Release notes for previous releases

Updates

Details

Browser:iPad and Browser:iPhone updated in Browser attributes used when creating audiences.

Adobe Target lets you target on any of several category attributes, including visitors who use a specific browser or browser options when they visit your page.

Starting with the Target Standard/Premium 24.3.1 (March 4-6, 2024), built-in audiences created using the Target UI, such as Browser:iPad and Browser:iPhone will be updated to perform proper targeting for iPad and iPhone using profile.mobile.deviceVendor, profile.mobile.isMobilePhone and profile.mobile.isTablet.

This update requires no action on the customers’ side.

Important: For customers to perform proper targeting for iPad and iPhone in profile scripts (and JavaScript segments), manual changes must be made by the customer by April 30, 2024. For examples of alternate settings that must be manually changed, see Updates for iPad and iPhone in Browser audience attributes.

Feature

Details

Recommendations implementation pattern

The Recommendations implementation pattern using at.js articles help you understand and create your Adobe Target Recommendations implementation when using the at.js JavaScript library.

For more information, see Recommendations implementation pattern using at.js overview in the Adobe Target Developer Guide.

Feature

Details

QA mode for Automated Personalization activities

Adobe Target QA mode is now available for Automated Personalization activities, replacing Preview links functionality.

For more information, see Activity QA.

Feature

Details

Real-Time CDP Profile Attributes shared with Target

Real-Time CDP Profile Attributes can be shared with Target for use in HTML and JSON offers.

For more information, see Share Real-Time CDP Profile Attributes with Target.

Feature

Details

AEM Content Fragments for headless personalization and experimentation

Use Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Content Fragments in Target activities. Combine the ease-of-use and power of AEM with powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities in Target to aid headless personalization and experimentation.

For more information, see AEM Content Fragments.

The Adobe Target Developer Guide has been relocated to Adobe Experience League. The move to Experience League aids in localization of text in additional languages, unifies search within Experience League to span and offer search results from both the Adobe Target Business Practitioner Guide and the Adobe Target Developer Guide, and provides additional benefits.

You will be redirected from the previous location to Experience League automatically. Please update your bookmarks as necessary.

Feature

Details

Optimized A4T metrics for Auto-Allocate and Auto-Target

(Release date March 30, 2023)

Target lets you choose metrics based on binomial events or metrics based on continuous events when using A4T for Auto-Allocate and Auto-Target activities.

Be aware of the following change in supported metrics:

• Target preserved the previous behavior for existing activities until September 9, 2023. After this date, activities using non-supported metrics will be discontinued to force existing activity migration to the new behavior.

For more information, see “Supported goal metrics” in A4T support for Auto-Allocate and Auto-Target activities.
With this feature, the following tutorials have been updated:

• Setting up A4T reports in Analysis Workspace for Auto-Allocate activities
• Setting up A4T reports in Analysis Workspace for Auto-Target activities

Feature

Details

JSON offer support in Automated Personalization (AP)

Added support for JSON offers in Automated Personalization (AP) activities using the Form-Based Experience Composer. (TGT-41460)

Added the ability to distinguish between Adobe Experience Manager fragment (AEM XF) types that are exported to Target. Instead of the “Experience Fragment” option, Target now lets you filter and search by “HTML XF” and “JSON XF.” (TGT-44132)

Feature

Details

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) experience fragments

Updates to the AEM experience fragments functionality include the following:

• Added the ability to filter AEM experience fragments by type (HTML or JSON) in the Offers list. (TGT-43121)
• Fixed an issue that allowed customers to insert JSON Experience Fragment offers when using the VEC, which is not supported. JSON offers can be inserted only when using the Form-Based Experience composer. (TGT-43846)

For more information, see AEM experience fragments.

New Visual Experience Composer extension for Google Chrome

A new Adobe Target Visual Experience Composer (VEC) extension for Chrome is available in the Chrome Web Store.
Starting in January 2023, the current Target VEC Helper extension will stop working in Google Chrome because Google won’t allow extensions using Manifest V2. Download the new extension to continue to visually author your websites in Target starting with the new year.
The following links show the two extensions in the Chrome Web Store:

• New extension
• Old Extension

For more information, see Visual Editing Helper extension.

Feature

Description

Improved audience evaluation accuracy and reduced end-user latency through IPv6 support (TNT-43364, TNT-44692)

Visitors’ geo-locations are now determined by IPv6 addresses, if available, as opposed to only IPv4 addresses. Delivery APIs also support IPv6 input parameters. Filtering and allow-listing support both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. The IPv6 support in this release means visitors will be more accurately included in audiences (more accurately qualify for activities or be included in filtering criteria). It also improves data latency, as IPv6 clients will route directly, avoiding the overhead of the the IPv6-to-IPv4 gateway.

Fixed A4T client-side payload handling issue (TNT-44926)

With A4T server-side integration, if Adobe Target identifies a request as coming from a bot, it does not forward the payload to Analytics, and there is no mod_stats event in recorded in the Target logs. With this release, A4T client-side logging has been enhanced so that the behavior regarding the A4T payload is the same as with A4T server-side: Visitors that are identified as bots are excluded from Target counting/reporting. (Note the issue in question was limited to implementations that used client-side payload handling; server-side was not impacted. With this release, the behavior is now consistent for both server-side and client-side payload handling.)

Feature

Description

In-product notifications

Get the following relevant in-product notifications:

• Activities: Notifications for all activity types when an activity is approved or deactivated, either manually or when it reaches its start or end date. The notification includes the name of the activity with a link to the activity’s overview page.
• Profile scripts Notifications when a profile script is activated or deactivated, either manually or by Target.
• Recommendations feeds: Notifications when a Recommendations feed is activated or deactivated, either manually or by Target. Notifications are also sent when a Recommendations feed fails.

By default, notifications are received by product admins, publishers, and approvers. Notifications are configurable inside Experience Cloud preferences.
For more information see Notifications and announcements.

The Adobe Target Developer Guide consolidates all Target developer content in one convenient guide. The guide includes information about implementing Target and Recommendations, Target SDKs, and Target APIs.
For more information, see Adobe Target Developer Guide.

