Author: Brian Hawkins Page 1 of 3

Adobe Target Audiences and Locations

On February 15, 2022

Over the years, we have gotten many requests from customers asking for clarity around how best to use Adobe Target Audiences and Locations when setting up Activities via the Visual Experience Composer (VEC) or Form-based creation.

This video will share best practices and explain how best to leverage the functionality.

Video Transcript

we put together this quick video to
hopefully help
some confusion out there and to share
some best practices and in ways to can
think about test locations and audiences
and how they play out when setting up a
test and adobe target whether using a
visual editor
or a form-based activity
so let me jump in here and show you uh
what’s going on here so i’m creating an
activity i’m going to use the visual
editor so here you supply the url this
is the location this is where you want
the test to execute we’re not thinking
about
using the target profile or anything
like that like you know for repeat
customers or people coming from google
or anything like that this is where the
test is running the location so i’m
going to enter in the url there
so the visual editor is loading and
doing its thing
so i’m clicking on the gear here and
then i’m going to apply page delivery
let’s say we want to expand on that
location
to apply to run on the mia provo blog
so i’ve got lots of options here to
expand on this location and and this is
the first part of the confusion uh
between
locations and audiences that we get
questions on
so
we’re limited here in terms of a list
there’s nothing to do with
people from texas or geographic data
it’s limited to location based which it
should it makes sense to do that let’s
say
i wanted to update this to go on the
blog i can do
or url
contains
www.miaprobot.com
blog cool so now whatever i do in the
visual composer will be applied here
uh on our homepage as well as here i can
also make sure i can use path i could do
you know things
that make sense for locations where
specifically
is the test running so i’ll just save
this update here
so within this section it’s best to
think of it at this experience stage is
not so much who’s going to become a
member of test but rather where the test
is running
you’ll notice there’s a component here
for audiences
i’m going to come back to this i think
this would be better served under the
targeting but i’m going to come back to
this in just a second here let me go
back into another window here and
i’m going to go ahead and create a form
based activity so create an a b test
come here i’m going to select form uh
properties uh is a whole other component
it is very it’s part of locations again
this whole first step whether this
visual editor where you put a url is
location
form is also location because properties
are defined uh you know based off of
where the organization uh defines the
properties and they’re based off of urls
or where the unbox calls are coming from
so now you’ll notice here in the form
target global emma so choose my inbox
now if you notice like in the visual
editor i supplied a url i told adobe
target this is where the test is running
but if i apply code in here i go ahead
and i create an offer and or pick an
offer
it’s a global inbox so it’s gonna that
offer is gonna fire and adobe rightly so
i was like whoa you should you should
refine and limit the scope
uh specifically limit where the code the
offer is going to fire the visual editor
absorbs this information automatically
and so
the test by default will only fire uh in
supply code based off of the url but the
refinements here
are audience refinements so in the
visual editor if you notice it’s it’s
based off of you get
uh
you get url per you know path domain
that sort of thing so here you could go
ahead and create an audience based off
of anything
browser operating system geo targeting
stuff that speaks to the the audience
that the the visitors that you want in
um yes there’s overlap i could go in
here and i could do site page uh current
page
url
due to do
contains
you know forward slash block cool okay
so
you’re able to accomplish that but
because you’re being exposed to
visitor stuff right um it’s creating
some some confusion so
even though you can create all of these
other different things based off of
these attributes
at this particular state please uh
consider you know think of this as the
scope of where you want the test to run
when it comes to audience members leave
that through here you can create
audiences you can use all the rich data
you’d like you can combine multiple
audiences
this is something very cool uh you’re
not able to do it in the audience
section although there’s a pretty big
update coming there which might enable
this um
but you think about it this day in the
targeting who
not where who experiences is is is the
where and and the same thing goes for
the visual editor use the
think of this as who’s going to become
members of this test
uh so
that makes sense so uh
here on the experience tab i said i’d
come back to this i’ll do this for both
so on the left here this is form base
okay
so you’ll notice here in the form base
audiences single and multiple
okay which i think is i think this needs
to be moved over to here as well but
they’re actually it makes sense for here
but let’s say i select multiple
audiences here
so i’ve got this odd i’m now
within i’m going to add an experience b
experience c
i’ll add in uh an audience let me just
create one here i’m going to say
chicago
add
rule geo
i’m not a big fan you know yeah i could
select city but
to me
companies are better to use dma you’re
going to get a wider a wider net in
terms of audiences so i’m a big fan of
dma but you can use city there
so wait for this to show up here in just
a second i’m just a shortcut
whenever i create an audience i like to
just create copies of all the ones i’m
going to use for the test
to do so dma i’m going to do this i’m
going to change this to san francisco
okay so yeah this is a much wider net
san francisco oakland san jose okay so
i’ll enter this to the dma
save okay cool so first test i want to
select
chicago so there’s my audience for
chicago i’m actually going to get delete
this i’ll stick with just an a and b so
chicago
i’m going to add in san francisco so
what this enables you to do
we still have the location specific i’m
actually going to update this because
because we need to do this so i’m going
to do
home page hopefully i have that in there
home
nope i don’t let me get out of there so
let me create the homepage big fan of
homepage is path
equals
that uh that allows it doesn’t create an
equal you don’t have to worry about
issues with contains uh or you know
lots lots of companies have had issues
not doing this this is an awesome uh
approach so i’m gonna do a current page
path
to do uh not contains we’re gonna use
equals here equals this so someone comes
in from paid search or something where
there’s utm or tracking parameters
you’ll still be members of this test
this limits the scope uh but this does
not uh if you’ve got lower environments
with different subdomains you’d want to
update that information
so here again
location
here is
audiences so basically if you get
experience a you can have an offer for
chicago and an offer for san francisco
for down here and i’ll and i’ll show you
an example of that
same thing applies within here so again
think of this section as
location where the test is running but
you do have the ability to add multiple
audiences with it within here same thing
as i did here so i’m going to change the
audience
i’m going to choose chicago done
and then i’ll add in san francisco
and here’s an example of how this comes
together
let’s say you’re united airlines i’m a
big united fan here um approaching a
million miler hopefully in the next year
or two
um but let’s say united wanted to run an
a b test where the control was the same
but let’s say they wanted to
highlight a new route for
uh people from from chicago here i i
typed this up so
multiple audience examples united wants
to run a test to visitors in chicago and
san francisco promoting new routes sfo
to ogg ogg is maui in hawaii and ord is
o’hare in chicago and ogg so
how the multiple audiences works is we
in the uh experiences we define the
location
but then we can also add in different
audiences like this and so the test
would look like this chicago you can
have a chicago imagery with text
promoting oh uh ord ogg
uh in san francisco the same thing so
that that’s kind of where that comes
together within adobe uh target within
here so hopefully that makes sense uh
like i said it was a big customer today
set up some tests and had it was a
little screwed up so i had enough
thought i’d make a quick video uh if you
like this and like others or got other
ideas for content to be helpful please
add it to the comments thank you
[Music]

