Terminology

Last update: April 26, 2024

CREATED FOR:

  • Experienced
  • Admin

A terminology reference for Experience Cloud users, and how those terms are used in Creative Cloud (where applicable).

TermCreative CloudExperience Cloud
AssetIn Creative Cloud, an asset is typically an image file.
Assets can be layers in a Photoshop file, slides in a PowerPoint file, pages in a PDF, and files in a ZIP.

In Experience Cloud, an asset is a digital document, image, video, or audio that can have multiple renditions and can have subassets. Examples include:

  • File
  • Document
  • Image
  • Video
  • Audio Clip
  • Presentation
  • Image Template
  • Video Template
AttributeWhat people have in common if they qualify for a segment. (Similar to a trait in Audience Manager.)
AudiencesIn Creative Cloud, an audience can be the person viewing a video.In Experience Cloud, Audiences are collections of people that you can target in campaign activities.
The membership in an audience can be determined based on a set of rules, operating on the visitor’s Context, or based on a fixed list. For example, a list of email subscribers or members in a Facebook group.
In Experience Cloud Audiences, creating and managing Audiences is similar to creating and using segments, with the addition of the ability to share them to Experience Cloud.
Adobe Target
In Adobe Target, Audiences were formerly called segments.
Adobe Analytics
In Analytics, Audiences can be thought of as visitors to a web site. You can create audience segments and publish the audience to Experience Cloud.
CampaignsIn Creative Cloud, a campaign can be thought of as a marketing campaign that uses Creative Cloud image assets.In Experience Cloud, campaigns determine what content is displayed to the audience. It also determines where (location) the content is displayed, and when. A campaign has a specific goal, which is tracked by metrics.
Running a campaign requires matching the visitor’s context with the rules set in the campaign, and the delivery of content according to the technical constraints of the location’s channel.
In Adobe Target, the terms campaign and activity are synonymous.
ChannelIn Creative Cloud, channels might be grayscale images that store different types of information. They are information channels and color channels.

In Experience Cloud, a channel is an attribute of a location, or an activity in a campaign.
In Analytics, marketing channels are commonly used to provide insight on how visitors arrive on your site, such as via email campaigns.
Examples include:

  • Email
  • Display Ads
  • Social Networks
  • Paid Search
  • Natural Search
  • Referring Domains
ContentIn Creative Cloud, content refers to text and images on a page. The term is similarly used between Creative and Experience Clouds.

In Experience Cloud, content refers to marketing content that can be used as part of a Campaign, to support a specific goal.
Content is used in specific Locations and can be comprised of Assets. Content can be structured, such as product information, or unstructured, such as a web page or a screen in a mobile application.
Examples include:

  • Web pages
  • Banners
  • Status updates
  • Comments
  • Text ads
  • Product information
  • Product reviews
  • Form data
  • Documents in a search index
  • Social posts
  • Articles
  • Publications
DashboardNo special use.A collection of data visualizations that surfaces multiple key metrics in a single view.
Data Usage EnforcementNo special use.The policies, system design, practices, and procedures enacted and defined by a system (applications, apps, services, SDKs, APIs, and so on) to use data usage metadata to enable data usage adherence to Adobe Corporate privacy policies, contractual considerations, and general privacy principles.
DeviceNo special use.A hardware device such as a tablet, phone, or desktop, on which applications run.
Device Co-opNo special use.A group of brands who have agreed to share data about which devices consumers use to better identify an individual across devices and deliver more meaningful, consistent experiences.
Experience Cloud ID Service (ECID)No special use.The unique, persistent ID assigned to a site visitor. It is a specific entity that can be used by the Experience Platform Identity Service. More…
Experience Platform Identity ServiceNo special use.The service that links identities. It is the device-linking service for people-based experience management.
LinkingNo special use. Linking refers to hyperlink navigation, and linking items like fonts, properties, layers, and so on.In Experience Cloud, linking usually refers to linking different application accounts to the interface.
See Organizations and account linking.
Linking also refers to standard URLs for Analytics reports sent to other users.
LocationsIn Creative Cloud, location refers to file locations, or a location on an open image or document.

In Experience Cloud, locations are where content is being seen (and can be interacted with) by Audiences. The association between Locations and Content can be more or less static, or can be managed dynamically according to the rules of a Campaign. A location always belongs to a specific Channel that determines how Content can be delivered and how Metrics can be collected.
Examples include:

  • Sites
  • Properties (Social)
  • Display inventory
  • Landing pages
  • Mobile applications
  • Slots (video)
MetricsNot used in Creative Cloud.Aggregate numbers about key concepts and goals. In Analytics, metrics are quantitative information about visitor activity, such as Views, Select-Throughs, Reloads, Average Time spent, Units, Orders, and Revenue.
OrganizationNot used in Creative Cloud.An organization is Experience Cloud entity that enables an administrator to configure users and products, and to control single sign-on in Experience Cloud. Most often, the organization is the billing company.
PortfolioAn assembly of multiple files or assets.A container of Campaigns.
Product profileSee Manage products and profiles.For a user to be entitled to use a product or a service, the user must be part of a product profile. The Product Administrator assigns licenses to a product profile by associating it with a plan that you have purchased.
A user could belong to multiple product profiles, each conferring different licenses to the user. A user’s final eligibility is the union of all licenses conferred by each product profile to that user.
ScheduleMay refer to a sequence of scenes in Adobe Story, or scheduled tasks in ColdFusion.

In Experience Cloud, a schedule is the start date (year, month, day) and an end date for activating campaigns, channels, and activities. Activity schedules have a granularity down to the minute. Changing a schedule creates a card.
Examples include:

  • Campaign schedules
  • Channel schedules
  • Activity schedules
SegmentN/AThe output of a set of rules to qualify an audience. In Analytics, segments can optionally be used to define an audience that can be passed to Experience Cloud.
In Audience Manager, a segment is a collection of traits and all the criteria that qualify visitors for membership or inclusion in that segment. Also, it’s a collection of people who share these common attributes.
SharingIn Creative Cloud, you can share files externally across platforms (social, communities, emails, and so on).In Experience Cloud, you can share an asset as a card only, within boards inside the interface. Sharing is available to those who are logged in to the site.
SolutionNo special use.In Experience Cloud, applications are known as products like Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and so on.
TraitN/AA key-value pair, for example, color=blue. In Audience Manager, traits are used to build segments.

Experience Cloud