Feature

Details

Adobe Experience Platform audiences in Target

You can now consume and use Adobe Experience Platform audiences in Target. The Target team, Experience Platform Destinations team and the Unified Profile Service team is pleased to announce the general availability of the “Same Page/Next Page Personalization” use cases.
Using audiences created in Adobe Experience Platform provide richer customer data that leads to more impactful personalization. The Real-time Customer Data Platform (RTCP), built on Adobe Experience Platform helps companies bring together known and anonymous data from multiple enterprise sources to create customer profiles that can be used to provide personalized customer experiences across all channels and devices in real time.
For more information, see Use audiences from Adobe Experience Platform in Create audiences.
Be sure to read the Adobe blog and watch the video: Adobe announces Same Page Enhanced Personalization with Adobe Target and Real-time Customer Data Platform.

Audiences UI refresh

As part of the Adobe Target team’s ongoing effort to improve the user-experience for Target users, this release refreshes the Audiences and Profile Scripts pages in the Target UI. This update unifies and standardizes design patterns that were previously inconsistent, while adding new enhancements, such as:

• The ability to select and delete multiple audiences simultaneously
• A refreshed audience builder design
• Exclusion rule support in the Audience library rule builder
• A new “Audience Source” filter, to allow for faster audience discovery
• Session persistent search and filter options
• The ability to move audiences between workspaces for Target Premium customers.

For more information, see Audiences.
NOTE: This feature will be rolled out to customers in different regions in the next eight weeks.

Profile Scripts UI refresh

The Profile Scripts library was also updated, and includes a refreshed interface along and several productivity updates:

• The ability to select and delete multiple profile scripts simultaneously
• A new code editor for profile scripts
• Syntax highlighting and error checking inside the code editor
• Auto-complete tokens (mbox or profile) parameters through keyboard shortcuts

For more information, see Visitor Profiles.
NOTE: This feature will be rolled out to customers in different regions in the next eight weeks.

Feature

Details

Visual Experience Composer (VEC)

Added support for Web Components. Personalized experiences and offers can be created and tested on custom elements and on elements inside custom elements.
For more information, see Visual Experience Composer options.

Feature

Details

Cart-based Recommendations

Added a new family of algorithms to deliver recommendations based on the contents of the visitor’s cart.
For more information, see “Cart-Based” in Create criteria, “Cart adds/cart views/checkout pages” and “Exclude items already in the visitor’s cart” in Plan and implement Recommendations, and “Cart-Based” in Base the recommendation on a recommendation key.

Feature

Details

Analytics for Target (A4T)

Clicking the “View in Analytics” link on the Reports page from an activity that uses Analytics as the reporting source (A4T), Analysis Workspace now opens. Previously, the link opened Analytics reporting. (TGT-36959)

Feature

Details

Recommendations Catalog Search API

Search your Recommendations product and content catalog programmatically via API to identify items that match a search criteria and simplify administration of your catalog.
Limitations and notes:

• Catalog search via API is not supported for environments with more than 2,000,000 items.
• Catalog search results via API are updated more rapidly than catalog search results via the Target UI. The catalog search in the Target UI can take additional time to reflect the latest results.

For more information, see Searching Entities in the Adobe Target Recommendations API guide.

Feature

Details

Redirect support with Analytics for Target (A4T)

The Platform Web SDK now supports Target redirects when using A4T.
For more information, see see Analytics for Target implementation.

Feature

Details

On-device decisioning support for at.js
(Date to be announced)

On-device decisioning lets marketers and developers deliver experimentation and personalization on a user’s browser at near-zero latency.
For more information, see On-device decisioning for at.js.

List-based operators for entity filtering rules

Target Recommendations supports new list-based operators for entity filtering rules. (TGT-39234)
Newly added operators include:

• Is Contained In List
• Is Not Contained In List
• List Contains An Item In
• List Does Not Contain An Item In
• List Contains All Items In
• List Does Not Contain All Items In

For more information, see “Available operators” in Use dynamic and static inclusion rules.

Feature

Details

On-device decisioning

On-device decisioning lets both marketers and product developers deliver experimentation and Machine Learning-driven personalization from within a user’s device, across channels, at near-zero latency.
Speed and performance matters–in customer insights and user satisfaction.
On-device decisioning lets you compile key personalization and experimentation instructions in A/B Test and Experience Targeting (XT) activity types into “optimization artifacts:” JSON objects that are loaded onto customer devices via the CDN. And because on-device decisioning connects natively with Adobe Experience Cloud products, Target users get rapid analysis and faster experience iterations.
For more information, see *On-device decisioning for at.js and Introduction to on-device decisioning for server-side.

Feature

Details

Analytics for Target (A4T) support for Auto-Target activities

Auto-Target activities now support Analytics for Target.
This integration allows you to use the Auto-Target ensemble machine learning algorithm to choose a best experience for each visitor based on their profile, behavior, and context.
If you’ve already implemented A4T for use with A/B Test and Experience Targeting activities, you’re all set!
For more information, see A4T support for Auto-Allocate and Auto-Target activities.

Feature

Details

Control recommendations slots within criteria sequences

Criteria Sequences now allow you to control the number of slots taken up by each recommendations criteria, enabling you to mix and match different types of items or different algorithm logic.
See Create criteria sequences to learn more.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Analytics for Target (A4T) support for Auto-Allocate activities

Auto-Allocate activities now support Analytics for Target.
This integration allows you to use the Auto-Allocate multi-armed bandit capability to drive traffic to winning experiences, while using an Adobe Analytics goal metric and/or Adobe Analytics reporting and analysis capabilities.
If you’ve already implemented A4T for use with A/B Test and Experience Targeting activities, you’re all set!
For more information, see A4T support for Auto-Allocate and Auto-Target activities.

Response tokens for Traffic Allocation Method for Auto-Target and Automated Personalization activities

Two response tokens have been added to Auto-Target and Automated Personalization activities to enable determination of whether a visitor received a particular experience as a result of being assigned to “control” or to “targeted” traffic.

