Destination types and categories
Read this page to understand the different types and categories of Adobe Experience Platform destinations.
Destination types destination-types
In Adobe Experience Platform, we distinguish between different destination types - connections, dataset exports, and extensions. There are several types of connection destinations, allowing you to export data to API-based destinations, social destinations, CRM platforms, and many more.
Finally, connections can also be distinguished between public destinations available across all organizations in the destinations catalog, and private destinations which Real-Time CDP Ultimate customers can create to satisfy their specific export use cases.
Connections connections
Profile Export, Streaming Audience Export, and Edge Personalization destinations in Adobe Experience Platform capture event data, combine it with other data sources to form the Real-Time Customer Profile, apply segmentation, and export audiences and qualified profiles to destinations.
Profile export destinations profile-export
Profile export destinations receive raw data, often with email address as the primary key. Experience Platform currently supports two types of profile export destinations:
Advanced enterprise destinations (streaming profile export destinations) advanced-enterprise-destinations
Use the advanced enterprise destination data connectors to deliver Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform profiles in near real-time to internal systems or to other third-party systems for data synchronization, analysis, and further profile enrichment use cases.
These destinations receive audience and profile data as Experience Platform data streams.
Advanced enterprise destinations include:
Batch (file-based) destinations file-based
File-based destinations receive .csv files containing profiles and/or attributes. Amazon S3 is an example of a destination where you can export files containing profile exports.
Streaming audience export destinations streaming-destinations
Audience export destinations receive Experience Platform audience data. These destinations use audience IDs or user IDs. Advertising and social destinations like Google Display & Video 360, Google Ads, or Facebook are examples of such destinations.
Edge personalization destinations edge-personalization-destinations
Edge personalization destinations in Experience Platform include Adobe Target and the Custom personalization destination. By using these destinations, you can enable same-page and next-page personalization use cases for your customers.
Read more about how to configure personalization destinations for same-page and next-page personalization.
Profile export and audience export destinations - video overview video
The video below runs you through the particularities of the two types of destinations:
Types of exported audiences exported-audiences-types
You can export three types of audiences from Experience Platform to various destinations:
- People audiences
- Account audiences
- Prospect audiences
Learn more about the various audience types.
A symbol on the destination card shows which types of audiences you can export to each destination.
Dataset export destinations dataset-export-destinations
Some cloud storage destinations in the destinations catalog support dataset exports. Use these destinations to export raw datasets to cloud storage locations.
Read more about how to export datasets.
Extensions extensions
Experience Platform leverages the power and flexibility of tag management, allowing you to configure tag extensions in the UI.
Tag extensions forward raw event data to several types of destinations. Think of extensions as an Event Forwarding type of destination. This is a simpler type of integration with destination platforms, which only forwards raw event data. Examples of those are the Gainsight personalization extension or the Confirmit Voice of the Customer extension.
When to use connections and extensions when-to-use
As a marketer, you could use a combination of connections and extensions to address your use cases.
Connections are useful when it’s necessary to leverage a complete centralized customer profile or a customer audience for activation. For example, use connections if you are joining behavioral data from an analytics system with uploaded CRM data to qualify a user for a given audience before delivering a personalized message to that user.
Extensions are helpful when event data triggers an action or conducts segmentation in an external environment. For example, if behavioral data needs to be forwarded to an external system without being joined to other data sources on file for a given user.
Destination categories categories
The connections and extensions in the destinations catalog are grouped by destination category (Advertising, Cloud storage, Survey platforms, Email marketing, etc.), depending on the marketing action that they help you achieve. For more information on each of the categories, as well as the destinations included in each category, see the Destinations catalog documentation.
