Source and manage audiences
Audiences are specific groups of users or customers segmented based on various attributes. These enable collaborators to work together on targeted marketing and personalized experiences for more effective advertising campaigns. This guide covers how to source audiences into Real-Time CDP Collaboration, view the audiences dashboard, and manage individual audiences.
What you’ll find on this documentation page:
Source audiences into Collaboration source-audiences
Before you can activate audiences with collaborators and run overlap calculations, the audiences need to be sourced into Collaboration. To source audiences, follow the workflow steps in the section below.
From the My audiences tab within the Setup workspace, select the add icon (
Select data connection select-data-connection
A data connection is the source of data from where you are sourcing audiences. Currently, the only supported data connection is ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Platform.
Any settings such as scheduling that you configure for your data connection are applied to all the audiences sourced from this data connection.
To begin adding your data connection, select Add a new data connection and then select Next.
Select data source
Next, you’ll choose the source for your data connection. The available sources include:
- ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Platform: Select this option to bring in your audiences from ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Platform.
- CSV File (Future release): Upload a CSV file containing your audience data for quick and straightforward data ingestion.
- Amazon Web Services (Future release): Connect to your Amazon S3 storage to source audience data directly from your S3 buckets.
- Snowflake (Future release): Use your Snowflake data warehouse to pull in audience data seamlessly.
- Google Cloud Platform (Future release): Connect to your Google Cloud Storage to source audience data directly from your GCS buckets.
Select your data souce and then select Next.
Select sandbox
After selecting your data source, you must select the sandbox that includes the audiences that you to use Collaboration. Select the sandbox from the list of available sandboxes and then select Next
Governance policy and enforcement actions governance-policy-and-enforcement-actions
Next, you must make sure that the correct marketing actions are set on the sourced data. You are also required to provide consent for data sourced from Experience Platform to be used for data collaboration.
Use marketing actions to control which audience data to bring into Collaboration from Experience Platform. The Data Collaboration marketing action supports C4, C5 and C9 data usage labels. The Data Science marketing action supports the C9 data usage label.
Read more about the C4, C5, and C9 data usage labels.
- When the checkbox is enabled, any data labeled in Experience Platform as described above is excluded and not brought into Collaboration.
- With the checkbox disabled, there is no restriction on data sourced from Experience Platform.
Read more about data usage labels in the Experience Platform documentation:
Additionally, you’ll want to select your consent rules to apply to data being sourced into Collaboration.
Once you have selected the marketing actions and consent rules, select Next to proceed to the next step. A confirmation dialog will appear, asking you to accept the terms. Select the checkbox and then select OK to confirm.
Provide details
Next, provide a name and a description for your data connection. This information will help you identify the data connection later on.
Map fields map-fields
Next you’ll select source fields to map to target fields in Collaboration.
Source fields are identity namespaces and attributes from Experience Platform. These are how the identities exist in the platform you’re sourcing data from. Source fields get mapped to the target fields defined in Collaboration.
Target fields indicate how the identities are referred to in Collaboration. Currently, hashed emails are the only supported match keys.
Use the Apply transformation option when you are importing non-hashed fields from your source. In this case, Collaboration will apply the hashing and transform the fields. The hashing algorithm used by ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ is SHA256.
Select the empty source field next to the target field. The Select source field dialog will appear. Select between the Identity namespaces and Profile attributes options to find the desired source field and then select the field from the list. You can also make use of the search option to find the desired field.
To handle multiple email fields, map the non-hashed email source field using Apply transformation.
Continue adding mapping pairs as needed and then select Next.
Schedule schedule
Next, schedule when to start and end populating the audiences. The audience will be refreshed according to this schedule.
Select the frequency of the audience refresh from the Frequency dropdown.
Next, select the Date range. The start date is the date when the audience will begin populating with profiles, and the end date is when the audience will stop refreshing.
Select audiences select-audiences
After selecting the audience source, you will choose specific audiences to include. Use the search and filter options to find the relevant audiences from your data source. Select your desired audiences and then select Next.
Review
Review all the configurations and settings before finalizing the audience addition. Ensure all details are correct and then select Complete to finish creating your data connection.
View audiences dashboard view-audiences-dashboard
After sourcing audiences, the My audiences workspace displays all audiences currently sourced into Collaboration.
Each audience contains an overview of the following information:
To perform quick actions on an audience, select the ellipsis … next to the audience name. The following options are available:
- Edit categories allows you to add different category tags to the audience. For more information, refer to the categories section below.
- Delete will delete the audience from the data connection.
View individual audiences view-individual-audiences
To view more information and edit configurations for an individual audience, select the audience from the My audiences workspace. The audience workspace displays detailed information about the selected audience, including its details, identities, categories, connection access, and metadata visbility settings.
Audience details
The following information is displayed for each individual audience:
Additionally, the following controls are available in the audience workspace:
- Delete: Remove the audience from your data connection.
- Edit: Edit audience’s name or description.
Next, you can update the following sections within the audience’s workspace:
Identities identities
The Identities section indicates the number of profiles present in the audience with any of the identities you selected when sourcing the audience. The section also contains an identity breakdown so you can tell which identities make up the most of the audience population.
Categories categories
For easy audience organization, filtering, and retrieval, you can tag your audiences. You can tag an audience with multiple categories and then you can use these category tags to filter your desired audiences in the discover product area, when running audience overlap reports.
To add categories, select the Edit option within the Categories section.
The Categories dialog will appear, allowing you to select the categories you want to add to the audience. To select an individual category, select the checkbox next to the category name.
Connection access connection-access
An audience’s availability for use in projects with collaborators differs based on the connection access setting. In the Connection access section, you can select if the audience should be private or public. Public audiences are usable and discoverable in connections.
To update the audience’s connection access, select the Edit option within the Connection access section.
The Connection access dialog appears, with three available connection access options:
- Private audience. These audiences are not available for use in overlap reports or for activation in connections with any collaborators. While the audiences are not available for collaborators to view or use, the population of the audiences still contributes to the total population in the All audiences view in the compare audiences section. Change the setting to public or custom to use the audiences in connections with collaborators.
- Public audience. These audiences are available for use in overlap reports and for activation in connections with any collaborators.
- Custom audience. These audiences are available for use in overlap reports and for activation in specified connections only. While the audiences are not available for collaborators to view or use, the population of the audiences still contributes to the total population in the All audiences view in the compare audiences section.
Select the desired connection access option and then select Save to apply the changes.
Audience availability for use in projects with collaborators differs based on the connection access setting. You can always change the connection access from private to public, but you cannot change that setting back once an audience is activated.
Metadata visibility metadata-visibility
Metadata visibility indicates the visibility of an audience’s metadata to other collaborators before they connect with you, or within different project views. To update the audience’s metadata visibility, select the Edit option within the Metadata visibility section.
The Metadata visibility dialog appears, allowing you to configure the visibility settings for the audience. There are two metadata visibility settings that you can configure for each audience:
Show identity count: This setting controls whether your collaborator can view identity counts for your audiences when viewing overlap reports in the discovery tab within a project.
Show audience overlap %: This setting controls whether collaborators are able to discover overlap percentages between their audiences and your audiences.
Audience index: When set to true, your collaborators can view the audience index within a project. This functionality is only available when you have three or more active audiences.
Next steps
After sourcing audiences, it’s time to discover publishers to connect with to collaborate on projects.