DocumentationAnalyticsStreaming media services guide

First air date

Last update: May 12, 2026

CREATED FOR:

  • User
  • Admin

This page covers the First air date reporting dimension. See First air date for how to collect this variable.

style
shade-box

The First air date dimension reports the date the content first aired on television. Use it to separate engagement on new releases from engagement on older content.

How this dimension is populated

First air date is set by the player at session start.

Reporting system
Source
Adobe Analytics (processing rule)
Create a Processing rule that maps a.media.airDate to an eVar.
Adobe Analytics (classification)
Classification of the Content (ID) dimension — Adobe automatically creates this classification when Video Metadata is enabled for the report suite. You are responsible for populating and maintaining classification values.
Customer Journey Analytics
mediaReporting.sessionDetails.firstAirDate
Data feeds (processing rule)
evar1-evar250, post_evar1-post_evar250 (the eVar that your processing rule maps a.media.airDate to)
Data feeds (classification)
N/A — Data feeds do not support classifications.
Audience Manager
c_contextdata.a.media.airDate

Classification approach

Adobe creates the First air date classification structure automatically when Video Metadata is enabled for the report suite. You are responsible for populating and maintaining the classification using Classification sets.

This approach provides a guaranteed 1:1 relationship between each content ID and its first air date. Classification updates apply retroactively across all historical data for that ID.

IMPORTANT
Do not change the First air date classification name. Renaming it can cause Adobe to recreate the original classification, resulting in a duplicate.

Processing rule approach

Create a Processing rule that maps a.media.airDate to an eVar. This approach captures the first air date as a per-hit value without requiring classification maintenance.

The trade-off is that you lose the guaranteed 1:1 relationship between the first air date and the parent Content (ID) dimension. If your implementation sends inconsistent values for the same content ID across events, multiple first air dates can appear under the same content. Updating a value only applies to data moving forward.

Dimension items

Each item is the literal date string reported at session start. Use a consistent format across implementations. Adobe recommends YYYY-MM-DD.

recommendation-more-help
media-analytics-help