Adobe Target and Local Storage

By Brian Hawkins

On January 30, 2022

In Adobe Target, YouTube

Spoiler Alert: If you don’t want to know today’s Wordle answer or how to access the solution without playing, please do not watch the video below.

Local Storage

Most websites widely use local Storage to store and access data. This data doesn’t expire like cookies and can hold considerably more data than cookies. Because of this, it is no surprise that there can be rich data to arm a testing and personalization engine like Adobe Target.

This video shows how easy it is to get data from Local Storage and make it available to Adobe Target for first impression targeting.

Adobe Target targetPageParams documentation: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/target/using/implement-target/client-side/at-js-implementation/functions-overview/targetpageparams.html?lang=en

Code used to grab the Wordle solution from Local Storage to Adobe Target:

function targetPageParams() { 

		var str = window.localStorage.getItem("gameState");
		var parsed = JSON.parse(str);
		var solution = parsed.solution;

		return ("solution=" + solution); 

}

Activity Conversions Use Case

By Brian Hawkins

On January 22, 2022

In Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target

This week, we had a client reach out to us with an interesting use case with one of their Activities in Adobe Target.

The Activity was a test in their cart targeted to visitors who were making their third visit to that location. Adobe Target profiles easily support targeting such an audience but the Analysts needed to only count purchases if they happened during the same session as that third visit.

This video highlights how you can use Adobe Target ‘events’ and data like Profile Attributes as Activity Goals and still have the data in Adobe Analytics via A4T.

Video Transcript

hello so i’ve got a pretty cool use case
here a client of ours was asking us
about a specific situation a specific
business requirement and how to approach
it
so it’s like oh wow this is a wonderful
example of activity conversions
which we we get a lot of questions about
and and so here here’s a really cool use
case let me outline it for you so
the requirement is to create an audience
that starts incrementing visits
to the cart starting today so it’s brand
new audience it’s it’s not something we
we can bring in legacy visits to from
adobe analytics and share to the
experience cloud and i should have
prefaced this is for a test that they
want to run via adobe target
on the third visit to the cart they need
to show a promo code but only on the
third visit
fourth fifth sixth whatever other visit
only the third visit is to get this
particular promo code i think there is
some data behind the decision for the
third visit
but that wasn’t shared with me so
they also want to only count purchases
made from those visitors when their
virtual was made during that third visit
to the cart if someone came to the cart
on their third visit
adobe target would
put them and show them the promo code
these these folks big users of of a for
t
um they don’t want to see and use the
purchase event in in analytics because
it wouldn’t have the definition
associated from adobe target in terms of
the third visit
so the fourth requirement is to get this
data to get this success event into
adobe
analytics so they can do deeper analyses
apply their segmentation and all the
rich stuff that they do within that
particular world
so this is very doable this is a
wonderful example of taking a success
event from adobe target and giving it
over to adobe analytics to do the deep
diving so first things first in order to
uh
to create this required we’re going to
use the target profile
a wonderful little tool it’s the cdp
before cdp’s were a thing
so
we go into adobe target uh we go under
audiences and i went ahead and i created
this particular script already
so there it is cart visit to anonymize
the company i change the domain
but essentially what happens is anytime
this
url is seen it’s going to grab the
session value which is a
adobe manages it and compares it against
the the last one which is nice it’s a
wonderful way to increment visits
and so this this works good this handles
uh requirement one creating an audience
from from day x
uh based off of certain behaviors
so now we’ll go about kind of creating
this test i’ll go ahead and create this
test in target just to show you how this
all kind of comes together so
come over to here let’s just do an a b
test i’ll use form to be quick
to do next
so let’s just use target global mbox
now what i want to do is i want to limit
this to the cart so let’s uh
the cart but also uh the the third visit
i can combine it the next step but as a
best practice you should you should
location specific stuff here targeting
is more audience related even though the
cart page
is audience and uh but it’s better to
think this let me just rename this
card uh activity
conversions
demo
so we’re going to come in here add in
audience requirements let me just create
a
car page
site pages current page
url
a lot of companies are passing uh adobe
analytics page names it’s a wonderful
best practice i would encourage that
you’d be able to can use that definition
under custom and be able to use that as
an inbox parameter but this for demo
purposes let’s say that’s the cart page
boom cart page has been added okay i’ll
leave that i’m not going to sign an
offer but this would be the promo code
for people that come on their third
visit you can add in multiple
experiences what have you
next uh this would be your
cart visit behavior so what we want to
do is create audience so this will be
third visit to cart
target definition of visit since it’s
becoming from the target profile
okay we’ll go to visit a profile because
it’s a visitor profile attribute and we
will change this to cart visit not
contains
we’re going to do equals and i have it
the profile script it’s not going to be
3.0 it’s going to be 3 exactly 3.
and so this will make sure that this
didn’t get
will not show the promo code to people
who have visits greater than three or
less than three
so boom
first the location of the experience the
audience of the experience next i’m come
over here
and then you’ll remember the a for t was
a requirement so we’re going to choose
analytics
you will choose our
report suite in adobe analytics okay so
now
this is where
we’re satisfying this requirement okay
keep in mind they they
we we want to only count conversions
that happen
when it was happened during
the visitors
third visit to the cart so the same
session of that third cart visit here’s
how we’ll do this
so go back to target
so what we want to do
if i were to choose analytics metrics
you certainly want that would work but
they wouldn’t satisfy this case
for those companies that are using
heavy users of a4t this is kind of
this is helpful to see reporting in
adobe and adobe target
but you get a bonus metric this
conversion is adobe target data so i can
suit view to page which is nice i can
put the order thank you page but that
wouldn’t satisfy the requirement for the
third visit um and there’s nothing here
to kind of help me refine that
um
clicked in mbox this is a wonderful tool
um very popular for um
for visual editor uh driven campaigns uh
but for this case i’m gonna use target
global mbox i’m gonna do target global
inbox
now i’m gonna add in a requirement add
in audience targeting so what i’m going
to do here
is create a condition
that say only count conversions
uh on that third visit to the card so
first thing i need to do is i got to
create like an order thank you page
order think you page do to do
again we would you
friendly little tip here
pass the analytics page name to the
target global inbox that would be
available here let’s just do this
current page
url
contains
let’s just say
thank you dot html
it’s not a real page
for demo okay so i created the order
thank you page
so now what i’m going to do is combine
multiple audiences i’m going to combine
the order thank you page
i’m going to combine the third visit to
the cart
so and then i’ll save this
i’ll select it and hit done
so now this success event let me uh let
me rename this it won’t matter for
analysis just say
purchase on third card visit
oh running out of characters
cart
visit okay
so now um this is like this bonus
success event so i’m gonna simply hit
save and close
i’m not going to turn this on because uh
actually
no i’m not i actually don’t have offer
so i could turn it on um
so i could turn on no harm because
there’s just default content it’ll just
show
uh
so now the activity is live
and so within the reporting it’s a for t
so it’ll take a while to show data
within here i don’t think it’ll be yeah
so it’s not available just yet
but to
let’s just call this
a test within so this now we’re into
analytics
so organizations will have all of their
metrics and all that wonderful stuff as
well
but to get this metric this goal that we
configured here
this is an adobe target driven goal it
would show up in analytics workspace as
activity conversions
and this is applicable to any of your
activities that are running an adobe
target
now you can’t simply just drag over
activity conversions and call it a day
you’ve got to come into here and you’ve
got to adjust the attribution model you
have to change this to same touch
same touch and hit apply
boom you’re done
so what this organization will now be
able to do
is exactly what they wanted
to be able to see in adobe analytics
a success event based off an adobe
target definition of a success event so
really freaking cool wonderful way for
adobe target and adobe analytics to work
together server-side to pass that
information along so

