Segmentation Service UI guide

Adobe Experience Platform Segmentation Service provides a user interface for creating and managing audiences and segment definitions.

Getting started

Working with audiences and segment definitions requires an understanding of the various Experience Platform services involved with segmentation. Before reading this user guide, please review the documentation for the following services:

  • Segmentation Service: Segmentation Service allows you to segment data stored in Experience Platform that relates to individuals (such as customers, prospects, users, or organizations) into smaller groups.
  • Real-Time Customer Profile: Provides a unified, real-time consumer profile based on aggregated data from multiple sources.
  • Adobe Experience Platform Identity Service: Enables the creation of customer profiles by bridging identities from disparate data sources being ingested into Platform.
  • Experience Data Model (XDM): The standardized framework by which Platform organizes customer experience data. To best make use of Segmentation, please ensure your data is ingested as profiles and events according to the best practices for data modeling.

You should also understand two key terms that are used through this document and understand the difference between them:

  • Audience: A set of people who share similar behaviors and/or characteristics. This collection of people can either be generated by Adobe Experience Platform using segment definitions or audience composition (Platform-generated audience) or from external sources such as custom uploads (externally generated audience).
  • Segment definition: The rules Adobe Experience Platform uses to describe key characteristics or behavior of a target audience.
  • Segment: The act of separating Profiles into audiences.

Overview

In the Experience Platform UI, select Audiences in the left navigation to open the Overview tab displaying the Audiences dashboard.

NOTE
If your organization is new to Platform and does not yet have active Profile datasets or merge policies created, the Audiences dashboard is not visible. Instead, the Overview tab displays links and documentation to help you get started with audiences.

Audiences dashboard segments-dashboard

The Audiences dashboard outlines key metrics related to your organization’s audience data.

To learn more, visit the audiences dashboard guide.

The audience dashboard is displayed. It shows various widgets, including the audience size, profiles by identity, identity overlap, and the audience size change trend.

Browse browse

Select the Browse tab to see a list of all the audiences for your organization. This view lists information about the audiences including the profile count, origin, created date, last modified date, tags, and breakdown.

The browse screen is displayed. A list of all the audiences belonging to the organization is shown.

Next to each audience is an ellipsis icon. Selecting this displays a list of available quick actions for the audience. This list of actions differs, based on the audience’s origin.

The quick actions list is shown for audiences with the origin of Audience composition.

Action
Origins
Description
Edit
Segmentation Service
Opens the Segment Builder to edit your audience. Please note that if your audience was created through the API, you will not be able to edit it using Segment Builder. For more information on using the Segment Builder, please read the Segment Builder UI guide.
Open composition
Audience composition
Opens the Audience composition to see your audience. For more information on Audience composition, please read the audience composition UI guide.
Activate to destination
Segmentation Service
Activates the audience to a destination. For more detailed information on activating an audience to a destination, please read the activation overview.
Share with partners
Audience composition, Custom upload, Segmentation Service
Shares your audience with other Platform users. For more information on this feature, please read the Segment Match overview.
Manage tags
Audience composition, Custom upload, Segmentation Service
Manages the user-defined tags that belong to the audience. For more information on this feature, please read the section on filtering and tagging.
Move to folder
Audience composition, Custom upload, Segmentation Service
Manages which folder the audience belongs to. For more information on this feature, please read the section on filtering and tagging.
Copy
Audience composition, Custom upload, Segmentation Service
Duplicates the selected audience.
Apply access labels
Audience composition, Custom upload, Segmentation Service
Manages the access labels that belong to the audience. For more information on access labels, please read the documentation on managing labels.
Archive
Custom upload
Archives the selected audience.
Delete
Audience composition, Custom upload, Segmentation Service
Deletes the selected audience.
Add to package
Audience composition, Custom upload, Segmentation Service
Moves the audience between sandboxes. For more information on this feature, please read the sandbox tooling guide.
NOTE
You will not be able to delete an audience that is used in a destination activation.

On the top of the page are options to add all audiences to a schedule, import an audience, create a new audience, and view a breakdown of the update frequency.

Toggling Schedule all audiences will enable scheduled segmentation. More information on scheduled segmentation can be found in the scheduled segmentation section of this user guide.

Selecting Import audience will let you import an externally generated audience. To learn more about importing audiences, please read the section on importing an audience in the user guide.

Selecting Create audience will let you create an audience. To learn more about creating audiences, please read the section on creating an audience in the user guide.

The top navigation bar on the audience browse page is highlighted. This bar contains a button to create an audience and a button to import an audience.

You can select Update frequency summary to display a pie chart that shows the update frequency.

The Update frequency summary button is highlighted.

The pie chart appears, displaying a breakdown of the audiences by update frequency. The chart displays the total number of audiences in the middle. If you hover over the different parts of the audience, it will display the number of audiences that belong to each update frequency type.

