First digital date

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

The First digital date dimension reports the date the content first appeared on a digital platform. Use it alongside First air date to compare digital release timing with original broadcast.

How this dimension is populated

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

Classification approach

Adobe creates the First digital 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 digital date. Classification updates apply retroactively across all historical data for that ID.

Processing rule approach

Create a Processing rule that maps a.media.digitalDate to an eVar. This approach captures the first digital 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 digital date and the parent Content (ID) dimension. If your implementation sends inconsistent values for the same content ID across events, multiple first digital 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.