And screenshots of the “Primary Goal Configuration” to automate the flow of this data into Analytics:

Adobe Target Host Groups

By Brian Hawkins

On January 19, 2022

In Adobe Target, YouTube

One of our customers here at MiaProva is expanding their testing efforts and use of Adobe Target well beyond their www and mobile site. They are bringing Adobe Target to their Email Platform, and we are helping them do so.

The magic that is making this possible is Adobe Target’s Delivery API. You have to call Adobe Target before emails get sent because you can’t put mboxes or Adobe Target server calls in email. The Delivery API does precisely this. It calls Adobe Target with data, just as a client-side mbox does on the site, and it gets a response based on any Activities and Audiences configured in Adobe Target.

Host Groups

The challenge this organization is dealing with was permissions within Adobe Target. The team developing this incredible capability for email testing with Adobe Target didn’t have the necessary Approver rights. Given they were new to Target and this organization has hundreds of live activities in place, handing out Approver rights wasn’t an initial option.

Host Groups was the fix, and after talking to a few other companies today, I realized a video might be helpful to the Target community, so here you go:

Video Transcript

okay so this is hopefully a quick video regarding adobe target host groups environments we are helping a big mia provo customer put testing as part of their email service so what they’re doing is actually quite fascinating and it’s awesome and this is a company that makes heavy use of adobe target across their public www properties and a really rich personalization program and they got really cool tools to manage their personalization program at mia prova but this team wanted to incorporate every target to do testing within their email platform and so what i’m going to go over now is something that team wasn’t familiar with they didn’t know about that option and i had several meetings with other adobe target customers today and was asking them as if they knew about this as well and it wasn’t something that was well understood so i said hey i’ll put together a quick video so every time adobe target gets called every time server side client side there’s something called the host group that gets passed along so you guys are probably all familiar with mbox parameters and profile parameters those lovely things you’re seeing them through the mia provo chrome extension here wonderful things that get automatically passed to adobe target client site or server side but there’s another thing that gets passed along so i’m going to copy doo doo doo doo it’s very it’s a lot easier to see this within here so i’m going to copy the mbox request or the adobe target server side request here copy is it a curl i’ll jump over to my lovely visual studio code and so this is what it looks like but the client side actually came from me at provo.com because it actually came from our home page so it’s it’s not something you can fake here or change here wherever the mbox or the adobe target server call came from is the host that gets passed along to adobe target but i’m going to go ahead and switch this to mia franklin franklin’s my dog who is sitting here next to me here so i’m going to generate a server call to adobe target by basically taking this data passing it over to adobe target but i want to show you something here in terms of like the the host groups so i’m just going to go to host groups here in brian so you can see brian and let me type in franklin so you know that that isn’t in here so what you will all see in this host group column is every single domain that adobe target made a request from in your account so you can see it’s empty and i wanted to show you just how quick this is so jumping back to a visual studio code i’m going to mimic the request boom so this is the response or response from adobe target you can see i have a lot of things going on here so i’ve got as you see on my home page lots of activities i demo help debug and show off a lot of things here so the response that you see here is just that all of the different activities the offer code basically what gets back what returns from the browser all cool stuff that powers your client-side testing you can see here all of the response tokens i make heavy use of that here as well so all dandy all works fun and easy but this testing team that wanted the email team that was building this service to put adobe target server-side using the delivery api wanted the ability to come into adobe target set up activities do their thing rock and roll but there was concerns given that the team was new to target they didn’t want to give them approver rights which which would essentially blow allow them to touch other activities if they use the wrong mbox name as part of the delivery apis it could create potential problems so lots of different custom things were talked about and then i was brought aware that i’ve made aware of the situations i’ve brought up host groups long term though long term it’s it’s definitely going to be the workspaces longer long term but for now as they’re building out this service we can incorporate workspaces later but host groups was the way to go so we wanted to give them the ability to get to to to modify activities modify offers because you could modify you can’t modify an offer if it’s live unless you have approver status here so what we did here is here’s an example of an adobe target server side call so we got my mbox name that’s taking place domain whatever so i’m going to update this to thinking is it mia dash franklin so oh let’s check to see so i’m going to so i’ll just make this call really quick to adobe server side boom nothing ah this is default content didn’t get any content returned but i’m going to come over to here let’s look at the host groups and see if i got franklin in there let’s see let’s try brian there’s brian let’s try mia dash franklin there it is mia dash franklin so this is a production host group and so what that means is that if it’s a production host group that the activity has to be approved has to be turned on there’s no way around that and this is the activity that we’re using host demo it’s not not approved but what we can do is we can say okay for staging host group for for activities and staging let’s change the activity mode to active