distribution-slider">Set a number with the distribution slider</h2><p>A numeric column — order count, lifetime value, days since last visit — gets a distribution. The bars are buckets of values and their height is how many people fall in each, so the shape tells you where your customers actually sit before you choose a threshold.</p>
<p>Drag a handle to set the threshold, and the shaded region shows what you are keeping. Above the chart, a line reports the consequence:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>About 19,274 satisfy this condition (42% of 45,677)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The axis is labeled in words rather than percentiles — <strong>Median</strong>, <strong>Top 25%</strong>, <strong>Bottom 25%</strong> — so you can place a handle against a landmark instead of reading a raw number. On a badly skewed column, where a handful of huge values would flatten everything else into one bar, the chart switches to a scale that spreads the crowded end out. It decides that from the data, not from anything you set.</p>
<p>You can also type an exact value beside the chart when you have a specific figure in mind.</p>

<figure class="image--main "  >
    <a 
         href="/docs/images/lookout/audience-slider.webp"
        
        >
        <img src="/docs/images/lookout/audience-slider.webp" 
         alt="A distribution slider on days since last order, the handle set at 90, with the count line reading about 19,274 satisfy this condition"  
         
         
        decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="img-shortcode"/>
    </a>
    
</figure>

<html lang="en">
<blockquote class="info">
  <div class="tip-quote">
    
    <div class="tip-text">For a column too large to measure bar by bar, the shape is drawn from summary statistics instead, and the readout says the figure is approximate rather than implying a count nobody took.</div>
  </div>
</blockquote>

</html>
<!-- end-chunk -->
<!-- begin-chunk -->
<h2 id="pick-a-value-with-pills">Pick a value with pills</h2><p>A column with a limited set of values — country, plan tier, channel, a yes/no flag — gets one pill per value, each carrying its own count. Select a pill to use that value; select more than one and the rule widens to match any of them.</p>
<p>Pills spare you the two things that quietly break a rule: guessing at spelling, and guessing at case. If a column holds both <code>india</code> and <code>India</code>, they fold into one pill with a badge saying how many spellings it stands for, and the tooltip lists them.</p>

<figure class="image--main "  >
    <a 
         href="/docs/images/lookout/audience-pills.webp"
        
        >
        <img src="/docs/images/lookout/audience-pills.webp" 
         alt="Value pills for a lifetime-value band and a country column, several selected, each pill carrying its own count"  
         
         
        decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="img-shortcode"/>
    </a>
    
</figure>

<p>Where a numeric column has natural bands rather than a smooth spread, you get <strong>segments</strong> instead — mutually exclusive ranges, one count each. Selecting one applies the whole condition it stands for.</p>
<!-- end-chunk -->
<!-- begin-chunk -->
<h2 id="read-the-footnote">Read the footnote</h2><p>Under every control is one line telling you how much of the data stands behind the picture. It is the difference between a rule that does what you meant and one that quietly drops people. Some examples:</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Example</th>
<th>What it means</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><em><code>91% of rows have a value for this column</code></em></td>
<td>The rest are blank, and a rule on this column excludes them.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em><code>All 7 values are shown</code></em></td>
<td>The pills are the whole column, so the list is safe to treat as a menu.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em><code>These 10 values cover 94% of rows with a value</code></em></td>
<td>There are more values than are on screen.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

<html lang="en">
<blockquote class="info">
  <div class="tip-quote">
    
    <div class="tip-text">When a measurement is missing, the line stays away rather than showing a zero. An unmeasured column is not an empty one.</div>
  </div>
</blockquote>

</html>
<!-- end-chunk -->
<!-- begin-chunk -->
<h2 id="watch-the-size">Watch the size</h2><p>Insights describe <strong>one column</strong>. They tell you how many people satisfy that single condition — not how many end up in the audience once every other rule applies.</p>
<p>For the real figure, refresh the <strong>Size</strong> in the header. It goes stale as soon as you change anything, which is your cue that the number above no longer matches the rules below.</p>
<!-- end-chunk -->
<!-- begin-chunk -->
<h2 id="next-steps">Next steps</h2><ul>
<li><a href="https://www.rudderstack.com/docs/activate/lookout/audiences/activate-an-audience/" >Activate an Audience</a>: Send the finished audience to a destination</li>
</ul>
<br />

