$re = '/([^=]*)\|/m';
$str = 'lineItem=USA~ACQ~AppNexus~PD~interscroller~D_M~lifestyle~ADF-10900-0221a|bannerDomain=marieclaire.com';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php