• experience.trafficAllocationId will return 0 if a visitor received an experience from being in “control” traffic and 1 if a visitor received an experience from the “targeted” traffic distribution.
• experience.trafficAllocationType will return “control” or “targeted.”

For more information on control vs. targeted traffic, see Select the control for your Automated Personalization or Auto-Target activity.

Publisher role

This new role is similar to the current Observer role (can view activities, but cannot create or edit them). However, the Publisher role has the additional permission to activate activities.
For more information, see:

• Target Standard users: Specify roles and permissions in Users.
• Target Premium users: Step 6: Specify roles and permissions in Configure enterprise permissions.

A4T support in Analysis Workspace
June 25, 2020

Anaytics for Target (A4T) is now supported in Analysis Workspace. The Analytics for Target (A4T) panel lets you analyze your Adobe Target activities and experiences in Analysis Workspace.
For more information, see Reports in Analytics in A4T reporting and Analytics for Target (A4T) panel in the Analytics Tools Guide.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Java SDK

The Target Java SDK lets you deploy Target server-side. This Java SDK helps you easily integrate Target with other Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, such as the Adobe Experience Cloud Identity Service, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Audience Manager.
The Java SDK introduces best practices and removes complexities when integrating with Target via our delivery API so that your engineering teams can focus on business logic. The following are notable features that we are introducing in the latest version:

• Support for prefetching and notifications that allows you to optimize for performance via caching.
• Support for optimizing performance when you have a hybrid integration of Target on both your web pages and server-side. We are introducing a setting called serverState that is populated by experiences retrieved via the server-side so that at.js 2.2 will no longer make an additional server call to retrieve the experiences. This approach optimizes page load performance.
• Support for retrieving VEC-created activities via the Java SDK, which is made possible by the new Delivery API.
• Open sourced so your developers can contribute to the Target Java SDK.

Learn more about the Target Java SDK on the Adobe Tech Blog - Server-Side Optimization with the new Target Java SDK.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Multi-value attribues

Sometimes you want to work with a multi-value field. Consider the following examples:

• You offer movies to users. A given movie has multiple actors.
• You sell tickets to concerts. A given user has multiple favorite bands.
• You sell clothing. A shirt is available in multiple sizes.

To handle recommendations in these scenarios, you can pass multi-value data to Target Recommendations and use special multi-value operators.
For more information, see Work with multi-value attributes.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

User-Based Recommendations
(October 24, 2019)

Recommends items based off of each visitor’s browsing, viewing, and purchasing history. These items are generally referred to as “Recommended for You.”
This criteria lets you deliver personalized content and experiences to both new and returning visitors. The list of recommendations is weighted towards the visitor’s most-recent activity and is updated in-session and becomes more personalized as the visitor browses your site.
For more information, see “User-Based Recommendations” in Criteria/Algorithms.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Enterprise Permissions

With the Target September 2019 release, Enterprise Permissions provides customers with the following access controls:

• You can choose the workspaces to which the integration can be applied.
• You can apply a role to the Adobe I/O integration: Approver, Editor, or Observer.

For step-by-step instructions and more information, see Grant Adobe I/O integrations access to workspaces and assign roles.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Recommendations in A/B Test and Experience Targeting (XT) activities

The Recommendations offer (algorithm) status displays on the Overview page for A/B Test and XT activities that contain Recommendations offers. Statuses include: Results Ready, Results Not Ready, and Feed Failure. (TGT-33649)
See Recommendations as an offer.

Cross-domain tracking support for at.js 2.0+ via the Experience Cloud ID (ECID) library

Previously, cross-domain tracking was not supported in at.js 2.x. With this release, customers using at.js 2.0 or above can now utilize cross-domain tracking through the ECID library. The ECID library must be installed on the page in conjunction with at.js 2.0 or above in order for cross-domain tracking to work. Experience Cloud ID library 4.3.0+ must be used.
See Cross-domain tracking support in at.js 2.x.

Target support for Apple’s ITP 2.1 and ITP 2.2 via the Experience Cloud ID (ECID) library 4.3

Today, Target customers can mitigate Apple’s ITP 2.1 and ITP 2.2 by leveraging Adobe’s CNAME certification program.
With this release, Target introduces a seamless integration with the ECID library 4.3, which leverages a server-side cookie to mitigate ITP 2.1 and ITP 2.2. It is highly recommended that Target customers deploy ECID library 4.3+ in conjunction with Target’s JavaScript library to mitigate any future ITP releases. The ECID library will continue to roll out enhancements that provide a robust solution to the ever-changing cookie policies introduced by browsers.
See Apple Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) 2.x.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Visual Experience Composer

The Visual Experience Composer (VEC) includes the following enhancements to make your work quicker and more efficient:

• The DOM path feature is now available when setting up click tracking.
  For more information, see click tracking.
• Use the Styles panel to view or edit the value of existing styles for the selected element. You can also add additional styling.
  To access the Styles panel, click a page element from within the VEC, then click Edit > Styles.
  The Styles panel displays on the right side of the VEC. The panel contains a list of styles that lets you edit or add to the selected element. A real-time CSS Editor lets you view changes and add styles if you are comfortable using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or if you receive code from your developer.
  For more information, see Styles in Visual Experience Composer Options.
• The Rich Text Editor now supports nested HTML5 elements.
  HTML5 specifications allow new combinations of tags for nesting. The previous version of the rich text editor did not support new nesting of tags as allowed by the HTML5 specification. As a result, any nested elements selected in the VEC were not handled properly, which led to unwanted HTML changes. (TGT-33618)
  For more information, see Edit Text/HTML in Visual Experience Composer options.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Visual Experience Composer

The Visual Experience Composer (VEC) includes the following enhancements to make your work quicker and more efficient:

• You can now cancel the loading of a website in the VEC to unblock editing of an activity. This enhancement is useful, for example, if you want to make a small edit to the activity, review its settings, or add custom code and you don’t want to wait for the site to load. (TGT-31288)
  See Cancel loading of a page within the VEC.
• You can perform many actions before the page loads in the VEC, or even if the page fails to load altogether (for example, custom code is no longer operational). Actions that cannot be edited before the site loads are disabled in the Target UI. (TGT-31288, TGT-31611, and TGT-32602)
  See Edit a page while the page is loading or after the page fails to load.
• The VEC displays the DOM path so you can easily select the proper element while creating or editing experiences. (TGT-13422)
  See Navigate elements using the DOM path.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Single Page App Visual Experience Composer

The Visual Experience Composer (VEC) for Single Page Apps (SPAs) lets marketers create tests and personalize content on SPAs in a do-it-yourself fashion without continuous development dependencies. The VEC can be used to create activities on most popular frameworks, such as React and Angular. (TGT-27916)
For more information, see Single Page App (SPA) Visual Experience Composer and Single Page Application integration.
In addition to the above article, there are many topics related to SPAs and at.js that address this feature and how to implement it. For more information see Documentation changes.

