Activity types

Target includes several activity types. The following table provides an overview of each activity type with links to help you learn more. To help you better choose the best activity type for your purposes, use the Adobe Target Activities Guide.

Activity TypeDescription
A/B TestA/B testing compares two or more versions of your website content to see which version best improves your conversions during a pre-specified test period.
Auto-AllocateAuto-Allocate, a type of A/B test, identifies a winner among two or more experiences and automatically reallocates more traffic to the winner to increase conversions while the test continues to run and learn.

Auto-Target

Target Premium

Auto-Target, a type of A/B test, uses advanced machine learning to identify multiple high performing marketer-defined experiences, and serves the most tailored experience to each visitor based on the individual customer’s profile and the behavior of previous visitors with similar profiles, to personalize content and drive conversions.
Multivariate TestMultivariate Testing (MVT) compares combinations of offers in elements on a page to determine which combination performs the best for a specific audience, and identifies which element most impacts the activity’s success.
Experience TargetingExperience Targeting (XT) delivers content to a specific audience based on a set of marketer-defined rules and criteria.

Automated Personalization

Target Premium

Automated Personalization (AP) combines offers or messages, and uses advanced machine learning to match different variations to each visitor based on their individual customer profile, to personalize content and drive conversions.

Recommendations

Target Premium

A recommendation determines how a product is suggested to a website visitor, depending on that visitor’s activities on the site.

For example, you might want to encourage people who purchase a backpack to consider buying hiking shoes and trekking poles. You could create a recommendation that shows items that are often purchased together, using the “People who bought this also bought that” algorithm. Or, you might want to encourage visitors to spend more time on your media site by recommending similar videos to the video they are watching, using the “People who viewed this viewed that” algorithm.

NOTE: You can also include recommendations inside A/B Test, Auto-Allocate, Auto-Target, and Experience Targeting (XT) activities. For more information, see Recommendations as an offer. This functionality requires that you have a Target Premium license.

Apply filters to the Activities list

Access filters by clicking the Show Filters icon ( Show Filters icon ) near the top of the list.

The menu lets you filter activities by the following attributes:

AttributeDetails
TypeFilter by activity type.
Status

Filter by activity status.

  • Live: The activity is currently running.
  • Draft: The activity setup has started but the activity is in draft mode and is not yet ready to run.
  • Scheduled: The activity is ready to be activated when the specified start date and time arrives.
  • Inactive: The activity has been paused or deactivated.
  • Syncing: The activity has been saved and is being synced to the Target delivery network.
  • Ended: The specified end date and time of the activity have been reached and the activity is no longer being served.
  • Archived: The activity has been archived. You can activate an archived activity to use it again.
Reporting Source

Filter by reporting source.

  • Analytics: Display activities that use Analytics for Target (A4T) as the reporting source.
  • Target: Display activities that use Target as the reporting source.
  • Customer Journey Analytics: Display activities that use Adobe Customer Analytics as the reporting source.
Experience Composer

Filter by which experience composer was used during activity creation:

  • Visual: Displays activities that were created using the Visual Experience Composer (VEC).
  • Form Based: Display activities that were created using the Form-Based Experience Composer.
Metrics Type

Filter by which success metric was chosen during activity creation.

  • Conversion
  • Revenue
  • Engagement
  • Use an Analytics metric
Decisioning Method

Filter by the decisioning method used in each activity.

  • Server-Side: Display activities that use server-side decisioning.
  • Client-Side: Display activities that use client-side decisioning.
Activity Source

Filter by the activity source used to create each activity.

PropertyFilter by the property in which the activity was created.

Perform quick actions

Click the More actions icon ( More actions menu ) next to each activity name to open a menu that lets you perform quick actions on an activity.

The following actions are available (depending on your permissions and the activity status):

ActionDescription
Edit

Change the activity. Any activity can be edited.

For more information about the various ways you can edit activities, see Edit an activity or save as draft.

Deactivate

Stop a live or scheduled activity. A deactivated activity can be reactivated or archived.

If you deactivate or archive an activity and then later reactivate it, a visitor will continue being a part of that activity after the reactivation if they were in it before it was deactivated or archived. Any conversion metrics recorded during the time between the two events won’t be attributed to that activity.

ActivateStart an inactive activity or an activity that is ready to be activated.
Archive

Send the activity to the archive. By default, archived activities no longer appear in the Activities list. Change the filter for the Activities list to include archived activities to see them. You can activate an archived activity to use it again.

If you deactivate or archive an activity and then later reactivate it, a visitor will continue being a part of that activity after the reactivation if they were in that activity before it was deactivated or archived. Any conversion metrics recorded during the time between the two events won’t be attributed to that activity.

Copy

Copy an activity. Any activity can be copied. Copying an activity creates a new activity with the same name, appended with “Copy.” For example, a test called “Browser Offers” is copied to “Browser Offers Copy.”

Visual offers are copied with the activity. You can safely edit the offers in the copy without impacting the original activity. The only exception is saved offers and images in the Content/Assets folder.

Delete

Delete a draft or activity.

NOTE: Deleted activities cannot be recovered. Unless you are sure that you’ll never need this activity again, use the Archive action. You can then reactivate the activity if necessary.

Considerations

Note the following details about the Activity list:

  • Archived and Ended activities do not appear in the Activities list. To view these activities, filter them using the Filters icon ( Show Filters icon ) at the top of the list.

  • When an activity originally created in Target Classic is deactivated or deleted, it is deleted from Target Standard/Premium. Deleted activities originally created in Target Classic are not sent to the Archive folder in Target Standard/Premium. The archived folder functionality applies only to activities created in Target Standard/Premium.

  • All activity types other than Automated Personalization (AP), Auto-Allocate, and Auto-Target give you the choice to use either Target or Adobe Analytics as the data source. Automated Personalization, Auto-Allocate, and Auto-Target always use Target data.

  • Activities are available to several channels:

    • Web and mobile sites
    • Internet-connected screens and devices, including kiosks and ATMs
    • Email and other acquisition channels or partner sites
    • Mobile apps
    • Anywhere else you can deliver tagged content

Limitations

Each Target activity has the following content limitations:

ItemLimit
Unique selectors300 if a selector is repeated in a different experience, it is counted once. However, if it is repeated in the same experience, it is counted again.
Offers in each experience350
Click track selectors in metrics50
Mboxes in metrics50
Audiences and locations50 audiences and locations (mbox) combinations should not be more than 50.

The activity cannot be saved if you exceed any of these limits.

Increasing the numbers of these items in your activity also increases the length of time that it takes to synchronize the activity across Target.

For additional limits of the Visual Experience Composer (VEC), see Visual Experience Composer Limitations.

Attributes imported into Target for activities updated outside of Target

If activities created in Target are updated from outside of Target (for example, via API), the following activity attributes are imported back into Target: thirdpartyId, startDate, endDate, status, priority, and marketingCloudMetadata(remoteModifiedBy).

This import job runs when the Activities list is opened, with a maximum delay of ten minutes.

Target