The update frequency pie chart is displayed.

Customize customize

You can add additional fields to the Browse page by selecting the filter attribute icon . These additional fields include lifecycle status, update frequency, last updated by, description, created by, and access labels.

Field
Description
Name
The name of the audience.
Profile count
The total number of profiles that qualify for the audience.
Origin
The origin of the audience. This states where the audience comes from. Possible values include Segmentation Service, Custom upload, Audience composition, and Audience Manager.
Lifecycle status
The status of the audience. Possible values for this field include Draft, Published, and Archived.
Update frequency
A value that states how often the audience’s data is updated. Possible values for this field include Batch, Streaming, Edge, and Not Scheduled.
Last updated by
The name of the person who last updated the audience.
Created
The date and time, in UTC, that the audience was created.
Last updated
The date and time, in UTC, that the audience was last updated.
Tags
The user-defined tags that belong to the audience. More information about these tags can be found in the section on tags.
Description
The description of the audience.
Created by
The name of the person who created the audience.
Access labels
The access labels for the audience. Access labels allow you to categorize datasets and fields according to usage policies that apply to that data. These labels can be applied at any time, providing flexibility in how you choose to govern data. For more information on access labels, please read the documentation on managing labels.
Breakdown
The profile status breakdown for the audience. A more detailed description of this profile status breakdown can be found below.

If breakdown is selected, the display shows a bar graph outlining the percentage of profiles that belong to each of the following calculated profile statuses: Realized, Existing, and Exiting. Additionally, the breakdown shown on the Browse tab is the most accurate breakdown of the segment definition status. If this number differs with what is stated on the Overview tab, you should use the numbers on the Browse tab as the correct source of information, since the Overview tab numbers only update once per day.

Status
Description
Realized
The count of profiles that qualified for the segment in the last 24 hours since the last batch segment job ran.
Existing
The count of profiles which remained in the segment in the last 24 hours since the last batch segment job ran.
Exiting
The count of profiles which exited the segment in the last 24 hours since the last batch segment job ran.

After you selected the fields you want to display, you can also re-size the width of the displayed columns. You can either do this by dragging the area between the columns or by selecting the arrow icon of the column you want to re-size, followed by Resize column.

The Resize column button is highlighted.

Filtering, folders, and tagging manage-audiences

To improve your work efficiency, you can search for existing audiences, add user-defined tags to audiences, put audiences in folders, and filter the displayed audiences.

Search

You can search your existing audiences in up to 9 different languages with Unified Search.

To use Unified Search, add the term you want to search in the highlighted search bar.

The search bar is highlighted.

For more information about Unified Search, including supported features, please read the Unified Search documentation.

Tags

You can add user-defined tags to better describe, find, and manage your audiences.

To add a tag, select Manage tags on the audience you want to tag.

The Manage tags button is selected for a specified audience.

The Manage tags popover appears. On this popover, you can either select a categorized tag or an uncategorized tag.

Tag type
Description
Categorized
A tag that is created and managed by your organization’s administrators.
Uncategorized
A tag that is created within the Manage tags popover. Anyone can create or manage these types of tags.

The Manage tags popover is displayed. The options to choose a categorized or uncategorized are highlighted.

After adding all the tags you want to attach to the audience, select Save.

On the Manage tags popover, the added tags are highlighted.

For more information on creating and managing tags, please read the Managing Tags guide.

Folders

You can place audiences within folders for better audience management.

To move an audience into a folder, select Move to folder on the audience you want to move.

The Move to folder button is selected for a specific audience.

The Move audience to folder popover appears. Select the folder you want to move the audience to, then select Save.

The Move audience to folder popover is displayed. The folder that the audience will be moved to is highlighted.

Once the audience is in a folder, you can choose to only display audiences that belong to a specific folder.

Audiences that belong to a specific folder are displayed.

Filter

You can also filter your audiences, based on a variety of settings.

To filter the available audiences, select the filter icon .

The browse audiences page is displayed, with the filter icon highlighted.

The list of available filters is displayed.

Filter
Description
Origin
Lets you filter based on the origin of the audience. Available options include Segmentation service, Custom upload, Audience composition, and Audience Manager.
Has any tag
Lets you filter by tags. You can select between Has any tag and Has all tags. When Has any tag is selected, the filtered audiences will include any of the tags you’ve added. When Has all tags is selected, the filtered audiences must include all of the tags you’ve added.
Lifecycle status
Lets you filter based on the audience’s lifecycle status. Available options include Active, Archived, Deleted, Draft, Inactive, and Published.
Update frequency
Lets you filter based on the audience’s update frequency. Available options include Scheduled, Continuous, and On Demand.
Created by
Lets you filter based on the person who created the audience.
Creation date
Lets you filter based on the creation date of the audience. You can choose a date range to filter when the audience was created.
Modified date
Lets you filter based on the last modified date of the audience. You can choose a date range to filter when the audience was last modified.