Visual Experience Composer

The Visual Experience Composer (VEC) includes the following enhancements to make your work quicker and more efficient:

• You can now use the Insert Before and Insert After options in the VEC while inserting AEM experience fragments. See Visual Experience Composer options. (TGT-32385)
• The Adobe Target VEC Helper browser extension for Google Chrome lets you load websites reliably within the VEC to rapidly author and QA web experiences. See Visual Experience Composer helper extension. (TGT-32746)

Recommendations in A/B Test and Experience Targeting activities

You can now include recommendations inside A/B Test (including Auto-Allocate and Auto-Target) and Experience Targeting (XT) activities. This opens up entirely new capabilities, such as:

• Test and target recommendations and non-recommendations content within the same activity.
• Easily experiment with placement of recommendations on the page, including the order of multiple recommendations.
• Automatically push traffic to the best-performing recommendations experience using Auto-Allocate.
• Dynamically assign visitors to tailored recommendations experiences based on their individual profiles using Auto-Target.

To get started, create an A/B Test or Experience Targeting activity using the VEC and use the Insert Before, Insert After, or Replace With action to add recommendations to an experience. (RECS-6166)
For more information, see Recommendations as an offer.

Enterprise Permissions support in Target APIs

Adobe Target Admin APIs will now take full advantage of the same Enterprise Permissions capabilities found in the Target UI. Starting Feb 21, 2019, system administrators can programmatically access report data as well as create and manage activities, offers, and audiences within any workspace. These actions were previously limited to the default workspace only. Support for Automated Personalization (AP) activities will come in a future release.

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Enterprise Permissions support in Target APIs

Adobe Target Admin APIs will now take full advantage of the same Enterprise Permissions capabilities found in the Target UI. Starting Feb 21, 2019, system administrators will be able to programmatically access report data as well as create and manage activities, offers, and audiences within any workspace. These actions were previously limited to the default workspace only. Support for Automated Personalization (AP) activities will come in a future release.

Recommendations: filter collections and exclusions by environment (host group)

You can now preview the contents of Recommendations collections and exclusions for a selected environment (host group).
Previously, when you viewed a collection or exclusion, the displayed items contained were results for the default host group (specified in Recommendations > Settings > Default Host Group).
Now, when creating or updating a collection or exclusion, you can use the Environment selector to choose the environment to preview results for. The new Environment filter saves you time and effort because you no longer need to navigate to the Settings page to select the appropriate default host group before creating or editing collections and exclusions.
Note: After changing the selected environment, you must click Search to update the returned results.
The new Environment filter is available from the following places in the Target UI:

• Catalog Search (Recommendations > Catalog Search)
• Create Collection dialog box (Recommendations > Collections > Create New)
• Update Collection dialog box (Recommendations > Collections > Edit)
• Create Exclusion dialog box (Recommendations > Exclusions > Create New)
• Update Exclusion dialog box (Recommendations > Exclusions > Edit)

For more information, see the following topics:

• Collections
• Exclusions
• Catalog Search
• Settings
• Recommendations: filter collections and exclusions by environment (host group)

(TGT-20622)

Feature / Enhancement

Description

Experiences

You can now copy an experience in an Experience Targeting (XT) activity so you can make minor changes to it without having to re-create the experience from scratch. This capability was already available for A/B Tests. (TGT-31504)

See Create experience.

Offers in Automated Personalization (AP) activities

In the September 2018 release, we added an enhancement that lets you filter offers by reporting groups. You can now filter for Unassigned Offers so you can assign a reporting group to an offer that is not currently assigned to any reporting group. (TGT-31882)

See Create an Automated Personalization activity.

Reporting source for activities

In Administration > Visual Experience Composer , you can select the reporting source for your activities, either Target or Adobe Analytics . You can also choose to select your reporting source per activity.

Starting with this release, there are some important workflow considerations you should be aware of when you choose the reporting source in Preferences or per activity.

Feature

Description

Audiences

• You can create activity-only audiences from within the three-step guided workflow when creating an activity. This audience can be used in other places within the same activity, but is not stored in the Audiences Library for use in other activities. (TGT-25474)

  

  For more information, see Creating an Activity-Only Audience.

• For all activities, you can choose a success metric that qualifies the user for the audience. In the past, Target qualified users for an audience when they entered the activity, whereas now you can choose when to evaluate the audience by choosing a success metric. (TGT-15805)

  

For more information, see Apply a Reporting Audience to a Success Metric.

Auto-Target

• Auto-Target activities now support segment-level reporting. (TGT-22777)

  For more information, see Auto-Target For Personalized Experiences.

• You can change the Control percentage for Auto-Target activities. (TGT-26467)

  

  For more information, see Auto-Target For Personalized Experiences.

Offers

• You can now view offer definition details on a pop-up card in the Offers Library without opening the offer. (TGT-26377)

  

  For more information, see Offers.

• You can copy and edit offers and folders in the Offer selector while creating an activity. (TGT-26936)

  

  For more information, see Offers.

Form-based Experience Composer

In the Form-based Experience Composer, Refinements have been replaced with full audience functionality. Refinements for existing activities have been migrated to activity-only audiences. (TGT-13646)

For more information, see Form-Based Experience Composer.

