Audience Composition UI guide

If you are an Adobe Journey Optimizer customer, please read the get started with audience composition guide in the Adobe Journey Optimizer documentation for more information on working with audience composition in that context.

AVAILABILITY
To use this feature, you must have the following permissions:
  • Manage Segments
  • Manage Profiles
  • Manage Merge Policies
More information about permissions within Experience Platform can be found in the access control overview.
NOTE
This guide explains how to create audiences using Audience Composition. To learn how to create audiences through segment definitions using the Segment Builder please read the Segment Builder UI guide.

Audience Composition provides a workspace to build and edit audiences, using blocks that are used to represent different actions.

The Audience Composition UI.

To change the details of the composition, including the title and description, select the sliders button.

The Composition properties popover appears. You can insert details of your composition, including the title and description here.

The Composition properties popover is displayed.

NOTE
If you do not give your composition a title, it will have a title of “Composition” followed by the creation date and time by default. Additionally, each composition must have its own unique name.

After updating your composition’s details, select Save to confirm these updates. The audience composition canvas re-appears.

The audience composition canvas is comprised of four different types of blocks: Audience, Exclude, Rank, and Split.

Audience audience-block

The Audience block type allows you to add the sub-audiences that you want to use to compose your new larger audience. By default, an Audience block is included at the top of the composition canvas.

When you select the Audience block, the right rail displays controls for labeling the audience, adding audiences to the block, as well as building custom rules for the audience block.

NOTE
You can either add audiences or create a custom rule. These two functionalities cannot be used together.

The Audience block details are displayed.

Add audience add-audience

To add audiences to the Audience block. select Add Audience.

The Add audience button is highlighted.

IMPORTANT
Please note that only audiences defined using the default merge policy will appear.
Additionally, only published audiences created using Segment Builder can be used. Audiences created using Audience Composition and externally generated audiences are not available.

A list of audiences appears. Select the audiences you want to include, followed by Add to append them to your audience block.

A list of audiences appears. You can select which audience you want to add from this dialog.

Your selected audiences now appear within the right rail when the Audience block is selected. From here, you can change the merge type of the combined audiences.

The possible merge types for the audiences are highlighted.

Merge type
Description
Union
The audiences are combined into one audience. This would be the equivalent of an OR operation.
Intersection
The audiences are combined, with only the audiences that are shared in all of them being added. This would be the equivalent of an AND operation.
Exclude overlap
The audiences are combined, with only the audiences that are shared in one, but not all of them being added. This would be the equivalent of a XOR operation.

Build rule build-rule

To add a custom rule to the Audience block, select Build rule.

The Build rule button is highlighted.

The rule builder canvas in Audience Builder appears. You can use Audience Builder to create a custom rule for the audience to follow. More information about using the Audience Builder can be found in the Audience Builder guide.

The Segment Builder UI is displayed.

After adding a custom rule, select Save to add the rule to your audience.

The custom rule is displayed in Audience Composition.

Audience payload audience-payload

Alternatively, you can add audience payloads to your composition. After selecting Build rule, the rule builder canvas appears.

You can now create a filter criteria for your audience payload. This filter criteria must include an attribute that is within an array. The attribute being an array is dependent on your organization’s schema structure. After you created your filter criteria, select Select payloads within the right-hand panel.

The Select payloads button is highlighted in Audience Builder.

From the left panel, choose the object array, as well as the fields you want to be used in the payload. If there is only one array in the profile, the array is automatically selected for you. Select Save to return to audience composition.

The schema tree for the enrichment tree is displayed.

Behavior details and guardrails

Please keep the following details and guardrails in mind while using audience payloads:

  • You can only use audience payloads with audiences created within Audience Composition.

  • The first block used within the composition must be a rule-based audience.

  • You cannot use any other operations within the composition.

  • Once published, you cannot edit the composition of the rule-based audience.

    • You can copy the composition into a draft and edit the draft if you wish to make changes to the base composition or rule-based audience.
  • Only one object array can be used to generate the payload within a single audience

    • The payload array can be nested within an object (up to seven layers within the profile schema), but cannot be contained in another array.
    • The payload array must have 50 or fewer rows.
    • All the columns included the payload must be a primitive type.
    • Only the first twenty columns of the array are included in the output.

Exclude exclude-block

The Exclude block type allows you to exclude a specified sub-audience or attributes from your new larger audience.

To add an Exclude block, select the + icon, followed by Exclude.

The Exclude option is selected.

The Exclude block is added. When this block is selected, details about the exclusion appear in the right rail. This includes the block’s label and exclusion type. You can exclude by audience or by attribute.

The Exclude block, highlighting the two different exclude types available.

Exclude by audience exclude-audience

If you exclude by audience, you can select which audience you want to exclude by selecting Add Audience.

The Add audience button is selected, which lets you choose which audience you want to exclude.

IMPORTANT
Only published audiences created using Segment Builder can be used. Audiences created using Audience Composition and externally generated audiences are not available.

A list of audiences appears. Select Add to add the audience you want to exclude to your exclude block.

A list of audiences appears. You can select which audience you want to add from this dialog.

Exclude by attribute exclude-attribute

If you exclude by attribute, you can select which attributes you want to exclude by selecting the filter icon within the Exclusion rule section. Excluding the attribute lets you exclude any profile that contains this attribute from your resulting audience.

The attribute section is highlighted, showing you where to select to choose the attribute to exclude.

A list of profile attributes appears. Select the attribute type you want to exclude, followed by Select to add them to your exclude block.

A list of attributes is shown.

