The techniques described herein relate to constructing and using seed audiences. In an embodiment, a method includes loading, by a processing device, a user event sequence, the user event sequence including a plurality of user events and a plurality of corresponding conversions; generating, by the processing device, a plurality of conversion neighborhoods based on the user event sequence, a given conversion neighborhood in the plurality of conversion neighborhood including at least one conversion rule and a set of user events from the plurality of user events; annotating, by the processing device, each conversion neighborhood in the plurality of conversion neighborhoods with categorical labels; and generating, by the processing device, seed audiences for each conversion neighborhood, a given seed audience including a ranked list of user events for each conversion rule associated with the conversion neighborhood.