and inactive activities and so i’m going to hit save here so i say that so basically if it’s a staging host group that means unapproved like this activity here it’s inactive should technically be able to fire so let me go over here and search for mia franklin i’m going to change the environment i’m going to change franklin over to staging and hit save so that’s now staging my activity here let’s take a look at this it’s using host demo i’m just returning this json object hello world no targeting in place because i’m using you know i’m using basically this this mbox name um don’t say to do not approve so let’s go back over to studio code i’ll close this response here and i will do a refresh boom lovely so there you go so you can see kind of i got my content back as well i cut the response back as well as all of the response tokens as well so this was huge so just to kind of refresh host groups very very powerful way to allow organizations to qa things but be careful though if you were to put a host group in there let’s say your your development or staging environment what could what could happen like so for example if if i were to use something like if i were to go to let’s say miaprova.com if i were to put me a pro let me put www if i were to change this to staging what would that happen is that all of the unapproved activities on the site so basically all of the ones that are inactive within fire so something to be very very careful with for this particular situation was really helpful um and there you have it

Amplitude and Adobe Target

By Brian Hawkins

On August 13, 2021

In Adobe Target, Features

Amplitude is a Digital Optimization System that we have been asked about quite a bit lately. It turns out, MiaProva has some friends there from our Omniture and Adobe days, and so we got a much closer look at the solution and some of the use cases that organizations are using it for.

They offer a free trial that allows you to send 10,000,000 hits per month, and so we decided to kick the tires and see if we could create an integration for those organizations that use Amplitude and Adobe Target.

*Image from: https://amplitude.com/digital-optimization-system*

Amplitude Data Consumption

We are by no means experts and have minimal experience with Amplitude, but from what we figured out so far, there are many different ways to collect data via SDK Libraries. Given that most organizations using Adobe Target leverages Javascript, we decided to create our Adobe Target custom integration based on their Javascript SDK.

Users and Events

Greatly simplifying things, with Amplitude, you send in a Visitors ID (or use theirs), pass in any Properties related to that ID, and any Events as you wish.

Here is an elementary example of passing to Amplitude that a Visitor is a “Cubs” fan:

var userProperties = {
    favorite_baseball_team: "Cubs"
};
amplitude.getInstance().setUserProperties(userProperties);

This data would then be correlated with the User that was initially defined. An event represents something that has happened like ‘clicked,’ ‘searched,’ ‘hovered,’ ‘started a video,’ etc… Really anything that all and these Events can be Arrays and have Properties similar to how User data is passed. Here is what an Event call looks like:

var event = "MiaProva_trial";
amplitude.getInstance().logEvent(event);

We’ve configured this event to fire when a visitor arrives on our trial page: https://www.miaprova.com/trial as a straightforward example. This documentation goes into much more advanced approaches as well.

Passing in your Adobe Target data

Adobe Target has some wonderful mechanisms to make data available for other solutions like Amplitude. Those organizations that use our popular Chrome Extension get to see Adobe Target Response tokens as one way to make the Activity meta-data visible. We did something similar with our approach to Amplitude.

We first had to decide whether we wanted to push the data as an “Event” Property or “User” Property. This decision has some significant implications for the Analysis and the management of data. While folks can debate the approaches, the best approach is a “User Property.” Adobe Target defaults to the Visitor counting methodology, and for excellent reason. Participating in a test is not like clicking a button or visiting a page, but rather something tied to the User so that it can be correlated to Events after entering into the Activity.

With that in mind, this is the single step needed to push your Adobe Target test data to Amplitude. Keep in mind; these steps assume you have Amplitude snippet in place or the npm/yarn installation. Modifications can be made as needed depending on how you manage Adobe Target’s deployment – we are using Adobe Launch.

You need to add this code to the bottom of your Adobe Target at.js file. This code can be added via the Adobe Target UI before your download the at.js file or it can be custom code added via Launch to execute after Target is Loaded.

     document.addEventListener(adobe.target.event.REQUEST_SUCCEEDED, function (e) {
         if (e.detail.responseTokens) {
             var rt = e.detail.responseTokens,
                 ids = [];
             window.targetExperienceList = '';
             for (var i = 0; i < rt.length; i++) {
                 var inList = false;
                 for (var j = 0; j < ids.length; j++) {
                     if (ids[j] == rt[i]['activity.id']) {
                         inList = true;
                         break;
                     }
                 }
                 if (!inList) {
                     ids.push(rt[i]['activity.id']);
                     targetExperienceList += (targetExperienceList ? ',' : '') + rt[i]['activity.name'] + ':' + rt[i]['experience.name'] + ':' + rt[i]['experience.trafficAllocationType'];
                 }
             }
         }
         if (window.targetExperienceList) {

             var values = [targetExperienceList];
             var identify = new amplitude.Identify().set('Activity:Experience', values);
             amplitude.getInstance().identify(identify);

         }

     });

Pretty easy, right!? Let us break things down so all can see what is going on with this code because developers can use this code to push data to any solution, including CDPs, data layers, etc…

Line 1: This is an event listener that will execute the code within it after a successful Adobe Target server call (mbox call:) has taken place.