Response Tokens

You can now create response tokens from Target without waiting for them to be created in or imported to Target. Previously, in the Response Token UI, you could see only the tokens created via API. Changes to the feature also help you avoid response tokens duplicates. (TGT-26534)

For more information, see Response Tokens.

Change

Details

at.js

October 13, 2017

at.js version 1.2.1 is now available. For more information, see at.js Version Details.

• Fixed an issue when click tracking on a link with target="_blank" prevented Target from opening the link in a new tab.

Feature

Description

Mobile Experience Preview

Updated: October 12, 2017

You can now select multiple mobile app activities from the UI and preview them on your device. This feature will allow you to enroll yourself into multiple experiences for previewing and QA without relying on special test builds and simulators.

This feature requires that you download and install the appropriate 4.14 (or later) version of the Adobe Mobile SDK.

For more information, see Target Mobile Preview.

Mobile Batch and Prefetch Delivery

Updated: October 12, 2017

Content for multiple mboxes can be pre-fetched in a single call and cached locally on the device without worrying how, when, and if the end user will see the content.

This feature requires that you download and install the appropriate 4.14 (or later) version of the Adobe Mobile SDK.

For more information, see Prefetch Offer Content.

Activities

The following enhancements have been made in the activity-creation workflow:

• While editing an activity, you can make the desired changes on the currently displayed step, click the drop-down on the split button, then select Next to advance to the next step, click Save and Close to save your changes and display the activity's Overview page, or click Save to save your changes and remain on that step.

  

  For more information, see Edit an Activity or Save as Draft.

• While editing an activity, you can open the desired workflow step, make your changes (for example experience percentages, audiences, and so forth), then save or close the activity without having to advance through the three-step guided workflow.

  

  For more information, see Edit an Activity or Save as Draft.

• When you are creating a new activity that has not yet been saved, or you are editing an activity that was previously saved in draft form, the Save Draft options display in the split button.

  

  For more information, see Edit an Activity or Save as Draft.

• You can now edit or copy an audience by hovering over the desired audience in the Choose Audience dialog box while choosing targeting in step 2 of the three-step guided workflow.

  

For more information, see Select Audience.

Reporting

The following new features and enhancements are available for reporting:

• You can choose the counting methodology for graphs in reports. Note that this is not supported in Auto-Target and Automated Personalization (AP) activities.

  For more information, see the "Counting Methodology" row in Report Settings.

• You can view multiple metrics in a single report for Auto-Target A/B activities. (TGT-23464)

  For more information, see View Multiple Metrics in a Report.

Audiences

You can now view the definitions of audiences imported from Target Classic or created via API. (TGT-22630)

For more information, see "Viewing Audience Definitions" in About Audiences.

Code Editor

The Form-based Experience Composer and the HTML offers editor now use the same code editor that the Visual Experience Composer (VEC) uses in custom code. (TGT-25808)

This enhancement gives you the following features when using the code editor in the Form-based Experience Composer and when creating HTML offers:

• Line numbers are now visible for better usability.

• Syntax highlighting helps you avoid incorrect syntax for HTML offers.

For more information, see Code Editor.

Geo Targeting

You can now use latitude and longitude in geo-targeting. (TGT-12129)

For more information, see Geo.

Node.JS SDK

You can install the node.js SDK from npm @adobe/target-node-clientto easily implement and run server-side tests on your node.js applications. The VisitorID service is enabled in the node SDK to connect all your Adobe data and you can use choose to use Adobe Analytics as your reporting source (A4T).

Feature

Description

Enterprise User Permissions for Target Premium

Create separate workspaces in Target and then assign users different roles and permissions for individual digital properties.

For more information, see Enterprise User Permissions.

QA Mode

Perform easy activity QA with preview links that never change, optional audience targeting, and QA reporting that stays segmented from live activity data.

For more information, see Activity QA.

Change

Details

at.js

August 3, 2017

at.js version 1.1 is now available. For more information, see Download at.js.

The following enhancements and fixes are included in at.js version 1.1:

• Added response token handling. For more information, see Response Tokens.

• Resolved issue so that document.currentScript polyfill doesn't interfere with Angular 1.X.

• Made changes to ensure that click tracking doesn't interfere with visibility property. Click tracking elements are marked with the at-element-click-tracking CSS class instead of at-element-marker .

Feature

Description

Audiences

You can now view audience definition details on a pop-up card in various places in the Target UI without opening the audience. Note that this functionality applies only to audiences created in Target Standard/Premium.

Success metrics

Previously, Target allowed dependency on a single metric and that metric had to be reached before its count incremented. You can now provide dependency on multiple metrics along with the flexibility to choose whether the metric should be reached or not reached for the count to increment.

Multiple-metric dependency functionality is not supported for the following:

• Recommendations activities. This functionality is supported for all other activity types.

• If you use Analytics as your reporting source (A4T).

• The "Viewed a Page" metric type.

• The "Clicked an Element" metric type for Visual Experience Composer (VEC) activities.

For more information, see the following topics:

• A/B: Goals and Settings

• Automated Personalization (AP): Creating an Automated Personalization Activity

• Experience Targeting (XT): Goals and Settings

• Multivariate (MVT): Goals and Settings

Reporting (Auto-Allocate A/B Tests)

The ability to view multiple metrics is now available for Auto-Allocate A/B activities.

For more information, see View Multiple Metrics in a Report.

Audiences

Audience site page types and comparison operators now match types and comparison operators in Target Classic.

You can now create site pages audiences using you own "user-defined query parameter" or "user-defined header."

For more information, see Site Pages.

Activities

The Activity list now lets you filter on Auto Allocate and Auto Target activity types.

For more information, see Activities.

Recommendations Criteria & Promotions

You can now handle empty values when filtering by Entity Attribute Matching, Profile Attribute Matching, and Parameter Matching.

For more information, see Use Dynamic and Static Inclusion Rules.

Feature

Description

Automated Personalization (AP) activities

• Automated Personalization activities can be created using the form-based composer.
• New confidence numbers for Automated Personalization

Recommendations: Criteria and Promotions

You can now create dynamic criteria and promotions based on profile attribute matching and parameter matching.

