Set up A4T reports in Analysis Workspace for Auto-Allocate activities
An Auto-Allocate activity in Adobe Target identifies a winner among two or more experiences and automatically reallocates visitor traffic to the winner while the test continues to run and learn. The Analytics for Target (A4T) integration for Auto-Allocate lets you view reporting data in Adobe Analytics, and you can optimize for custom events or metrics defined in Analytics.
Although rich analysis capabilities are available in Adobe Analytics Analysis Workspace, a few modifications to the default Analytics for Target panel might be required to correctly interpret Auto-Allocate activities. These modifications are needed due to the nuances in optimization metric criteria.
Each type of optimization metric requires a different report configuration in A4T, as follows:
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Using an Analytics metric
- Maximize metric value per visitor
- Maximize unique visitor conversion rate
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Using a Target-defined conversion metric
This tutorial covers overall A4T guidance, and criteria-specific report configuration steps.
Analytics metrics with “Maximize Metric Value Per Visitor” optimization criteria
Definition: (Overall Metric Value) / (# of Visitors)
To configure the report, make the following changes in the A4T report:
- Remove Confidence metrics.
- Remove Lift (Low) and Lift (High). Keep Lift (Med).
- Uncheck the percentage presentation from the Conversion Rate column to avoid confusion. See Overall guidance for A4T below.
- Rename the Conversion rate metric to “Metric / Visitor.”
- Remove Confidence metrics.
- Remove Lift (Low) and Lift (High) Keep Lift (Med).
- Uncheck the percentage presentation from the Conversion Rate column to avoid confusion. See Overall guidance for A4T below.
- Rename the Conversion rate metric to “Metric / Visitor.”
- Ensure that the date and time ranges align with the values you see in the Target report. See Overall guidance for A4T below.
Analytics metrics with “Unique Visitor Conversion Rate” optimization criteria
Definition: (# of Unique Visitors with a positive value of the metric) / (Total # of Unique Visitors)
Example: Suppose that your optimization metric is Revenue. There are five unique visitors in the activity, and three of those unique visitors make a purchase. In this example, this value = (3 visitors for whom Revenue is positive) / (5 total unique visitors) = 0.6 = 60%.
To configure the report, make the following changes in the A4T report:
- Remove Confidence metrics.
- Remove all three Lift metrics.
- Uncheck the percentage presentation from the Conversion Rate column to avoid confusion. See Overall guidance for A4T below.
- Remove Confidence metrics.
- Remove all three Lift metrics.
- Create a segment to filter visitors with a positive metric value who viewed the activity that was analyzed. See Create a segment below.
- Replace the auto-populated Conversion Rate metric so that is the division between Unique visitors with a positive metric value and unique visitors. See Update the Conversion Rate metric below.
- Uncheck the percentage presentation from the Conversion Rate column to avoid confusion. See Overall guidance for A4T below.
- Ensure that the date and time ranges align with the values you see in the Target report. See Overall guidance for A4T below.
Default A4T Panel report - additional guidance
The following sections contain more information about additional guidance as you set up your default A4T panel report.
Create a segment segment
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Click the “+” sign next to Segments in the left rail.
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Title the segment “Visitors with Positive Metric Value.”
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Under Definition, next to Include, select Visitor.
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Under Definition, select the optimization metric in your activity.
In this example, assume Revenue as the optimization metric.
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Select the “is greater than” operator, then specify “0”.
These settings filter for all visitors with a positive metric value.
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Click Save.
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Add the newly created segment named “Visitors with positive metric value” to the A4T panel.
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Drag and drop the Unique Visitors metric in the same column as the “Visitors with Positive Metric Value.”
This configuration creates a segment of all unique visitors for whom the metric value is positive. In this example, all unique visitors whose revenue was greater than zero.
Update the Conversion Rate metric update-conversion-metric
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If you have not already done so, remove the existing Conversion Rate column from the panel, as explained below.
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Add a metric by clicking the “+” sign next to the Metrics section in the left rail.
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Name the metric “Conversion Rate” and define it as “(Unique Visitors with positive metric value)” divided by “Unique Visitors,” as shown below.
Add the newly created segment (steps defined below) of “Visitors with positive metric value,” the division operator, the “Unique Visitors” metric in the numerator, and “Unique Visitors” as the denominator.
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Click Save.
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Drag and drop your newly created “Conversion Rate” metric into your existing panel.
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Click the gear icon, then deselect the Percent checkbox, because this value can lead to confusion.
The correct configuration of the report should yield a result that resembles the following illustration:
Target-defined conversion rate
To configure the report, make the following changes in the A4T report:
- Remove Confidence metrics.
- Remove Lift (Low) and Lift (High). Keep Lift (Med).
- Uncheck the percentage presentation from the Conversion Rate column to avoid confusion. See Overall guidance for A4T below.
- Remove Confidence metrics.
- Remove Lift (Low) and Lift (High). Keep Lift (Med).
- Uncheck the percentage presentation from the Conversion Rate column to avoid confusion. See Overall guidance for A4T below.
- Ensure that the date and time ranges align with the values you see in the Target report. See Overall guidance for A4T below.
The correct configuration of the report should yield a result that resembles the following illustration:
Overall guidance for A4T guidance
You can navigate to a pre-built Analytics for Target panel by clicking the link from the report screen in Target (this is referred to later in this guide as the “Target-triggered report”). Alternatively, you can build the A4T panel in Analytics (details later in this section).
The following sections specify which configurations are required, depending on which of these methods you choose. However, the following steps serve as overall guidance for A4T:
- Remove the confidence metrics from the A4T panel regardless of the panel creation method (both are detailed below). Instead, reference these values in Target reporting. Additionally, activity winners can be identified in Target reporting. Details on activity winner identification can be found in the Identify the activity winner section below.
To avoid confusion, uncheck the “Percent” presentation of the Conversion Rate metric. See Hide the percentage from the Conversion Rate column below.
If you are building an A4T panel, ensure that the date and time ranges match that of your Target report. See Align the date and time in the A4T panel below.
Hide the percentage from the Conversion Rate column hide-percentage
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Click the gear icon next to the title of the Conversion Rate column.
The Column settings dialog box displays:
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Deselect the Percent checkbox.
Your A4T panel now does not include percentages as the Conversion Rate and matches Target, as shown below:
Align the date and time in the A4T panel aligning-date-and-time
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Below each panel, check the date range that the panel references to ensure that the date range matches that of the Target report.
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In Analytics, set the time range to 12:00am – 11:59pm.
Identify the activity winner winner
Auto-Allocate activity winners are selected when there is a winning conversion rate with confidence values greater than or equal to 95%. These values should be referenced in the Target reports, as confidence calculations reflect the more conservative methods Target recommends for Auto-Allocate activities. See Statistical guarantees of Auto-Allocate in the Adobe Target Business Practitioner Guide.
Create the A4T for Auto-Allocate panel in Analysis Workspace
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To create an A4T panel for an Auto-Allocate activity report, start with the Analytics for Target panel in Analysis Workspace, as shown below.
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Make the following selections:
- Control Experience: Choose any experience.
- Normalizing Metric: Select Visitors (included in the A4T panel by default). Auto-Allocate always normalizes conversion rates by unique visitors.
- Success Metrics: Select the same (optimization) metric that you used during activity creation. If this was a Target-defined conversion metric, select Activity Conversion. Otherwise, select the Adobe Analytics metric that you used.