Implementing Audience Manager

This section outlines and explains the processes related to getting started with the Audience Manager data management platform (DMP). This section is designed to help business teams, project managers, and technology managers understand the Audience Manager implementation process. Getting started with Audience Manager can take approximately six weeks to three months, depending on your data collection needs.

Our implementation techniques help create consultative partnership with new clients. This process is designed to:

Discover and understand your business requirements;
Produce an actionable plan to address those demands;
Develop custom solutions to help meet unique requirements or use cases;
Ensure that your proprietary data is imported and made available in the Audience Manager.

Our Partner Solutions and Account Management teams will work closely with you before, during, and after the implementation process.

Audience Manager takes a phased approach to setup and implementation.

Define Phase

The define phase introduces you to our Partner Solutions project leads and begins the project management process.

This step is designed to help potential clients define and agree on project scope, understand custom requirements, establish milestones, and set up communications.

The following table describes key activities that take place during this phase:

Activity	Purpose/Description	Suggested Participants
Kick-off call/meeting	Introduce project leads Define roles and responsibilities Establish goals and milestones tied to delivery dates Confirm plans for on-site work Establish communications for questions and status updates	Business and technical teams
Provide access	Establish access to shared resources and distribute log-in credentials	Business and technical teams
Status reports and project team calls	Establish and maintain clear communication about plans and progress	Business and technical teams

Deliverables for this phase can include the following:

Documents that identify roles and responsibilities;
Documents that establish the scope of work;
A plan to schedule project meetings and calls;
A process to share resources and access.

Discovery Phase

The discovery phase is dedicated to gathering requirements, conducting research, and working toward a deeper understanding of your business needs and data-collection strategies.

The following table describes key activities that take place during this phase:

Activity	Purpose/Description	Suggested Participants
Requirements and goal setting	Develop plans for tag management and data collection Develop plans that meet customer needs, goals, and expectations	Business teams
Evaluate data	Determine how to collect your data and the sources of that data Discover sources of your first-party, second-party, and third-party data	Business and technical teams
Find destinations	Discover if the client sends data to other ad servers, DSPs, networks, or exchanges	Business teams
Breakout sessions	Refine business requirements and needs	Business teams
Follow-up communication	Regular communication for follow-up and development purposes	Business and technical teams

Deliverables for this phase can include:

A completed first-party, second-party, and third-party data collection strategy;
A completed CRM or data warehouse ingestion plan;
Defined audience-segmentation requirements;
a completed data taxonomy;
A developed third-party data-integration plan.

Build, Test, and Train Phase

During the build, test, and train phase, you will review the data collection strategy and prototype with a designated Partner Solutions lead.

Your data collection strategy will undergo end-to-end QA testing. Partner Solutions will track discovered bugs and coordinate problem resolutions with our systems engineers. Customer training can start in parallel with these other efforts.

The following table describes key activities that take place during this phase:

Activity	Purpose/Description	Participants
Prepare a data collection strategy	Work with Adobe technical teams to build a data-collection plan that satisfies your business requirements	Business and technical teams
Deploy and test code	Test the proposed solution in a staging environment and perform cross-browser testing	Technical teams
Verify functionality and resolve bugs	Examine and communicate results, resolve bugs, and re-test	Technical teams
User training	Provide education and understanding about Audience Manager features, tools, and reports	Business teams

Deliverables for this phase can include:

A completed and accepted data-collection plan;
End-to-end QA testing;
Basic instruction on Audience Manager user interface features;
Acceptance and sign-off.

Launch, Support, and Optimize Phase

During the launch, support, and optimize phase, your data-collection and prototyped implementation moves from development to a live, production environment. We’ll continue training on product familiarization and strategies that can help increase your ROI through data-driven optimization.

The following table describes key activities that take place during this phase:

Activity	Purpose/Description	Participants
Data analysis and optimization	Analyze data trends and provide recommendations for optimization	Business teams
Create traits and segments	Create real traits and segments for data collection: Create real traits and segments Discuss segment-creation strategies Consider and review use cases	Business teams
Further training	Continue to build understanding and familiarity with product features, tools, and reports	Business teams
Follow-up communications	Regularly scheduled communication to keep abreast of your user experience with Audience Manager	Business and technical teams

Tasks for this phase can include:

Generating and interpreting report data;
Understanding custom reports;
How to get product support
Responding to or soliciting feature requests, bugs, and user feedback;
Deepening familiarity with Audience Manager features and reports.

Code Implementation

Audience Manager uses the Data Integration Library (DIL), to receive audience data.

For detailed instructions on how to use DIL, see Getting and Implementing DIL Code.

Participants

Partner Solutions can work directly with your technical teams to help deploy code, address final concerns, and fulfill other requirements.

Post-Implementation Support

Our collaborative efforts don’t stop with final deployment. After implementation is complete, our Account Management team takes over.

Account managers provide continuing support and consultation services after the product implementation process is complete. You can expect to have regular meetings with your account manager. These meetings ensure that you get the maximum amount of use and value from Audience Manager.