Note: If you are familiar with how inclusion rules were configured prior to the Target 17.6.1 release (June 2017), you'll notice that some of the options and operators have changed. Only those operators applicable to the selected option display and some operators were renamed ("matches" is now "equals") to be more consistent and intuitive. All existing exclusion rules created prior to this release were automatically migrated into the new structure. No restructuring is necessary on your part.

VEC Code Editor improvements

If the page format changes and actions cannot be applied, an alert now appears next to each failing action. Previously, a general error notified the user that the page structure had changed. Now, the code editor highlights each failed action.

Feature

Details

Reporting

View Multiple Goals/Metrics: You can now view multiple metrics in A/B and Experience Targeting (XT) activities, with the exception of Auto-Allocateand Auto-TargetA/B activities.

For more information, see View Multiple Metrics in a Report.

Change

Details

at.js

at.js version 0.9.6 is now available. For more information, see Download at.js.

The following enhancements and fixes are included in at.js version 0.9.6:

• Redirect offer support for A4T. After you download and install at.js version 0.9.6, you can use redirect offers in activities that use Adobe Analytics as the Reporting Source for Target (A4T). Besides at.js version 0.9.6, there are other minimum requirements your implementation must meet in order to use redirect offers and A4T. For more information and additional important information you should know, see Redirect Offers - A4T FAQ.

• Prior to at.js 0.9.6, when the Visitor API was present on the page and the visitorApiTimeout setting was too aggressive, Target could run into a situation when no MCID data was sent in the Target request. This could lead to issues like unstitched hits in Analytics when using A4T.

  This behavior has been changed in at.js 0.9.6, even if the visitorApiTimeout is set to say 1 ms, Target will try to collect SDID, tracking servers, and customer IDs data and send those in the Target request.

• Added the selectorsPollingTimeout setting. For more information, see targetGlobalSettings().

• The format of the response from getOffer() has been changed. For more information, see adobe.target.getOffer(options).

• Console logging has been added for unsupported <!DOCTYPE> declarations.

• Fixed an issue where Target Classic plugins weren't being applied correctly when multiple default offers were delivered to a single mbox. (TGT-22664)

• Improved cookie-setting for two letter top-level-domains (TLDs) to ensure that the mbox cookie is set correctly for these domains (for example, test.no , autodrives.ca , and so forth).

• The algorithm for extracting the top-level domain that should be used when saving cookies has changed in at.js version 0.9.6. Because of this change, cookies cannot be saved to addresses that use IP. Most of the time, IP addresses are used for testing purposes, but as workarounds you can use DNS entries or adjust the hosts file on a local box.

• Fixed move and rearrange actions handling when properties are string values instead of integers.

For information about this and previous versions of at.js , see at.js Version Details.

Feature

Description

Auto-Allocate: Winner Badge

We've now made it easier to determine a winner in an Auto-Allocate A/B activity.

Many marketers make the mistake of prematurely declaring a winning experience before the results indicate the clear winner.

When using the Automated Traffic Allocation feature, Target displays a badge at the top of the activity's page indicating "No Winner Yet" until the activity reaches the minimum number of conversions with sufficient confidence. When a clear winner is declared, Target displays "Winner: Experience X."

For more information, see Automated Traffic Allocationand Determine a Winner.

Note: Auto-Allocate A/B activities are no longer supported in Analytics for Target (A4T) going forward. With this release, any active Auto-Allocate A/B activities with A4T enabled will be switched to Manual mode (equal traffic allocation).

Target mobile devices by carrier

Create an audience to target mobile devices based on mobile carrier (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.). The Mobile Carrier option is under the Geo settings.

For more information, see Geo.

Generate mboxTrace authentication token from Target UI

Enable advanced Target debugging tools by creating a temporary authentication token.

Click Generate Authentication Token on the Implementation Details page ( Administration > Implementation ). You can then add the resulting parameter to your web page URLs for troubleshooting purposes.

For more information, see "Retrieve the Authorization Token to Use With Debugging Tools" in Troubleshooting Content Delivery.

Recommendations: Criteria set sequencing

Use sets of up to five pre-created criteria in a single experience for greater control over the recommendations presented to visitors.

For more information, see Create Criteria Sequences.

Recommendations: Insert external promotions

Add promoted items and control their placement in your Recommendations designs.

For more information, see Adding Promotions.

First Look

Auto-targeting in A/B activities

Note: This "First Look" offering is enabled for a few customers in this release for testing and feedback.

Automatically target experiences in A/B tests to serve the right experience to the right visitor.

For more information, see Auto-Target For Personalized Experiences.

Change

Details

at.js version 0.9.3

October 10, 2016

at.js version 0.9.3 is available.

• Ensures mbox calls fire in Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 when legacy browsers are disabled in the at.js settings.

• Ensures that default content is rendered if a dynamic remote offer fails (for example, if the URL is incorrect and returns a 404 error).

• Ensures that elements are revealed quickly when VEC click-tracking selectors can't be found in the DOM.

For more information, see at.js Version Details.

Feature

Description

Combine audiences

Combine multiple audiences (including Adobe Experience Cloud audiences and Target audiences) on the fly during the activity-creation workflow.

For example, you can target all loyalty customers by including a specific Audience Manager segment for loyalty status and combine it with a Target segment made up of people who signed up for your loyalty program during the current session, instead of creating a third, permanent audience.

For more information, see Combining Multiple Audiences.

Target visitors during a specific time period

Add start and end dates to target an audience.

For example, using the new combined, ad-hoc audiences mentioned above, you can target low-spenders with specific content during the three days leading up to Black Friday and other content after Black Friday.

For more information, see Time Frame.

Save smart collections

Search functionality on the Content page now includes saved folders, called smart collections, to save time when performing similar searches.

For more information, see Search Content and Create Smart Collections.

Form-based Experience Composer

Add a link to an image. The link can be a click-through link, destination link, or a landing link.

For more information, see Form-Based Experience Composer.

Enhancement

Description

Visual Experience Composer (VEC)

Improved error messaging.