Lines 2 – 19: We are creating a window scoped variable called “targetExperienceList” that will have a value that will equal a concatenation of all “Activities, Activity Experience, and Activity Allocation” that were tied to the response of the successful Adobe Target server call (mbox call:). On MiaProva.com, this is what the value looks like:

You won’t typically see this sort of thing, but we have quite a few Activities running here for demonstration purposes. For those of you not familiar with “Activity Allocation,” that value is only pertinent to Automated Personalization and Auto-Target, where Adobe has Control and Targeted Groups. All other Activity types will have ‘undefined’ as a value.

Lines 20 – 26: Here, we are first checking to see if there is a value for “targetExperienceList”. This value would exist if the Adobe Target server call (mbox call:) had Adobe Target Response Tokens that showed that the Visitor was in a live Activity. If so, then it would execute Lines 22-24, which pushes all the Adobe Target data to Amplitude as User Properties. This could differ from the above User Properties because we treat the values like an array if the Visitor gets into more than one Adobe Target Activity on a single Adobe Target server call (mbox call:).

And there you have it:

Then you can analyze as you wish, create user cohorts (not available in free trial), create dashboards, visualize paths, etc…

Happy testing, folks!

Why are we paying for Adobe Target Premium?

By Brian Hawkins

On August 12, 2021

In Adobe Target, Features, Optimization Management

Optimization Management is so much more than managing the intake and output of tests. A true Optimization Management Platform enables the organization to monitor tests or groups of tests and answers the big questions about their testing program as a whole and their investments in resources and technologies.

MiaProva automatically stitches the organizational meta-data related to Activities to data from Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics. This approach allows organizations to use this data to analyze and manage their tests and what offline variables are impacting the program – similar to how organizations use eVars and list variables in Adobe Analytics.

One of the many ways organizations use this is to understand how Adobe Target Premium is adding value to their Optimization Programs. MiaProva automatically classifies Activities that are specific to Adobe Target Premium as a dimension for Program Analysis. Doing so exposes a potential problem that needs addressing if limited or no value is being realized or creates an opportunity to expand on any value that is being realized.

MiaProva just onboarded two organizations that have made significant investments with Adobe and are heavy users of Adobe Target. Both organizations have launched more than 100 Activities launched since January of 2021. While mapping test tickets or test design documents to Adobe Activities to put all that data to life, MiaProva was able to immediately highlight for both of these organizations that they were not receiving the amount of value they should be with Adobe Target Premium.

In this blog post, we are going to highlight how we were able to identify this opportunity (and others) for these two organizations, what is being done to change things, and a great example of another MiaProva client who sees considerable value in Premium and MiaProva has used the ROI models to expand on their use of the Automated Personalization.

Optimization Program Macro-Analysis

MiaProva automatically creates dimensions related to the Adobe data such as “Adobe Target Premium vs. Standard,” A4T vs. non-A4T, Activity Types, Activity Sources, etc… Organizations use this data to manage live Activities and for all historical tests. While this is powerful (and very helpful for these two new MiaProva clients), the strategic value lies in tying the organization’s internal data to their optimizations efforts.

With Adobe Target, organizations have the tools they need to analyze individual tests. Organizations can go into Adobe Target and understand how the test impacts any metrics configured in Adobe Target. Lift, Confidence, segments, Success Metrics, etc…..all the great things you need to analyze an individual test.

And with, Analytics for Target (A4T), the analysis capabilities are exponentially more powerful by automating the inclusion of any metric, full use of organizationally accepted segments, metrics, calculated metrics, etc… Organizations can also look at all Activities in aggregate and use Activities and Activity Experiences as Segments which is a massive capability in and of itself that can’t be understated.

What is missing, though, is all the great data that is driving the Activity or test, to begin with. That is where MiaProva comes in by automating the process of mapping data from test tickets or test design documents to the rich data collected and managed by Adobe. MiaProva does this by way of MiaProva Programs – customize templates for their test design documents.

MiaProva Programs allow organizations to ‘dimensionalize’ any internal data related to tests just like MiaProva is ‘dimensionalizing’ the Adobe data like how we are distinguishing Activities that are part of ‘Adobe Target Premium.’ The use cases are limitless, but here are some that are being used by our clients today:

What idea source is leading to the greatest number of tests? the greatest lift against metric x, y, or z?
How are the tests distributed across organizational locations?
What audiences are being used across test locations?
How does our feature flaging solution (that we capture via an Adobe Analytics eVar) compare in terms of impact to revenue compared to tests that were executed via Adobe Target?
What value is Adobe Target Premium giving us? What is our win rate with Premium Activities vs. Standard Activites?
What is our ratio of Premium Activites vs. Standard Activities? What business units are seeing value from Premium and which ones are not using Premium?
What Product Managers are runing the most tests?
What is the distribution of Activities to Analysts?
Are HIPPO driven tests as effective as data-driven tests?
What is the ratio of Adobe Target ‘personalization’ efforts (pushing the winner or just targeting content) to actual tests

and we can go on and on. Any data that an organization would like to use is available for management for any Live Activities and all historical ones. This data can come by way of our APIs, JIRA integration, or as users supply tickets as part of their test management process.

Our approach to macro-analysis of optimization programs has enabled organizations to learn fascinating things and exponentially increase the realized value of investments in optimization. It is this approach that these two new organizations to MiaProva started to ask, “Why are we paying for Adobe Target Premium”?

Automated Personalization Playbook

Both of these new MiaProva organizations reached out to us to better understand what they saw in terms of our Program Analysis regarding their investments in Adobe Target Premium. It turns out the value they were realizing was non-existent or low was because they were not using the Activity features that come with Adobe Target Premium (Automated Personalization, Recommendations, and Auto-Target) correctly or in a minimal capacity despite licensing them for a considerable period of time.

