Activities in Adobe Target let you personalize content to specific audiences and test page designs.
For example, you might design an activity that tests two different landing pages, one that highlights information about women’s summer shoes, and another landing page that highlights more general summer apparel. The activity determines the conditions that control when each of these landing pages appears, and the metrics that determine which page is more successful. The activity is configured to start and end when specific conditions are met, such as between specific dates, or to start when the activity is approved and to end when it is deactivated.
When designing an activity, you should plan carefully. Determine when the activity will start and how long it will last. Then, list your offers and assign a target audience to each one.
Target includes several activity types. The following table provides an overview of each activity type with links to help you learn more. To help you better choose the best activity type for your purposes, we have also created the Adobe Target Activities Guide.
Activity Type | Description |
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A/B Test | A/B Testing compares two or more versions of your Web site content to see which version best improves your conversions during a pre-specified test period. Note: You can now include recommendations inside A/B Test activities. This functionality requires that you have a Target Premium license. |
Auto-Allocate | Auto Allocate identifies a winner among two or more experiences and automatically reallocates more traffic to the winner to increase conversions while the test continues to run and learn. Note: You can now include recommendations inside Auto-Allocate activities. This functionality requires that you have a Target Premium license. |
Auto-Target![]() |
Auto Target uses advanced machine learning to identify multiple high performing marketer-defined experiences, and serves the most tailored experience to each visitor based on their individual customer profile and the behavior of previous visitors with similar profiles, in order to personalize content and drive conversions. Note: You can now include recommendations inside Auto-Target activities. This functionality requires that you have a Target Premium license. |
Using Analytics Data (A4T) | You can configure an activity to use Adobe Analytics as the reporting source. This activity type requires that you link your Adobe Experience Cloud account with both Analytics and Target. |
Multivariate Test | Multivariate Testing (MVT) compares combinations of offers in elements on a page to determine which combination performs the best for a specific audience, and identifies which element most impacts the activity’s success. |
Experience Targeting | Experience Targeting (XT) delivers content to a specific audience based on a set of marketer-defined rules and criteria. Note: You can now include recommendations inside Experience Targeting activities. This functionality requires that you have a Target Premium license. |
Automated Personalization![]() |
Automated Personalization (AP) combines offers or messages, and uses advanced machine learning to match different variations to each visitor based on their individual customer profile, in order to personalize content and drive conversions. |
Recommendations![]() |
A recommendation determines how a product is suggested to a website user, depending on that user’s activities on the site. For example, you might want to encourage people who purchase a backpack to consider buying hiking shoes and trekking poles. You could create a recommendation that shows items that are often purchased together, using the “People who bought this also bought that” algorithm. Or, you might want to encourage visitors to spend more time on your media site by recommending similar video to the one they are watching, using the “People who viewed this viewed that” algorithm. Note: You can now include recommendations inside A/B Test (including Auto-Allocate and Auto-Target) and Experience Targeting (XT) activities. See Recommendations as an offer. |
The Activities list is the default view when you open Target. You can create new activities from this page and manage existing activities.
You can also display the Activities list by clicking the Activities tab at the top of the Target UI.
The Activities list provides an overview of all activities:
Element | Description |
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Type | The activity type, such as A/B or MVT. |
Name | The name of the activity. |
URL | The URL appears in lighter text below the name. The URL for the activity identifies where the activity is displayed. This helps you quickly identify an activity, and determine whether a particular page already has a test running on it. If a test runs on multiple URLs, a link shows how many more URLs are used. Click the link to view the complete list of URLs for that activity. You can search based on URL. Use the drop-down list next to search box and select Search URL. |
Status | The status of the activity can be one of the following:
|
Source | Shows where the activity was created:
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On-Device Decisioning Eligible | After you create an activity that is on-device decisioning eligible, a label that reads On-Device Decisioning Eligible, is visible in the activity’s Overview page. This label does not mean that the activity will always be delivered via on-device decisioning. Only when at.js 2.5.0+ is configured to use on-device decisioning will this activity be executed on-device. If at.js 2.5.0+ is not configured to use on-device, then this activity will still be delivered via a server call that is made from at.js. See On-device decisioning. |
Property | Shows the property for the activity. |
Estimated Lift in Revenue | Shows the predicted increase in revenue if 100% of the audience sees the winning experience. Calculated using the following formula: (<winning experience> - <control experience>)*<total number of visitors> This number is rounded to one decimal place, maximum, if the condensed form has only a single digit before the decimal. For example: $1.6M, $60K, $900, $8.5K, $205K This column shows “—” for activities that do not have enough data to call a winner show or do not have a cost estimate. See Estimating Lift in Revenue for more information. |
Last Updated | The date when the activity was last updated, and by whom. |
Mouse over an activity to see the available actions.