The available filters are displayed and highlighted on the browse audiences page.

Audience details audience-details

To see more details about a specific audience, select an audience’s name within the Browse tab.

The audience details page appears. On the top, there is a summary of the audience, information about the qualified audience size, as well as destinations the segment is activated for.

The audience details page is displayed. The audience summary, audience total, and activated destinations cards are highlighted.

Audience summary

The Audience summary section provides information such as the ID, name, description, origin, and details of the attributes.

Additionally, you are given the option to activate the audience to a destination, apply access labels, or edit/update the audience.

Selecting Activate to destination lets you activate the audience to a destination. For more detailed information on activating an audience to a destination, please read the activation overview.

The Activate to destination button is highlighted.

Selecting Apply access labels lets you manage the access labels that belong to the audience. For more information on access labels, please read the documentation on managing labels.

The Apply access labels button is highlighted.

Audience composition

The audience details page is shown, with the Open composition button highlighted.

Selecting Open composition lets you view your audience in Audience Composition. For more information about Audience Composition, please read the Audience Composition UI guide.

Custom upload

The audience details page is shown, with the Update audience button highlighted.

Selecting Update audience lets you re-upload an externally generated audience. For more information on importing an externally generated audience, please read the section on importing an audience.

Segmentation Service

The audience details page is shown, with the Edit audience button highlighted.

Selecting Edit audience lets you edit your audience in the Segment Builder. For more detailed information about using the Segment Builder workspace, please read the Segment Builder user guide.

Selecting Edit properties will let you edit the basic details of the audience, such as the name, description, and tags.

Audience total

The Audience total section shows the total number of profiles that qualify for the audience.

Estimates are generated by using a sample size of that day’s sample data. If there are less than 1 million entities in your profile store, the full data set is used; for between 1 and 20 million entities, 1 million entities are used; and for over 20 million entities, 5% of the total entities are used. More information about generating estimates can be found in the estimate generation section of the audience creation tutorial.

Activated destinations

The Activated destinations section shows the destinations that this audience is activated for.

NOTE
Destinations are a feature available with Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform, and allow you to export data to external platforms. For more information on destinations, please read the destinations overview. To learn how to activate a segment to a destination, see activation overview.

Profile samples

Underneath is a sampling of profiles that qualify for the segment, detailing information including the Profile ID, first name, last name, and personal email.

The way data sampling gets triggered depends on the method of ingestion.

For batch ingestion, the profile store is automatically scanned every fifteen minutes to see if a new batch was successfully ingested since the last sampling job was run. If that is the case, the profile store is subsequently scanned to see if there’s been at least a 5% change in the number of records. If these conditions are met, a new sampling job is triggered.

For streaming ingestion, the profile store is automatically scanned every hour to see if there’s been at least a 5% change in the number of records. If this condition is met, a new sampling job is triggered.

The sample size of the scan depends on the overall number of entities in your profile store. These sample sizes are represented in the following table:

Entities in profile store
Sample size
Less than 1 million
Full data set
1 to 20 million
1 million
Over 20 million
5% of total

More detailed information about each Profile can be seen by selecting the Profile ID. To learn more about a profile’s details, please read the Real-Time Customer Profile user guide.

The sample profiles for the audience are highlighted. Sample profile information includes the profile ID, the first name, the last name, and the person's email.

Creating an audience create-audience

You can select Create audience to create an audience.

On the Audience browse page, the Create audience button is highlighted.

A popover appears, letting you choose between composing an audience or building rules.

A popover that displays the two types of audiences you can create.

Audience Composition

Selecting Compose audiences takes you to Audience Composition. This workspace provides intuitive controls for building and editing audiences, such as drag-and-drop tiles used to represent different actions. To learn more about creating audiences, please read the Audience Composition guide.

The Audience Composition workspace is displayed.

Segment Builder

Selecting Build rule takes you to the Segment Builder. This workspace provides intuitive controls for building and editing segment definitions, such as drag-and-drop tiles used to represent data properties. To learn more about creating segment definitions, please read the Segment Builder guide

The Segment Builder workspace is displayed.

Importing an audience import-audience

You can select Import audience to import an externally generated audience.

On the Audience browse page, the Import audience button is highlighted.

The Import audience CSV workflow appears. You can select a CSV file to import as an externally generated audience.

In the Import audience CSV workflow, the Drag and drop files box is highlighted, showing where you can upload your externally generated audience.

NOTE
The external generated audience must be in CSV format, have a maximum of 25 columns, and be less than 1GB.

After selecting the CSV file to import, a list of sample data is shown for this externally generated audience. After confirming that the sample data is correct, select Next.

