Offsite retargeting of unauthenticated visitors

Learn how to build an audience of unauthenticated visitors and retarget them using partner provided durable IDs.

Why to consider this use case why-use-case

With the phasing out of third-party cookies, digital marketers must reimagine their strategies for re-engaging with anonymous visitors. Brands that choose to integrate with identity vendors for real-time visitor recognition can also leverage partner provided durable identifiers for off-site paid-media retargeting.

Despite high volume of traffic, many brands see a significant drop-off at the conversion stage. Visitors engage with content and product demos but leave without signing up or making a purchase.

Not only can you build audiences based on on-site engagement to personalize marketing messages, you can also use Adobe’s support for partner IDs to re-engage with visitors across paid-media destinations.

Prerequisites and planning prerequisites-and-planning

When planning on retargeting unauthenticated visitors, please consider the following prerequisites during your planning process:

Additionally, in order to implement the use case, you will make use of the following Real-Time CDP functionality and UI elements. Ensure that you have the necessary attribute-based access control permissions for all these areas or ask your system administrator to grant you the necessary permissions.

Get partner data into Real-Time CDP get-data-in

To create an audience of unauthenticated visitors, you’ll first need to get your partner data into Real-Time CDP.

To learn how to best import data into Real-Time CDP using Web SDK, please read the data management and event data collection sections of the onsite personalization use case.

Bringing partner provided IDs forward bring-partner-ids-forward

After importing the partner provided IDs into an event dataset, you’ll need to get this data into the profile records. You can do this by utilizing computed attributes.

Computed attributes let you quickly convert profile behavioral data into aggregated values at the profile level. As a result, you can use these expressions, such as “lifetime purchase total” to the profile, allowing you to easily use the computed attribute within your audiences. More information about computed attributes can be found in the computed attributes overview.

To access computed attributes, select Profiles followed by Computed attributes and Create computed attribute.

The Create computed attribute page appears. On this page, you can use the components to create your computed attribute.

For this use case, you can create a computed attribute that, if the partner ID exists, gets the most recent value of the partner ID within the last 24 hours.

Using the search bar, you can locate and add the “Partner ID” event that you created during the onsite personalization use case to the computed attribute canvas.

After adding the “Partner ID” event to the definition, set the event filtering condition to Exists, set the event filtering condition to be the Most Recent value of the added partner ID, and with a lookback period of 24 hours.

Give the computed attribute an appropriate name (such as “Partner ID”) and description, then select Publish to complete the computed attribute creation process.

Create an audience using the computed attribute create-audience

Now that you’ve created the computed attribute, you can use this computed attribute to create an audience. In this example, you will be creating an audience comprised of visitors that visited your website more than 5 times this month but have not yet signed up.

To create an audience, select Audiences, followed by Create audience.

A dialog appears, asking you to choose between Compose audience and Build rule. Select Build rule followed by Create.

The Segment Builder page appears. On this page, you can use the components to build your audience.

To achieve the goal of finding these visitors, you’ll first need to add a Page View event to your audience. Select the Events tab under Fields, then drag and drop the Page View event and add it to the events section canvas.

Select the newly added Page View event. Change the lookback period from Any time to This month, and change the event rule to include At least 5.

After adding your event, you’ll need to add an attribute. Since you’re working with unauthenticated visitors, you can add the computed attribute you just created. This newly created computed attribute lets you link partner IDs to an audience.

To add the computed attribute, under Attributes, select XDM Individual Profile, followed by your organization’s tenant ID., SystemComputedAttributes, and PartnerID. Now, add the Value of the computed attribute to the attributes section of the canvas.

Additionally, search for Personal Email and add the Address attribute below PartnerID to the attributes section of the canvas.

Now that you’ve added your attributes, you’ll need to set their evaluation criteria. For PartnerID, set the criterion to exists, and for Address, set the criterion to does not exist.

You’ve now successfully created an audience that looks for high intensity visitors who have a partner-provided ID but have not yet signed up for your site. Name your audience “Retargeting Unauthenticated Users” and select Save to finish creating your audience.

Activate your audience activate-audience

After successfully creating your audience, you can now activate this audience to downstream destinations. Select Audiences on the left navigation rail, look for your newly created audience, select the ellipsis icon, and select Activate to destination.

The Activate destination page appears. On this page, you can select which destination you want to activate your destination to. After selecting the destination of choice, select Next.

The Scheduling page appears. On this page, you can create a schedule that determines how frequently you want the audience activated. Select Create schedule to create a schedule for the audience activation.

The Scheduling popover appears. On this page, you can create the schedule for your audience activation. After configuring the schedule, select Create to continue.

After confirming the scheduling details, select Next.

The Select attributes page appears. On this page, you can select which attributes you want to export along with the activated audience. At a minimum, you’ll want to include the partner ID, since this will let you identify the visitors you plan to retarget. Select Add new mapping and search for the computed attribute. After adding the necessary attributes, select Next.

The Review page appears. On this page, you can review the details of your audience activation. If you’re satisfied with the provided details, select Finish.

You have now activated an audience of unauthenticated users to a downstream destination for further retargeting.

Other use cases other-use-cases

You can explore further use cases enabled through partner data support in Real-Time CDP: