Unable to unpublish Analytics segments even with no AAM destination mappings

Description description

Environment

  • Adobe Analytics

  • Adobe Audience Manager

Issue/Symptoms

While trying to unpublish Analytics segments, a generic error is returned. Also, Customer Care may report that the error code says that there are still mapped entities, but the segment in question is not mapped to any AAM destinations in the AAM UI.

Resolution resolution

When an AA segment/audience is published, a new AAM trait and segment are created. That trait is the single qualification criteria for the corresponding AAM segment. However, even though that trait was created only for the AA published audience, it’s still just a trait that can be used in other segments, which often happens*. When that trait is used in other manually created AAM segments, it creates a dependency upon that AA published audience/segment. As such, the AA segment can’t be unpublished (and the associated trait deleted) until that trait is removed from all other segments that it may be a part of. To fix this, take the following actions:

  1. Log into your Audience Manager instance and browse to the traits screen.
  2. Search for the trait for your published audience. It’ll have the same name as your published AA audience. Once you’ve found the trait, click on it.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the trait details screen and note all of the segments where the trait is used as qualification criteria. It should be used in the segment with the same name as the trait (the published audience), but you will likely find that it is part of one or more other manually created AAM segments.
  4. Review the other manually created AAM segments and adjust them as needed so that the trait in question is no longer part of their qualification criteria. Do NOT change the AAM segment with the same name as the trait (the published audience segment). Only adjust the manually created segments that are also using this trait.
  5. Once the trait is only used as qualification criteria for the segment with the same name (the published audience), review the AAM segment for the published audience and ensure that there are still no destination mappings.**
  6. When there are no destination mappings, return to the Analytics Segment builder and again unpublish the segment. If the segment still won’t unpublish, contact customer care for further troubleshooting steps.

* This is only possible if there is an active AAM contract. If you are not an AAM customer/don’t have access to the AAM UI, then this document does not apply to you.

** Ad Cloud destinations have an auto-mapping feature. As such, even if you had previously unmapped the segment from an Ad cloud destination (Ad Cloud or Media Optimizer destination), the mapping may have returned. Ensure the published segment is not being used in any Ad Cloud campaigns, unmap it using the AAM UI, and then quickly return to the Analytics UI and unpublish the segment (step 6 above) before the auto-mapping has a chance to run again.

For AAM API Users:

If you are familiar with the AAM API, one sure-fire way to see if the above issue is the same problem you’re facing is to do a Get Segment by Segment ID command with the includedInUseStatus query string parameter set to true for the AA published segment in question. This will show you all of the destination mappings. If you see the pairedTraitSegments node within the mappedEntities node in the response, then you know that that underlying trait is shared with other manually created segments. The IDs in the pairedTraitSegments node are the IDs of all the segments that are using the same trait.

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