Migrate from tracking server to report-suite-level server-side forwarding
- Topics:
- Adobe Analytics Integration
CREATED FOR:
- Intermediate
- Developer
This article and video will show you how to enable server-side forwarding of Analytics Data to Audience Manager at a report suite level instead of at a tracking server level.
Introduction
If you have Adobe Audience Manager AND Adobe Analytics, you can implement server-side forwarding of the Analytics data to Audience Manager. This means that, instead of your page sending two hits (one to Analytics and one to Audience Manager), it can send a hit to Analytics, and Analytics will forward that data to Audience Manager.
If you already have this up and running, and if you had it enabled/implemented before October 2017, your server-side forwarding might be based on your Tracking Server, which had to be enabled by Adobe Customer Care or Adobe Consulting. As of October 2017, you can now configure server-side forwarding yourself, and do it at a report-suite-level (forwarding per report suite). There are significant benefits to this, which is discussed below.
Tracking server forwarding
Your tracking server is the location to which you are sending your Analytics data, and also the domain at which the image request and cookie is written. It should be set in DTM or Experience Platform Launch, or in the AppMeasurement.js file, and will typically look like this, with your site or business name replacing “mysite”:
s.trackingServer = "mysite.sc.omtrdc.net";
If server-side forwarding is set up to forward at the tracking server level, any hit that is being sent to this tracking server (IF the Experience Cloud ID Service is also enabled) will be forwarded to Audience Manager. This had to be enabled by Adobe Customer Care or Adobe Consulting. They are also the ones who can disable it, AFTER you have switched over to report suite forwarding, as described below.
If you are unsure if tracking server forwarding is enabled for you, contact Adobe Customer Care or Adobe Consulting, and they should be able to let you know.
Report-suite-Level server-side forwarding
One of the biggest benefits to moving to report suite forwarding from tracking server forwarding is that you will now be able to use “Audience Analytics”, which is the ability to forward Audience Manager segments back into Adobe Analytics for detailed segment analysis. This great feature is NOT supported if you are still on tracking server forwarding and not report suite forwarding. See more information about Audience Analytics in the documentation.
Important tip
As stated in the video above, once you have all of the report suites set to forward that you want to forward to Audience Manager, you should contact Adobe Customer Care or Adobe Consulting and have them disable the tracking server forwarding. It is not an emergency for you to do this, because having both tracking server forwarding and report suite forwarding doe not result in duplicate hits. However, it is best practice to only have report suite forwarding on.
If you leave tracking server forwarding on, not only might it forward data from report suites that you do not want forwarded, but in the future, after you (and everyone at your company) has forgotten that tracking server forwarding is on, you might think that data is not forwarding for a specific report suite. This is because it is not turned on at the report suite level, but the data is still being forwarded anyway because of the tracking server. Then you will waste time and money figuring out why it is forwarding and also paying for AAM server calls that you didn’t expect. So, it’s a good idea to disable tracking server forwarding as soon as you have all the report suites set to forward that make sense for your business needs.
Audience Manager
- Audience Manager tutorials
- Intro to Audience Manager
- Industry news and trends
- Setup and admin
- Web implementation
- Integrating offline data
- Mobile implementation
- Audience Marketplace
- Build and manage audiences
- Data explorer
- Use the Signals Dashboard to quickly view top available signals
- Use Data Explorer to search for used and unused key/value pairs
- Save searches in Data Explorer for convenient re-use
- Use Data Explorer to create retroactive traits and segments
- Use Data Explorer to validate trait creation for on-boarded data
- Use Data Explorer to work with signals coming from Adobe Analytics
- Traits and segments
- Plan trait creation from Analytics data
- Create a trait taxonomy
- Create a rule-based trait
- Create onboarded traits
- Create a conversion trait
- Choose a data source when creating traits
- Configure trait expiration with the Time to Live (TTL) setting
- Use code view to create and edit traits
- Introduction to Bulk Management (BAAAM)
- Create and manage traits in bulk with BAAAM
- The basics of creating segments
- Create a segment taxonomy
- Practical segment definition and creation
- Create segments from multiple data sources
- Choose a data source when creating a segment
- Enhance your segments with trait recommendations
- Trait recommendation enhancements in segmentation
- Use Recency and Frequency in segments
- Use code view when building segments
- Import segments from Adobe Analytics into Audience Manager
- Build a segment to suppress ads to customers
- Map Audience Manager segments to destinations
- Map segments to a device-based destination
- Understand numbers in the Trait graph
- Understand numbers in the Segment graph
- Customer tips - trait and segment best practices
- Algorithmic models
- Profile merge
- Profile Merge Rules
- Overview of Profile Merge Rules
- Profile merge rule examples and use cases
- Choose the right profile merge rule
- Create and use simple Profile Merge Rules
- Use Profile Merge Rules to personalize in an authenticated state
- Use Profile Merge Rules for device extension and increased reach
- Overview of Profile Merge Rule enhancements
- Profile Merge Rule enhancements - prerequisites
- How Profile Merge Rule enhancements impact segmentation, activation, and reporting
- Interpret audience identity reporting
- Understand cross-device metrics in Audience Manager
- Customer tips - getting the most out of Profile Merge Rules
- Data explorer
- Data activation
- Destinations basics
- Audience Lab
- People-based Destinations
- People-based Destinations videos and tutorials
- People-based Destinations data flow
- Create a data source for People-based Destinations
- Understand Hashed PII data ingestion for People-based Destinations
- Ingest Hashed PII for People-based Destinations
- Use setCustomerIDs() to ingest and hash PII as a declared ID
- Configure Profile Merge Rules for People-based Destinations
- Create segments for People-based Destinations
- Create and Configure People-based Destinations
- Understand and configure the LinkedIn People-based destination
- Understand and configure the Google customer-match People-based destination
- Reports
- Other integrations
- Integrate with Real-time Customer Data Platform
- Ingest data using the Adobe Audience Manager data connector
- Understand first-party data ingestion in Real-time CDP
- Understand Web data ingestion in Real-time CDP
- Understand schemas and XDM in Real-time CDP
- Understand traits in Real-time CDP
- Understand signals in Real-time CDP
- Understand segments in Real-time CDP
- Understand destinations in Real-time CDP
- Understand access control in Real-time CDP
- Understand data governance in Real-time CDP
- Integrating with Ad Cloud
- Integrate with Real-time Customer Data Platform
- API