Diving deeper into their use cases and their understanding of the Premium Activity types, it became clear that their understanding of Automated Personalization, how it worked, and how best to apply it was incorrect or less than ideal. We dove into the other Premium Activity types, but the investments made for Adobe Target Premium were tied to Automated Personalization.

We tried to point them towards documentation that could help, including a co-authored book on Adobe Target. Still, there was nothing out there that provided a soup-to-nuts approach to how best to use Automated Personalization. So, for these two organizations, and anyone else that may want to learn about Automated Personalization, we are committing ourselves to author what will be referred to as the Automated Personalization Playbook.

Give us a follow below to follow this series over the next month or two automatically:

This Automated Personalization Playbook will go very deep into what Automated Personalization is, how to give you the best chance to ensure success, and outline the best-in-class:

Framework
Execution
Strategy
Analysis

Stay tuned, as this will be a pretty powerful tool for those organizations that license Adobe Target Premium. It will also be exciting to possibly report on the change in ROI of these two organizations if they can adapt the strategy as outlined in this playbook!

Automated Personalization for the win

Another organization that leverages MiaProva is seeing significant ROI with investments with Adobe Target Premium. This company had applied a macro-view of optimization way before adopting MiaProva, which was helpful, but now MiaProva automates much of this effort.

This organization invested more than $3MM on an internally built engine that sits on top of its content management system. This system enabled business teams to establish rules for sections of their home page – very similar to how Adobe’s Experience Manager works. The team made heavy use of this solution, leading to significant increases in engagement and impact on key organizational metrics.

In an ongoing effort to continue optimizing, they tested this solution against Automated Personalization (using strategies outlined in the above-mentioned playbook). This effort lasted more than six months and spanned dozens of iterations. Without going into the details, here were the high-level results:

This effort clearly showed that humans are clearly smarter when it comes to applying rules to digital experiences based on data. This effort also showed the value of removing the cognitive bias that humans bring to decision-making and the value that AI could bring.

This ROI is managed by MiaProva and clearly visible in the MiaProva dashboard as a target that they continue to try to hit. This visibility has enabled this organization to demonstrate the value of automation, which has led to its operationalization to several other key areas for its digital consumers.

MiaProva Activity Sources

By Brian Hawkins

On June 18, 2021

In Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Features

We added something pretty significant to MiaProva this week. Activity Sources.

As you may know, MiaProva is the only Optimization Management Solution to integrate with Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics fully. Any Activity type or optimization effort in Adobe Target is fully available for management within MiaProva. Any of your Adobe Analytics Segments, Metrics, Calculated Metrics, Events, etc….are also fully available as well. We’ve expanded our deep integration with Adobe I/O to now give our users Activity Sources.

Activity Sources represent different sources for optimization or testing related events. Adobe Target is a wonderful example of an Activity Source, and now MiaProva has broadened Optimization Management to include any data from any dimension in Adobe Analytics.

At MiaProva, our most successful customers have shown us that:

Data collected and reported on should have more of an optimization focus with ROI and learning management
Considerable opportunities exist within Adobe Analytics to expand on optimization and personalization over and above Adobe Target
Organizations need a centralized platform to manage all of their optimization efforts along with the efforts that stem from their testing and optimization solution

Adobe Analytics Dimensions

Adobe Analytics provides organizations with 75 Props, 250 eVars, and 3 List Variables. These variables allow organizations to report and analyze any data that is associated with them. MiaProva now treats each of these as configuration sources for Optimization Related efforts.

These additional sources also inherit the same MiaProva benefits that Activities from Adobe Target get including:

Real-time and automated reporting
Custom alerting and notifications based on any conversion event in Adobe Analytics based on defined thresholds and confidence levels
Centralized management with any other source, including Adobe Target
Program Dashboards and ROI models
Automatic creation of a knowledge library
Collaboration and risk mitigation
And everything else available within MiaProva…

Given the limitless ways organizations can use their Adobe Analytics Variables, the opportunities to treat the data collected by them like optimization initiatives are essentially limitless. Here are a few examples to give you a sense of the power this Activity Sources feature enables:

All acquisition initiatives (SEM, Email, Affiliate, etc.….) – huge opportunities here!
Product Finding Method eVar
Form type if B2B
Custom feature flagging
Internal server-side testing
Loyal program management
Page Categories
Search
Custom multi-armed bandits
Other testing solutions

Looking to the future, as organizations adopt and make use of Adobe’s Experience Platform (AEP), this Activity Sources capability by MiaProva will be even more valuable given the power AEP has to collect and manage data from many sources. We’ve built this capability for today with the future in mind, given the considerable opportunities that exist with Adobe’s Journey Optimizer.

Configuration in MiaProva

Organizations can easily configure Activity Sources right within MiaProva’s Admin Console as seen below.

Here organizations can add any of their Adobe Analytics dimensions (eVars, list variables, sProps, etc…) as an Activity Source.

Simply provide a name, the dimension ID, and a value pattern and MiaProva will immediately take over and provide management of these sources along with your Adobe Target Activities!

Below highlights how one can Access or manage these different sources within MiaProva’s Live Dashboard.

Adobe Target and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

By Brian Hawkins

On April 17, 2021

In Adobe Target, Optimization Management

If your organization leverages Adobe Target for their optimization and personalization efforts and you have not joined your internal Visitor ID to Adobe Target’s visitor ID, consider making that a top priority. This capability has existed for quite some time but is now getting a renewed focus mainly due to ITP, browsers like Chrome are changing how cookies are managed, and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

Joining your internal Visitor ID to Adobe Target’s ID takes just a few minutes to complete, costs you absolutely nothing, immediately creates cross-device test coordination, and opens the door wide open to use ANY (except PII, of course:) of the data that you have mapped to that ID. We recommended this blog post or this article by Adobe to see how to do this.

