Documentation Experience Platform Segmentation Service Guide

Segment Match overview

Last update: April 2, 2025

Topics:
Segments

CREATED FOR:

User

Adobe Experience Platform Segment Match is a segment-sharing service that allows for two or more Experience Platform users to exchange segment data in a secure, governed, and privacy-friendly manner. Segment Match uses Experience Platform privacy standards and personal identifiers such as hashed emails, hashed phone numbers, and device identifiers like IDFAs and GAIDs.

With Segment Match you can:

Manage the identity overlap process.
View pre-share estimates.
Apply data usage labels to control whether data can be shared with partners.
Maintain shared audience lifecycle management after publishing a feed and continue a dynamic exchange of data through abilities to add, delete, and unshare.

Segment Match uses an identity overlap process to ensure that segment sharing is done in a secure and privacy-focused manner. An overlapped identity is an identity that has a match in both your segment and your selected partner’s segment. Prior to sharing a segment between a sender and a receiver, the identity overlap process checks for an overlap in namespaces and consent checks between the sender and receiver(s). Both overlap checks must pass in order for a segment to be shared.

The following sections provide more information about Segment Match, including details on setup and its end-to-end workflow.

Setup

The following sections outline how to to set up and configure Segment Match:

Set up identity data and namespaces

The first step to getting started with Segment Match is to make sure you’re ingesting data against the supported identity namespaces.

Identity namespaces are a component of Adobe Experience Platform Identity Service. Each customer identity contains an associated namespace that indicates the identity’s context. For example, a namespace can distinguish a value of “name@email.com” as an email address or “443522” as a numeric CRM ID.

A fully qualified identity includes an ID value and a namespace. When matching record data across profile fragments (such as when Real-Time Customer Profile merges Profile data), both the identity value and the namespace must match.

In the context of Segment Match, namespaces are used in the overlap process when sharing data.

The list of supported namespaces are as follows:

Namespace

Description

Emails (SHA256, lowercased)

A namespace for pre-hashed email address. Values provided in this namespace are converted to lowercase before hashing with SHA256. Leading and trailing spaces need to be trimmed before an email address is normalized. This setting cannot be changed retroactively. Experience Platform offers two methods of supporting hashing upon data collection, through setCustomerIDs and through data prep.

Phone (SHA256_E.164)

A namespace that represents raw phone numbers that need to be hashed using both SHA256 and E.164 format.

ECID

A namespace that represents an Experience Cloud ID (ECID) value. This namespace can also be referred to by the following aliases: “Adobe Marketing Cloud ID”, “Adobe Experience Cloud ID”, “Adobe Experience Platform ID”. See the ECID overview for more information.

Apple IDFA (ID for Advertisers)

A namespace that represents Apple ID for Advertisers. See the following document on interest-based ads for more information.

Google Ad ID

A namespace that represents a Google Advertising ID. See the following document on Google Advertising ID for more information.

You must provide a consent configuration and set its default value to either opt-in or opt-out for a consent check.

The opt-in and opt-out consent check determines whether you can operate with the consent to share user data by default. If the consent configuration default is set to opt-out, then user data can be shared, unless a user explicitly opts out. If the default is set to opt-in, then user data cannot be shared, unless a user explicitly opts in.

The default consent configuration for Segment Match is set to opt-out. To enforce an opt-in model for your data, please send an email request to your Adobe account team.

For more information on the share attribute used to set data-sharing consent value, see the following documentation on privacy and consents field group. For information on the specific field group used to capture consumer consent for collection and use of data related to privacy, personalization and marketing preferences, see the following Consent for Privacy, Personalization and Marketing Preferences GitHub example.

Configure data usage labels

The last prerequisite you must establish is to configure a new data usage label to prevent data sharing. Through data usage labels, you can manage what data is allowed to be shared through Segment Match.

Data usage labels allow you to categorize datasets and fields according to usage policies that apply to that data. Labels can be applied at any time, providing flexibility in how you choose to govern data. Best practices encourage labeling data as soon as it is ingested into Experience Platform, or as soon as data becomes available for use in Experience Platform.

Segment Match uses the C11 label, a contract label specific to Segment Match that you can manually add to any datasets or attributes to ensure that they are excluded from the Segment Match partner-sharing process. The C11 label denotes data that should not be used in Segment Match processes. After you have determined which datasets and/or fields you want to exclude from Segment Match and added the C11 label accordingly, the label is automatically enforced by the Segment Match workflow. Segment Match automatically enables the Restrict data sharing core policy. For specific instructions on how to apply data usage labels to datasets, see the tutorial on managing data usage labels in the UI.

For a list of data usage labels and their definitions, see the data usage labels glossary. For information on data usage policies, see the data usage policies overview.

Understanding Segment Match permissions

There are two permissions associated with Segment Match:

Permission

Description

Manage Audience Share Connections

This permission allows you to complete the partner handshake process, which connects two organizations to enable Segment Match flows.

Manage Audience Shares

This permission allows you to create, edit, and publish feeds (the package of data used for Segment Match) with active partners (partners who have been connected by the admin user with Audience Share Connections access).

See the access control overview for more information on access control and permissions.

Segment Match end-to-end workflow

Once you have set up your identity data and namespaces, consent configuration, and data usage label, you can start working with Segment Match and its features.

Manage partner

In the Experience Platform UI, select Segments from the left-navigation and then select Feeds from the top header.

The Feeds page contains a list of feeds received from partners as well as feeds you have shared. To view a list of existing partners or establish a connection with a new partner, select Manage partners.

A connection between two partners is a “two-way handshake” that acts as a self-service method for users to connect their Experience Platform organizations together at a sandbox level. The connection is required to inform Experience Platform that an agreement has been established and that Experience Platform can facilitate share services between you and your partner(s).

NOTE

The “two-way handshake” between you and your partner is strictly a connection. No data is exchanged during this process.

You can view a list of connections with existing partners in the main interface of the Manage partners screen. On the right-rail is the Share setting panel, which provides you with the option to generate a new connect ID as well as an input box where you can enter a partner’s connect ID.

To create a new connect ID, select Regenerate under Share setting and then select the copy icon beside the newly generated ID.

To connect a partner using their connect ID, enter their unique ID value in the input box under Connect partner and then select Request.

Create feed

A feed is a grouping of data (segments), the rules for how that data can be exposed or used, and the configurations that determine how your data is matched against your partners’ data. A feed can be managed independently and exchanged with other Experience Platform users through Segment Match.

To create a new feed, select Create feed from the Feeds dashboard.

The basic set up of a feed includes a name, a description, and configurations regarding marketing use cases and identity settings. Provide a name and a description for your feed and then apply the marketing use cases that you want your data to be excluded from. You can select more than one use case from a list that includes:

Analytics
Combine with PII
Cross-site targeting
Data Science
Email targeting
Export to third party
Onsite advertising
Onsite personalization
Segment Match
Single identity personalization

Finally, select the appropriate identity namespaces for your feed. For information on the specific namespaces supported by Segment Match, see the identity data and namespaces table. When you are finished, select Next.

Once you have established the settings of your feed, select the segments you want to share from your list of first-party segments. You can select more than one segment from the list and you can use the right-rail to manage your list of selected segments. Once you are finished, select Next.

The Share page appears, providing you with an interface to select the partners you want to share your feed with. During this step, you can also view the pre-share overlap estimates report and see the number of overlapping identities by namespace between you and your partner, the number of overlapped identities that have consent to share data.

Select Analyze by segment to see the estimates report.

The overlap estimates report allows you to manage overlap and consent checks per partner and per segment prior to sharing your feed.

Metrics

Description

Estimated identities with consent

The total number of overlapped identities that meet the consent requirements configured for your organization.

Estimated overlapped identities

The number of identities that qualify for the selected segment and also have a match with the selected partner. These identities are displayed by namespace and do not represent individual Profile identities. The overlap estimates are based on Profile sketches.

When you are finished, select Close.

Once you have selected your partners and viewed your overlap estimates report, select Next to proceed.

The Review step appears, allowing you to review your new feed before it is shared and published. This step includes details on the identity setting that you applied, as well as information on the marketing use cases, segments, and partners that you selected.

Select Finish to proceed.

Update feed

To add or remove segments, select Create feed from the Feeds page and then select Existing feed. In the list of existing feed that appears, select the feed that you want to update, and then select Next.

feed-list

The list of segments appears. From here, you can add new segments to your feed and you can use the right-rail to remove any segments that you no longer need. Once you have finished managing the segments in your feed, select Next and then follow the steps outlined above to complete the updated feed.

update

NOTE

When you add or remove a segment from a shared feed, the receiving partner must confirm the change by re-enabling the Profile toggle in their list of received feeds.

Accept an incoming feed

To view an incoming feed, select Received from the header of the Feeds page and then select the feed you want to view from list. To accept the feed, select Enable for profile and allow for a few moments for the status to update from Pending to Enabled.

Once you accept a shared feed, you can start using the shared data to build new segments.

Next steps

By reading this document, you have gained an understanding of Segment Match, its capabilities, and its end-to-end workflow. See the following documents, to learn more about other Platform services:

recommendation-more-help

Segment Match overview

Setup

Set up identity data and namespaces

Set up consent configuration

Configure data usage labels

Understanding Segment Match permissions

Segment Match end-to-end workflow

Manage partner

Create feed

Update feed

Accept an incoming feed

Next steps