Documentation Experience Platform Segmentation Service Guide

Account audiences

Last update: April 1, 2025

Topics:
Segments

CREATED FOR:

User

AVAILABILITY

Account audiences are only available in the B2B Edition of Real-Time Customer Data Platform and the B2P Edition of Real-Time Customer Data Platform.

With account segmentation, Adobe Experience Platform allows you to bring the full ease and sophistication of the marketing segmentation experience from people-based audiences to account-based audiences.

Account audiences can be used as an input for account-based destinations, allowing you to target the people within those accounts in downstream services. For example, you can use account-based audiences to retrieve records of all the accounts that do not have contact information for any people with the title Chief Operating Officer (COO) or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

Terminology

Before getting started with account audiences, please review the differences between the different audience types:

Account audiences: An account audience is an audience that is created using account profile data. Account profile data can be used to create audiences that target people within downstream accounts. For more information about account profiles, please read the account profile overview.
People audiences: A people audience is an audience that is created using customer profile data. Customer profile data can be used to create audiences that targets your business’ clientele. For more information on customer profiles, please read the Real-Time Customer Profile overview.
Prospect audiences: A prospect audience is an audience that is created using prospect profile data. Prospect profile data can be used to create audiences from unauthenticated users. For more information about prospect profiles, please read the prospect profile overview.

Access

To access account audiences, select Audiences in the Accounts section.

The Audiences button is highlighted within the Accounts section.

The Browse page is displayed, showing a list of all the account audiences for the organization.

The account audiences belonging to the organization are displayed.

This view lists information about the audience, including name, profile count, origin, lifecycle status, created date, and last updated date.

You can also use the search and filtering functionality to quickly search and sort for specific account audiences. More information about this feature can be found in the Audience Portal overview.

Create audience

NOTE

Account audiences are evaluated using batch segmentation, and will be evaluated every 24 hours.

To create an account audience, select Create audience on the Browse page.

The Create audience button is highlighted on the account audience browse page.

The Segment Builder appears. The account attributes and audiences are displayed on the left navigation bar. Under the Attributes tab, you can add both Experience-Platform-created and custom attributes.

The Segment Builder is displayed. Note that only the attributes and audiences are displayed.

When creating account audiences, please note that events are listed under People, rather than being their own tab, since these attributes are associated with people.

The location to find events, which is within the People folder, is highlighted.

Under the Audiences tab, you can add previously created people-based audiences to build off of when creating your own account audience.

The Audiences tab within the Segment Builder is highlighted.

For more information on using the Segment Builder, please read the Segment Builder UI guide.

Establish relationships

By default for account audiences, the Segment Builder UI displays the direct relationship between an account and a person. However, other relationship types are available for account audiences.

To use the alternate relationship types, select .

The settings icon is highlighted on the Fields section.

On the Settings tab, select Show relationship selectors in the Relationship of fields section.

The Show relation selectors toggle is selected within the Relationship of fields section of the Settings tab.

Select again to return to the Fields tab. You can now see the Establish relationships section, which lets you establish how the account is connected to the person and how the person is connected to the opportunity.

The Establish relationships section is highlighted, displaying the options for how to connect an account to person and how to connect a person to an opportunity.

When connecting the account to the person, you can choose from the following options:

Option

Description

Direct relationship

The direct connection between the account and the person. This specifies which accounts each person is linked to via the array of accountID values in the personComponents array on the person schema. This path is the most frequently used.

Account-person relation

The relationship between the account and the person, which is defined by the accountPersonRelation object. This path also allows each person to be connected to multiple accounts. It is used when your organization has defined an explicit relationship table from your source data.

Opportunity-person relation

The relationship between the opportunity and the person, which is defined by the opportunityPersonRelation object. This connects the person to an account by going from the opportunity-person to the opportunity to the account. This lets you describe which companies the person is attached to opportunities at.

When connecting the opportunity to the person, you can choose from the following options:

Option

Description

Account

The direct connection between the account and the opportunity. When you use this in an account audience, this path connects all people at the company to the opportunity.

Opportunity-person relation

The relationship between the opportunity and the person, which is based off of the opportunity-person object. This path connects only people who have been specifically identified as involved in an opportunity to that opportunity.

After establishing the desired relationship, you can add the requisite people-audiences to your segment definition.

Activate audience

NOTE

Only a limited number of destinations support account audiences. Please ensure that the destination you want to activate to supports account audiences before continuing this process.

After creating your account audience, you can activate the audience to other downstream services.

Select the audience you want to activate, followed by Activate to destination.

The Activate to destination button is highlighted in the quick actions menu for the selected audience.

The Activate destination page appears. For more information on the activation process, including supported destinations and details on field mappings, please read the activate account audiences tutorial.

Next steps

After reading this guide, you now have a better understanding of how to create and use your account audiences in Adobe Experience Platform. To learn how to use other types of audiences in Experience Platform, please read the audience type overview.

Appendix

The following section provides additional information about account audiences.

Account segmentation validation

When using account audiences, the audience must comply with the following constraints:

The maximum lookback window for Experience Events is 30 days.
The maximum depth of nested containers is 5.
- This means that you cannot have more than five nested containers when creating your audience.
The maximum number of rules within a single container is 5.
- This means that your audience cannot have more than five rules that compose your audience.
The maximum number of cross entities that can be used is 5.
- A cross entity is when you change between different entities within your audience. For example, going from an Account to a Person to a Marketing List.
Custom entities cannot be used.
The maximum number of values that can be checked for a single field is 50.
- For example, if you have a field of “City Name”, you can check that value against 50 city names.
Account audiences cannot use inSegment events.
Account audiences cannot use sequential events.
Account audiences cannot use maps.
The maximum depth of nested arrays is 5.
The maximum number of nested objects is 10.

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