Adobe Target 1st party data, 2nd party data, and 3rd party data

This effort is, by far, the most valuable and highly strategic component of Adobe Target. Doing this converts your optimization program from a 2nd Party one to a 1st Party one where all the data is based on YOUR organization’s ID, not just Adobe’s. All of your Adobe IDs across your various browsers and devices will now map to your organization’s 1st Party ID.

Once this exercise is complete, your organization has a 1st-party optimization program which means ITP and changes to cookies are managed within browsers will not impact test execution and analysis. In fact, a 1st-party optimization program not only future proofs investments in testing and personalization but also enables your organizations to expand their efforts considerably with customer journey optimization.

Okay, so now you have the 1st Party ID in place, now what…

Configuring Adobe Target to become a 1st-Party Optimization program is the easy part. Historically, and still quite common, the more challenging part is figuring out where internally at your organization the 1st Party data is located that is mapped to that visitor ID that you now have mapped to Adobe Target. Then once you know that, the challenge then becomes how best to get it to Adobe Target.

The where…

Organizations vary considerably in terms of where this rich 1st-Party data exists. The data could be located across several different systems and spread across an array of different teams. The data might be in data-lakes, data layers, cookies, completely offline, and in some cases not joined to the Visitor ID you used but rather other definitions of a Visitor ID. Users of Adobe Target, those that execute the Activities, may also not have access to the systems or teams that manage this 1st Party data.

Data compliance is another important factor concerning where the data is located. Data compliance is the practice of making sure that the data being managed is guarded against misuse. Depending on where the data is located, it may or may not be data compliant – safe to use for testing and personalization within Adobe Target.

As you can see, finding safe-to-use data can be a challenge. Thankfully, some organizations have overcome this challenge and established governance and processes to get the data. This then leaves them with the “how” to get this data into Adobe Target for their personalization and testing needs.

The how…

Once you know where the data is, Adobe Target provides quite a few options to get the data into Adobe Target. Depending on the format your data is in, you may also have to modify the format to leverage one of the options available. Here are the main mechanisms organizations get data into Adobe Target for personalization and targeting Activities:

Adobe Target API – here you can update single Profile attributes or use Adobe Target batch files to upload as many as 1,000,000 Visitors per day (I know of several organizations that exceed this considerably and it works wonderfuly)
Adobe Target adbox – this is an old-school tool that many of us old-timers use from time to time. It is simply a pixel that passes data to Target. Very helpful from taking data from email platforms and passing it to Adobe Target upon email open.
Client-side or Server-side via parameter value pairs – just like your Analytics tags collect data that Adobe Target mbox calls as well. This is a very popular approach given the use of local stroage and datalayers and Adobe Target’s ability to easily consume that information.
Adobe Analytics Customer Attributes – those organizations that make strategic use of Customer Attributes are using this approach to very creatively to get 1st party data into Adobe Target. Adobe converts these attribute to Adobe Target Profile Attributes automatically.
Adobe Audience Manager – within Audience Manager, organizations can create segments as they wish and share them to the Experience Cloud, which makes them available within Adobe Target. Quite a few of the organizations that use MiaProva, leverage this approach.

As you can see, the highways are built and are ready to use. Adobe has done a fantastic job giving organizations different options to get the data that they need to Adobe Target for personalization and testing. Despite these mechanisms, organizations still struggle to establish the infrastructure to automate and maintain the data transfer despite the considerable value.

The value…

Out of the clients that use MiaProva and the organizations that we work with at Demystified, it is safe to say that only about 45% of them leverage the functionality that enables 1st Party optimization programs. The reality of it all is that while the functionality is there and the value is massive, organizations often struggle to take advantage of these capabilities. Learning the capabilities, connecting the pipes, establishing process and governance, etc… are barriers that many organizations can’t overcome.

Those organizations that have been able to overcome the barriers realize significant value. Here are just a handle of many examples of organizations and what they are doing with their 1st Party Optimization Programs:

For a $1.2B retailer, weekly (on Sundays), they use Adobe Target’s batch processing for Profile attributes processing in-store transaction data so they can be used in key Activities by the various testing teams for customer journey optimization.
A $900M retailer, before each email blast, they pass key profile attributes via a pixel call to Adobe Target that is specific to that email in the event the visitor “view throughs” to the website vs. clicking through. This effort was instrumental to coordinate pricing threshold messaging offline and online.
For a $7B retailer, 1st Party data is made available as Response Tokens so that their CMS can use the data for content decionsing and rules.
For finance, a $20B financial institution, using Audience Manager and Adobe Target batch APIs is allowing them to give Automated Personalization very rich 1st Party data for modeling and content decisioning. Additionally, considerable personalization efforts via Target are rooted in this data.
A $39B financial instituation is using client-side and server-side parameter passing Tag Management for very advanced use of Automated Personalization along with rich analyis via A4T. Additionally, this approach enables their internal call centers to mimic experiences of the digital consumers by way of the cross-device test coordination.

The challenges around “where” the data is and “how” to use it are not specific to personalization and optimization efforts. The increasing demand to make data actionable, connect multiple data sources, and provide data compliance expands well beyond testing to all marketing and data science components.

This perfect storm has created a vacuum that is being filled by something called Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

CDP

What is a CDP? This is not a simple answer by any means, as CDPs providers have a wide range of features and capabilities that align and manage consumer data for organizations. CDPs can make the “where” and the “how” considerably easier than it has to be, and some CDPs can automate those efforts.

We are not going to go into all that a CDP is here. At a high level, a CDP is all about managing an individual customer with a single profile. CDPs have visitor stitching algorithms, provide data compliances, and make the data available to different departments and solutions like Adobe Target, for example.

ACTIONIQ

MiaProva customers vary considerably in terms of CDP use with testing and optimization. Those that do can automate and accelerate their use of 1st Party data for testing and optimization. Our clients work with several different CDPs, but I wanted to call out ACTIONIQ specifically because they work with Adobe Target to bring the 1st party data to life.

I’ve highlighted above how organizations have to establish processes and governance around the “where” and the “how”, but here is how ACTIONIQ automates that process seamlessly, specifically for Adobe Target, so that testing teams can focus on strategy and execution.