The following actions are available (depending on your permissions):
Action | Description |
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Edit | Change the activity. Any activity can be edited. For more information about the various ways you can edit activities, see Edit an activity or save as draft. |
Deactivate | Stop a live or scheduled activity. A deactivated campaign can be reactivated or archived If you deactivate or archive an activity and then later reactivate it, a visitor will continue being a part of that activity after the reactivation if they were in it before it was deactivated or archived. Any conversion metrics recorded during the time between the two events won’t be attributed to that activity. |
Activate | Start an inactive or ready activity. |
Archive | Send the activity to the archive. By default, archived activities no longer appear in the Activities list. Change the filter for the activities list to include archived activities to see them. You can activate an archived activity to use it again. If you deactivate or archive an activity and then later reactivate it, a visitor will continue being a part of that activity after the reactivation if they were in it before it was deactivated or archived. Any conversion metrics recorded during the time between the two events won’t be attributed to that activity. |
Copy | Copy an activity. Any activity can be copied. Copying an activity creates a new activity with the same name, appended with “Copy.” For example, a test called “Browser Offers” is copied to “Browser Offers Copy.” Visual offers are copied with the activity. You can safely edit the offers in the copy without impacting the original activity. The only exception is saved offers and images in the Content/Assets folder. |
Delete | Delete a draft or activity. NOTE: Deleted activities cannot be recovered. Unless you are absolutely sure that you’ll never need this activity again, use the Archive action. You can then reactivate the activity if necessary. |
Note the following details about the Activity list:
Archived and ended activities do not appear in the Activities list. To view these activities, filter them using the advanced filter settings on left rail.
As soon as an activity originally created in Target Classic is deactivated or deleted, it is deleted from Target Standard/Premium. Deleted activities originally created in Target Classic are not sent to the Archive folder in Target Standard/Premium. The archived folder functionality applies only to activities created in Target Standard/Premium.
All activity types other than Automated Personalization (AP), Auto-Allocate, and Auto-Target give you the choice to use either Target or Adobe Analytics as the data source. AP, Auto-Allocate, and Auto-Target always use Target data.
Activities are available to several channels:
By default, the list is sorted by the date the activity was last modified, with the most recent on top. However, there are several filtering options to help you customize the list to show the activities you want to see.
Use the search field to search for activities that match your search criteria.
The search field includes a drop-down menu to help you narrow your search by specifying one of the following search filters: Activity Name and URL.
You can determine which activities appear in your Activities list by selecting list filters.
You can filter by the following options. In each category, if nothing is selected, the default is All.
Filter Category | Filter |
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Type | A/B Test: Manual, Auto-Allocate, and Auto-Target. Automated Personalization Experience Targeting Multivariate Test Recommendations |
Status | Live Draft Scheduled Inactive Syncing Ended Archived |
On-Device Decisioning Eligible | Yes No |
Reporting Source | Target Analytics |
Experience Composer | Visual Form-Based |
Metrics Type | Conversion Revenue Engagement |
Activity Source | Adobe Target Adobe Target Classic Adobe Experience Manager Adobe Mobile Services |
Click one of the following headings to toggle whether the activities are listed in ascending or descending order according to the selected heading.
Each Target activity has the following content limitations:
Item | Limit |
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Unique selectors | 300 if a selector is repeated in a different experience, it is counted once. However, if it is repeated in the same experience, it is counted again. |
Offers in each experience | 350 |
Click track selectors in metrics | 50 |
Mboxes in metrics | 50 |
Audiences and locations | 50 Audiences and locations (mbox) combination should not be more than 50. |
The activity cannot be saved if you exceed any of these limits.
Increasing the numbers of these items in your activity also increases the length of time it takes to synchronize the activity across Target.
For additional limits of the Visual Experience Composer, see Visual Experience Composer Limitations.
If activities created in Target are updated from outside of Target (for example, via Adobe I/O), the following activity attributes are imported back into Target:
thirdpartyId
startDate
endDate
status
priority
marketingCloudMetadata(remoteModifiedBy)
This import job will run when the activities page is opened, with a maximum delay of ten minutes. (KB-1526)
The following videos contain more information about the concepts discussed in this article.
This video explains the activity types available in Target Standard/Premium.