IMPORTANT
When excluding by attribute, you can only specify one value to exclude. Using any sort of separator, like a comma or semicolon, will only result in excluding that exact value. For example, setting the value as red, blue will result in excluding the term red, blue from the attribute, but will not result in excluding either the term red or blue.

Enrich enrich-block

IMPORTANT
At this point in time, enrichment attributes can only be used in downstream Adobe Journey Optimizer scenarios.

The Enrich block type allows you to enrich your audience with additional attributes from a dataset. You can use these attributes in personalization use cases.

To add an Enrich block, select the + icon, followed by Enrich.

The Enrich option is selected.

The Enrich block is added. When this block is selected, details about the enrichment appear in the right rail. This includes the block’s label and the enrichment dataset.

To select the dataset to enrich the audience with, select the filter icon.

The filter button is highlighted. Selecting this leads you to the Select dataset popover.

The Select dataset popover appears. Select the dataset that you want to add for enrichment, followed by Select to add the dataset for enrichment.

The chosen dataset is selected.

IMPORTANT
The selected dataset must meet the following criteria:
  • The dataset must be of record type.
    • The dataset cannot be of event type, be system-generated, or be marked for Profile.
  • The dataset must be 1 GB or smaller.

The Enrichment criteria section now appears on the right rail. In this section, you can select the Source join key and the Enrichment dataset join key, which lets you link the enrichment dataset with the audience you’re trying to create.

The Enrichment criteria area is highlighted.

To select the Source join key, select the filter icon.

The Select a profile attribute popover appears. Select the profile attribute you want to use as the source join key, followed by Select to choose that attribute as your source join key.

The attribute you want to use as the source join key is highlighted.

To select the Enrichment dataset join key, select the filter icon.

The Enrichment attributes popover appears. Select the attribute you want to use as the enrichment dataset join key, followed by Select to choose that attribute as your enrichment dataset join key.

The attribute you want to use as the enrichment dataset join key is highlighted.

Now that you’ve added both of your join keys, the Enrichment attributes section appears. You can now add the attribute you want to enhance your audience with. To add these attributes, select Add attribute.

The Enrichment attributes popover appears. You can select the attributes from the dataset to enrich your audience with, followed by Select to add the attributes to your audience.

The enrichment attributes you want to add are highlighted.

Rank rank-block

The Rank block type allows you to rank and sort profiles based on a specified attribute and include these ranked profiles to your composition.

To add a Rank block, select the + icon, followed by Rank.

The Rank option is selected.

When you select the block, details about the ranking are shown in the right rail, including the block’s label, the attribute to rank by, the ranking order, and a toggle for limiting the number of profiles to rank.

The rank block is highlighted, as well as the details of the rank block.

To select which attribute to rank the audiences by, select the filter icon.

The filter icon is highlighted, showing you what to select to access the profile attribute selection screen.

A list of profile attributes appears. On this popover, you can select the attribute type you want to rank your audience by. Select Select to add it to your rank block. Please note that the selected attribute can only be numbers.

A list of attributes is shown.

After selecting the attribute, you can select the order to rank it by. This is either in ascending (from lowest to highest) or descending (from highest to lowest) order.

Additionally, you can limit the number of profiles returned by enabling the Add profile limit toggle. When this toggle is enabled, you can set the maximum number of profiles returned within the Included profiles field.

The Add profile limit toggle is highlighted, which lets you limit the number of profiles returned.

Split split-block

NOTE
In order to use the Split block, you must have at least 10 profiles in your audience.

The Split block type allows you to split your new audience into various sub-audiences. You can either split this audience based on percentage or by an attribute.

To add a Split block, select the + icon, followed by Split.

The Split option is selected.

When splitting your audience, you can either split by percentage or split by attribute.

Split by percentage split-percentage

When splitting by percentage, the audiences will be randomly split, based on the number of paths and percentages provided.

The percent split is highlighted.

Alternatively, you can also provide an identity, which would make the percentage-based split persistent. Available identity types include all the identity namespace available on your organization.

The Split by identity checkbox is highlighted. Additionally, the dropdown that lets you select with identity to split by is highlighted.

Split by attribute split-attribute

When splitting by attribute, the audiences will be split based on the provided attributes. To select the attribute to split by, select the Split block, followed by the filter icon.

The filter button is selected, showing how to filter by attribute.

A list of profile attributes appears. Select the attribute type, followed by Select to add it to your split block.

A list of attributes is shown.

After selecting the attribute, you can choose which profiles will belong to which sub-audience by adding the values within the Values field.

The values you want to split the attributes by are added.

Additionally, you can enable the Other profiles toggle to create a sub-audience that comprises of all the non-selected profiles.

The Other profiles toggle is highlighted.

Publishing your audience publish

IMPORTANT
When publishing your audience composition, please note that it may take up to 48 hours for it to be evaluated and activated for usage in downstream services such as a Real-Time CDP destination or Adobe Journey Optimizer channel.

After creating your composition, you can save and publish it by selecting Publish.

The Publish button is highlighted, showing you how to save and publish your composition.

If there are any errors in creating the audience, an alert appears, letting you know how to resolve the issue.

The Publish button is highlighted, showing you how to save and publish your composition.

Faster activation faster-activation

Faster activation lets you activate your audience to a downstream destination immediately after the composition has evaluated. If you set your destination to activate after segment evaluation, you no longer need to wait for 24 hours after the evaluation job has run.

To learn how to manage your destination, read the activate audiences to batch profile destinations guide.

Next steps

Audience Composition provides a rich workflow allowing you to create compositions from the different block types. To learn more about other parts of the Segmentation Service UI, please read the Segmentation Service user guide.

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