Feature

Description

Combine audiences

Combine multiple audiences (including Adobe Experience Cloud audiences and Target audiences) on the fly during the activity-creation workflow.

For example, you can target all loyalty customers by including a specific Audience Manager segment for loyalty status and combine it with a Target segment made up of people who signed up for your loyalty program during the current session, instead of creating a third, permanent audience.

For more information, see Combining Multiple Audiences.

Target visitors during a specific time period

Add start and end dates to target an audience.

For example, using the new combined, ad-hoc audiences mentioned above, you can target low-spenders with specific content during the three days leading up to Black Friday and other content after Black Friday.

For more information, see Time Frame.

Save smart collections

Search functionality on the Content page now includes saved folders, called smart collections, to save time when performing similar searches.

For more information, see Search Content and Create Smart Collections.

Form-based Experience Composer

Add a link to an image. The link can be a click-through link, destination link, or a landing link.

For more information, see Form-Based Experience Composer.

Enhancement

Description

Visual Experience Composer (VEC)

Improved error messaging.

Feature

Description

Hosts and environment (host group) management

Organize your sites and pre-production environments for easy management and separated reporting.

Hosts are bundled into environments for ease of management. The preset environments include Production, Staging, and Development. You can also add new environments.

This feature achieves feature parity with Target Classic .

For more information, see Hosts.

Category Affinity

The category affinity feature automatically captures the categories a user visits and calculates the user's affinity for the category so it can be targeted and segmented on. This helps to ensure that content is targeted to visitors who are most likely to act on that information.

This feature achieves feature parity with Target Classic .

For more information, see Category Affinity.

Enable/Disable Enhanced Experience Composer at the activity level

Enable/disable the Enhanced Experience Composer at the account level (applies to all activities created in the account) or at the individual activity level.

Previously, you could enable/disable the Enhanced Experience Composer only at the account level.

For more information, see Experiences.

Automated Personalization: Offer performance report

Download an offer performance report with all Automated Personalization activity success metrics.

Enhancement

Description

Code Editor UI redesign

The code editor UI has been updated to be more intuitive and easier to use.

For more information, see Code Editor.

Feature

Description

Experience Versions

Versions targeted to different audiences can now be set up within experiences in A/B activities.

See Target an Experience to Multiple Audiences.

Recommendations custom algorithms

Custom algorithm mappings can be uploaded in a CSV file. It is no longer required to use the XML-based API.

See Uploading Custom Criteria.

Analytics for Target: Analytics tracking server

To ensure proper reporting tracking, you must specify a tracking server when you create or edit activities that use Analytics for Target (A4T). Existing activities will continue to run using current settings.

See Using an Analytics Tracking Server.

New Instructional Videos

The following instructional videos have been added to help:

• Using DTM to pass parameters to the global mbox
• Using DTM to deploy Target
• Setting up a multivariate test
• Creating an A/B activity
• Understanding activity types
• Configuring activity settings
• Targeting an activity
• Creating audiences
• Using audiences
• Using the Content Library
• Using profile scripts
• Setting account preferences
• Understanding Visual Experience Composer modes
• Creating and managing Target users
• Setting success metrics

User Interface improvements

User interface improvements have been made to the Visual Experience Composer and Recommendations search.

Recommendations CSV download

CSV downloads now have a line for all environments, including those that do not have entity recommendations (for example: # environment: 1724 ).

Feature

Description

User Interface Improvements

The user interface has been changed significantly in this release. Among the most noticeable changes are:

• Navigation has moved from the left to the top
• Improved dialog boxes
• Improved activity creation flow

The way Experience Cloud solutions, including Target, are selected has also changed. To access Experience Cloud solutions and services, click the menu icon:

For more information about accessing Target and making Target your default page after logging in to the Experience Cloud, see Access Target from the Adobe Experience Cloud.

Inclusion rules can be disabled for backup recommendations

When backup recommendations are enabled, you can choose not to apply inclusion rules to your backup recommendations. .

Recommendations: New debugging capabilities in text area via mboxTrace

Adding &mboxTrace to a URL replaces recommendations on that page with debugging details, including information about served recommendations, criteria, design, exclusions, inclusions, backup recommendations served, and more.

Recommendations API: Upload a CSV for the Custom Criteria

You can upload a CSV for the Custom Criteria via API.

This ability will be added to the Target Premium user interface in an upcoming release.

Recommendations API: New Design APIs

New Design APIs make it possible to manage your Recommendations designs via API.

AP: Dependent Success Metrics

Automated Personalization now supports the ability to limit a success metric to only count if a previous success metric has already been met.

For more information, see Success Metrics.

AP: Reports Summary View Download

The download option now allows users to download summary view (i.e. comparing Control and Automated traffic) as broken down by all available success metrics.

Customer attributes can be used as tokens in offers

Previously, customer attributes could be referenced in profile scripts, formatted as crs.get('< Datasource Name >.< Attribute name >') .

Now, the attributes are available as tokens in profile scripts and directly in offers without first requiring a profile script. The token should be in the form: $crs. datasourceName . attributeName .

See CRS Tokens.

Custom Code enhancement

Custom code can now execute the JavaScript code in the <head> tag. Execution of code no longer waits for the <body> tag to be present in DOM. Earlier, the selector was only the first element in the <body> tag.

New Instructional Videos

Instructional videos have been added to help. Currently, you can view videos about the Visual Experience Composer and Form-Based Experience Composer. More videos will be added in the coming weeks.

Feature

Description

First Look:

New Target implementation library, at.js

Note: This "First Look" offering is available via API download. It will be available via the Target interface in an upcoming release. In the meantime, you can download the at.js library, test it in your environment, and deploy it in your production Target implementation.

at.js is a new implementation library for Target designed for both typical Web implementations and single-page applications.

Among other benefits, at.js improves page load times for Web implementations, improves security, and provides better implementation options for single-page applications.

at.js contains the components that were included in target.js, so there is no longer a call to target.js.

