Event forwarding
This guide describes the event forwarding use case pattern, which uses server-side processing on Adobe Experience Platform Edge Network to distribute real-time event data to non-Adobe destinations — such as third-party analytics platforms, cloud storage endpoints, advertising networks, or custom webhooks. It is designed for solution architects, marketing technologists, and implementation engineers who need to understand what this pattern does, the business objectives it supports, the tactical use cases it enables, and the Adobe applications involved.
Use case pattern
This section describes the pattern and execution plan used to implement event forwarding.
Event Forwarding — Forward real-time event data collected via Edge Network to non-Adobe destinations for analytics, storage, or advertising.
Execution plan: Datastream Configuration > Event Rule Definition > Destination Mapping > Forwarding Execution > Monitoring
Use case overview
Organizations collecting behavioral data through the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK, Mobile SDK, or Server API often need to share that same event stream with non-Adobe systems — analytics platforms like Google Analytics or Snowflake, advertising networks for conversion tracking, data warehouses for long-term storage, or custom internal services. Traditionally this required client-side tag proliferation, which increases page weight, introduces latency, and creates privacy and governance risks.
Event forwarding solves this by operating server-side on the Edge Network. When a visitor interaction triggers an event through the Web SDK or Server API, that event is routed through a datastream to the Edge Network. Event forwarding rules — configured in a dedicated event forwarding property — evaluate the incoming event data and selectively forward it to one or more configured destinations. This server-side approach reduces client-side tag bloat, improves page performance, centralizes data governance, and gives the organization control over exactly what data leaves the Adobe ecosystem.
The target audience for this pattern includes organizations that have already deployed (or plan to deploy) the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK or Server API for data collection and want to extend that investment by distributing event data to non-Adobe endpoints without adding client-side JavaScript tags.
Key business objectives
The following business objectives are supported by this use case pattern.
Improve data quality and governance
Ensure clean, complete, and compliant data for accurate targeting, reduced waste, and reliable analytics. Event forwarding centralizes data distribution at the server side, giving the organization a single control point for what data is shared with external systems, reducing the risk of data leakage, and ensuring governance policies are applied before data leaves the Adobe Edge Network.
KPIs: Efficiency, Cost Savings
For more information, see Improve data quality and governance.
Consolidate and modernize marketing technology
Reduce tool fragmentation and technical debt by migrating to unified, scalable platforms. Event forwarding enables organizations to replace multiple client-side vendor tags with a single server-side data distribution mechanism, reducing page load overhead and simplifying the technology stack.
KPIs: Cost Savings, Efficiency, Speed To Market
For more information, see Consolidate and modernize marketing technology.
Example tactical use cases
The following are common tactical scenarios where this use case pattern applies.
- Third-party analytics enrichment — Forward page view, click, and conversion events to Google Analytics, Snowflake, or other analytics platforms in real time without adding client-side tags
- Advertising conversion tracking — Send purchase and lead-generation events to Meta Conversions API, Google Ads, TikTok, or Snap for server-side conversion measurement and optimization
- Data warehouse streaming — Route raw event data to a cloud data warehouse (Google BigQuery, Amazon S3, Azure Event Hubs) for long-term storage and offline analysis
- Custom webhook integration — Forward filtered or transformed event data to internal microservices, CRM systems, or partner platforms via HTTP endpoints
- Tag reduction and page performance improvement — Replace multiple client-side vendor JavaScript tags with a single Web SDK implementation plus server-side event forwarding rules, reducing page weight and improving Core Web Vitals
- Privacy-compliant data sharing — Apply data filtering and field-level redaction rules server-side before sharing event data with third parties, ensuring PII is stripped or hashed before it reaches external systems
- Multi-cloud event distribution — Simultaneously forward the same event stream to multiple destinations (for example, analytics, advertising, and data warehouse) from a single server-side rule set
- Real-time fraud signal forwarding — Forward high-value transaction events to fraud detection systems for real-time risk scoring and alerting
Key performance indicators
The following KPIs help measure the success of this use case pattern.
- Page load time reduction — Measured improvement in page load speed and Core Web Vitals after migrating client-side tags to server-side event forwarding
- Data delivery success rate — Percentage of events successfully forwarded to destination endpoints without errors or timeouts
- Tag count reduction — Number of client-side vendor tags removed after implementing server-side equivalents
- Data freshness / latency — Time between event occurrence on the client and event arrival at the destination endpoint (target: sub-second to seconds)
- Governance compliance rate — Percentage of outbound data shares that pass through server-side filtering rules, ensuring no PII or restricted data reaches unauthorized destinations
- Operational efficiency — Reduction in developer hours spent managing client-side tag deployments and troubleshooting tag conflicts
Applications
The following applications are used in this use case pattern.
- Adobe Experience Platform (Edge Network) — Receives and routes real-time event data from Web SDK, Mobile SDK, or Server API through configured datastreams
- Adobe Experience Platform (Event Forwarding) — Provides the server-side rule engine for evaluating, filtering, transforming, and forwarding event data to external destinations
- Adobe Experience Platform (Tags / Data Collection) — Manages the event forwarding property lifecycle, extensions, rules, and publishing workflow
Related documentation
The following resources provide additional detail on the topics covered in this guide.
Event forwarding
Event forwarding extensions
Data collection and Edge Network