Sample data for the externally generated audience is displayed.

The Audience details page appears. You can add information about your audience, including its name, description, primary identity, and identity namespace value.

When importing the externally generated audience, you must select one of the columns to be the primary identity field and specify the namespace value. Please note that all the remaining fields will be considered payload attributes. These attributes are considered non-durable, as they will only be associated with this audience for purposes of personalization, and are not connected to the profile.

The Audience details page is displayed.

After filling in your audience details, select Next.

The Next button is highlighted on the Audience details page.

The Review page is displayed. You can review the details of your newly imported externally generated audience.

The Review page is displayed, showing details of your newly imported externally generated audience.

After confirming the details are correct, select Finish to import your externally generated audience into Adobe Experience Platform.

IMPORTANT
By default, externally generated audiences have a data expiration of 30 days. The data expiration is reset if the audience is updated or modified in any way.
Additionally, if your externally generated audience contains sensitive and/or healthcare-related information, you must apply the necessary data usage labels before activating it to any destination. For more information on applying data usage labels, please read the documentation on managing labels.

Scheduled segmentation scheduled-segmentation

Once audiences have been created, you can then evaluate them through on-demand or scheduled (continuous) evaluation. Evaluation means moving Real-Time Customer Profile data through segment jobs in order to produce corresponding audiences. Once created, the audiences are saved and stored so that they can be exported using Experience Platform APIs.

On-demand evaluation involves using the API to perform evaluation and build audiences as needed, whereas scheduled evaluation (also known as ‘scheduled segmentation’) allows you to create a recurring schedule to evaluate audiences at a specific time (at a maximum, once daily).

Enable scheduled segmentation enable-scheduled-segmentation

Enabling your audiences for scheduled evaluation can be done using the UI or the API. In the UI, return to the Browse tab within Audiences and toggle on Schedule all audiences. This will cause all audiences to be evaluated based on the schedule set by your organization.

NOTE
Scheduled evaluation can be enabled for sandboxes with a maximum of five (5) merge policies for XDM Individual Profile. If your organization has more than five merge policies for XDM Individual Profile within a single sandbox environment, you will not be able to use scheduled evaluation.

Schedules can currently only be created using the API. For detailed steps on creating, editing, and working with schedules using the API, please follow the tutorial for evaluating and accessing segmentation results, specifically the section on scheduled evaluation using the API.

The toggle to Schedule all audiences is highlighted on the Audiences Browse page.

Compositions compositions

Select the Compositions tab to see a list of all the audiences generated through Audience Composition for your organization.

A list of audiences created in Audience Composition for your organization.

By default, this view lists information about the audiences including the name, status, created date, created by, last updated date, and last updated by.

You can select the Customize table icon to change which fields are displayed.

The customize table button is highlighted. Selecting this button allows you to customize the fields that are displayed on the Audiences compositions page.

A popover appears, listing all the fields that can be displayed within the table.

The attributes that can be displayed for the Composition section.

Field
Description
Name
The name of the audience.
Status
The status of the audience. Possible values for this field include Draft, Published, and Archived.
Created
The time and date the audience was created.
Created by
The name of the person who created the audience.
Updated
The time and date the audience was last updated.
Updated by
The name of the person who last updated the audience.

To see how the audience is composed, select an audience’s name within the Audiences tab.

The Audience Composition page appears with the building blocks that compose your audience. For more details about how to use Audience Composition, please read the Audience Composition UI guide.

Streaming segmentation streaming-segmentation

Streaming segmentation is the ability to do segmentation on Platform in near real-time, while focusing on data richness. With streaming segmentation, qualification for segmentation now happens as data lands into Platform, alleviating the need to schedule and run segmentation jobs.

More information about streaming segmentation can be found in the streaming segmentation user guide.

NOTE
In order for streaming segmentation to work, you will need to enable scheduled segmentation for the organization. For details on enabling scheduled segmentation, please refer to the streaming segmentation section in this user guide.

Edge segmentation edge-segmentation

Edge segmentation is the ability to evaluate audiences in Platform instantaneously on the edge, enabling same page and next page personalization use cases.

More information about edge segmentation can be found in the edge segmentation UI guide

Policy violations

NOTE
Policy violations only apply if you are creating an audience that has been assigned to a destination.

Once you are done creating your audience, the audience will be analyzed by Adobe Experience Platform Data Governance to ensure there are no policy violations within the audience. See the Data Governance overview for more information.

The policy violations for the audience are displayed.

Next steps and additional resources next-steps

The Segmentation Service UI provides a rich workflow allowing you to create marketable audiences from Real-Time Customer Profile data.

To learn more about Segmentation Service, please continue reading the documentation. To learn how to use the Segmentation Service API, please read the Segmentation Service developer guide.

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