Real-time syncing – as this first-party data gets updates, these guys update the Adobe Target Profile as events take place across other channels
Batch synching – weekly, every 10-days, Sunday nights, they can automate the process of porting Adobe Target Profile attributes for personalization and testing. Much easier than gathering a file internally and uploading it from your PC.
Porting Adobe Target Activity Meta-data to other solutions. CDPs shouldn’t be limited to feeding Adobe Target data about the digital consumers, but they can also consume what Activities or tests your digital consumers are members of. Consider how helpful it would be for internal Call Centers to have visibility into this information? Or to coordinate these onsite personalizations with initiatives with Social or with Acquisition initiatives?
It is related to #3 above, impression management. If you are using Adobe Target to show digital consumers an offer through an Activity, you can control in Target how many times they see it. This is better served in a CDP where you can coordinate impressions of ‘offers’ or content at a macro level across channels and mediums.

MiaProva and CDPs

The customers of MiaProva that use CDPs as part of their personalization and testing efforts are increasingly using the data the facilitate Customer Journey Optimization. Customer Journey Optimization is where organizations have testing roadmaps with targeted testing and personalization, advancing customers across their various customer journeys.

MiaProva supports those efforts by way of our MiaProva workstreams, where we automate the management of metrics, segments, tickets, activities, and ROI based on these workstreams – making it more efficient to advance the throughput of these efforts.

Customer Journey Optimization

Sample Ratio Mismatch (SRM)

By Brian Hawkins

On April 7, 2021

In Adobe Target, Features

Sample Ratio Mismatch (SRM) is a thing, a real thing that optimization programs need to concern themselves about. At a high level, SRM means that the variants (experiences) of an A/B test have a traffic distribution (sample) that differs in a statistically significant way from what you expected the allocation of traffic or the sample to be.

This blog post and this blog post are great as they dive into what it is, how scary it can be, and what to do about it. Please do check out both those posts as they drive home just how important of a topic this is for optimization programs.

Sample Ratio Mismatch and MiaProva

About 5-6 weeks ago, MiaProva quietly released a new Alert to our array of alerts we provide for testing programs. This Alert will notify MiaProva customers that use Adobe Target automatically when SRM has been detected. This approach automatically applies a Chi-Squared calculation to every single A/B Activity currently Live in their Adobe Target accounts.

When MiaProva detects these issues, we will immediately notify stakeholders via email and highlight the Alert in the Live Dashboard and the daily Aggregate email that summarizes all Activity-related Alerts.

In the last month, we have had SRM detected a handful of times across many hundreds of Live Activities from different organizations. With SRM, the most important thing is identifying the root cause of the mismatch. Two out of the five are still being investigated, but the other three were quickly diagnosed. The statistically significant issues were:

During QA, an internal team became members of one of the variants and maintained that membership when the test went live. Incorrect targeting used in the Activity setup further exacerbated this SRM issue.
A bot had gotten into one of the variants.
Improper use of the Advanced settings upon Conversion, the selected Action below, combined with the audience criteria, caused an imbalance of sample distribution.

Adobe Target Conversion Advanced Settings

Had MiaProva not detected and alerted people to this key issue, organizations could have found themselves in a situation where they were making decisions on statistically invalid test results. Furthermore, because MiaProva detected SRM, the organizations could remedy the underlying causes, thus preventing additional reporting issues.

Below represents what SRM alerts look like in context to Live Activities that are from Adobe Target. MiaProva also provides an SRM calculator with each Live Adobe Target Activity that is an A/B Activity. Automated Personalization, Experience Targeting, and Auto-Allocate Activity types have logic to promote differences in sample distribution across Activity variants. MiaProva provides this service for all A/B Activities, Multivariate Activities, and Adobe Recommendations.

And lastly, here is what the calculator looks like and how users can adjust their Expected Visitor distribution as needed.

Using Adobe Target to test Adobe Experience Manager

By Brian Hawkins

On April 4, 2021

In Adobe Target

I imagine many folks may find this post fascinating given the amount of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) adoption as of late. It seems like about half the companies I work with are either being sold AEM, are onboarding it, or have already rolled it out.

As an Adobe Target practitioner, I can definitely appreciate and value the integration between AEM and Adobe Target. Especially helpful are:

Experience Fragments – AEM can automatically export content to have available in Adobe Target as offers. Very helpful for the highly democratized organizations with limited technical expertise. This solution provides a wonderful way to mitigate risk as well. This approach helps organizations that want to move away from modular mboxes to the global mbox approach to manage all test-related content.
Productization (operationalizing test winners)- When Adobe Target finds a winner, you don’t want to rely on Adobe Target to maintain that experience for that audience. The Audiences in the Activities are often pretty sophisticated, and AEM does a pretty good job of mirroring rules used in Audiences.

Deploying AEM via Adobe Target

One of our MiaProva’s customers decided to contract Analytics Demystified to provide Adobe Target training and strategic support to their growing optimization practice. During this engagement, this customer also licensed AEM and asked if we could provide support and a model to leverage Adobe Target to throttle to AEM and test the impact of AEM against their organizational KPIs, and so we did. We evaluated their use of Tridion, provided support for Adobe Target server-side, created the Activity and offers, and provided the monitoring via MiaProva and Adobe Analytics.

AEM vs. Tridion

The test design is actually pretty straightforward. The approach that was decided on provided a great introduction to the organization to the server-side testing capabilities of Adobe Target. The following video shows the approach and how you can easily use Adobe Target to quantify the impact of AEM and leverage Adobe Target to throttle AEM’s rollout.

Steps taken in video:

Leverage Adobe Target server-side capabilities (video uses the delivery API as an example)
Configure an Activity in Adobe Target using JSON offer type
Configure the default CMS or server to trigger AEM or other CMS based on the server-side JSON response from Adobe Target

Code used:

Experience A:

{ "redirect": "false", "domain": "www.miatest.com" }

Experience B:

{ "redirect": "true", "domain":"ww1.miatest.com" }