When implementing at.js, be aware of the following:

• Visual Experience Composer redirects do not work.
• Internet Explorer versions earlier than 8 are not supported.
• Asynchronous implementation means legacy integrations like the Test&Target to SiteCatalyst plugin may not work.

Dependent Success Metrics

This features provides the option per success metric to count someone as reaching the success metric only if they've previously reached a different success metric.

For example, a test might change the hero image on the homepage. The marketer might only want to count conversions for people who clicked the hero image. So, the marketer can set a success metric for "clicked on homepage hero" and then another metric for purchasing. Then, the marketer can add a rule on the "purchasing" metric to ensure visitors have first reached the "clicked on homepage hero" success metric.

Note: If audience targeting on a location in a success metric is set, this feature is not supported for that metric.

Dependent Success Metrics are only supported in AB, XT, and MVT activities. Automated Personalization and Recommendations support will be available later.

For more information, see Success Metrics.

Auto-Allocate usability improvements

After the model for an Auto-Allocate activity is ready, the following operations from the UI are not allowed:

• Switching the "Traffic Allocation" mode to "Manual"
• Changing the reporting source from "Adobe Target" to "Analytics" and vice-versa
• Changing the goal metric type
• Changing options in the "Advanced Settings" panel

Refer to Automated Traffic Allocationfor documentation about Auto-Allocate.

Feature

Description

Activity entry targeting by percentage.

You can now limit entries into A/B and multivariate activities to a percentage of visitors or audience members. For example, you might limit entries to 50% of all visitors or 45% of your “Californians” audience.

Support for Revenue, Orders, and Engagement in Auto-Allocate

You can now choose Revenue (RPV), Orders, and Engagement metrics as goals for A/B activities with Auto-Allocation selected. Previously, only conversion metrics were supported. See Automated Traffic Allocation.

Filter by source

You can now filter the Activities list by the source where the activity was created. Choice are Adobe Target and Adobe Experience Manager. See Activities.

Automated Personalization performance enhancements

Automated Personalization has been redesigned to perform better with a large number of offer/location combinations.

Feature

Description

User interface improvements.

The Activities list and Audience list design have been improved, as has the search/sort functionality. Additional user interface changes will be included in upcoming releases.

See Activities.

"Super" audiences

Use nested AND/OR logic when configuring audiences.

See Creating an Audience.

Select host groups in reports

Host groups are available in reports.

Note: This option is not available for Automated Personalization.

Support for Internet Explorer 11

Internet Explorer 11 is now supported in the Target interface.

See Supported Browsers.

View Confidence Interval in Target reports for continuous variables

Display the Confidence Interval Range for the revenue metric type (RPV, AOV, Sales, Orders), and for engagement metrics.

For example, if RPV = 200.00 and CI Range = 50.00 , then this should be displayed for RPV: 200.00 +/- 50.00

This change applies to A/B, Experience Targeting, and Multivariate tests.

See Confidence Level and Confidence Interval.

Visual Experience Composer URL rules enhancement

Previously, the URL template rules in the Visual Experience Composer formed an OR condition with the Page URL. Now you can choose AND or OR when specifying multiple URLs. OR is the default.

Recommendations:

Change in global mbox delivery coding

When creating a design, it is now the default to wrap an HTML design in a <div> element.

For information about creating a design, see Create a Design.

Life Time Value (LTV) machine learning reinforcement technique

This new algorithm focuses on long-term conversion across many sessions instead of focusing on improving conversion just in this session. This technique is suitable for sites with many returning visitors because it optimizes on overall revenue for the entire interaction with the visitor.

See Automated Personalization.

Enhancement: Allow targeting on hash (#) fragments

You can now target on the part of a URL that follows a hash (#).

See Include the Same Experience on Similar Pagesand other relevant topics.

Download success metrics report

Download a single csv file with all success metric listed, instead of a report that only had the final activity goal.

See Reports.

Feature

Description

Auto-Allocate in A/B Tests

You now have the option to automatically allocate traffic to increase overall campaign lift and discover winning experiences faster. This algorithm increases the overall campaign performance while maintaining the integrity of an A/B test.

The algorithm relies on measured performance (e.g. conversion rate) and confidence intervals to produce a traffic distribution that is changed up to twice per hour.

Key Benefits

• Preserves the integrity of an A/B test by ensuring that visitors remain in the same experience, like they do in a manual A/B test
• Finds a statistically significant winner faster than a manual A/B test
• Provides higher average campaign lift than a manual A/B test
• Allows you to toggle to a manual test at any time

See Automated Traffic Allocation.

Customer Attributes

Upload 1st party data, called Customer Attributes, using the Experience Cloud core service and choose attributes to share to Target. This functionality launched in March for Analytics and now integrates directly with Target.

For example, you might use customer data such as membership status (gold, silver, etc.), purchase history, favorite destination, local store, and so on in your CRM or eCommerce/POS system. Now you can upload that data to Experience Cloud. After the user authenticates on your site, Target can match that data to their web behavior.

See Customer Attributes.

Multiple companies are available when selecting Analytics as the reporting source for Target.

When selecting Analytics as the reporting source for Target, you select an Analytics report suite to receive Target activity data. To do this, first choose from any of the Analytics companies your account is tied to, and then select the appropriate report suite for the activity. Only report suites that are provisioned to connect to Adobe Target will be available for selection. If you don't see the report suite(s) you expect, first try logging out and logging back in to the Adobe Experience Cloud to try again. If the report suite is still missing from the list, please contact Customer Care.

New Built-in Options for Audience Creation

There are new built-in audience options:

• Target visitors based on which language they use on their browser. This is more accurate than geo-based language targeting.
• Target visitors based on browser version, not just which browser is being used.
• You can now Target multiple browsers rather than only one.

See Browser Options.

Recommendations

Exclude Past Purchases

Target now automatically excludes previously purchased items from a visitor's recommendations. This option can be disabled for any criteria.

All out-of-the-box criteria now have this option enabled, including those used in activities that were running prior to this release. If you do not want to exclude past purchases, you should edit those activities.

Recommendations

Attribute Weighing

Recommendations ranking rules have changed for criteria. This change affects existing Recommendations.

Use attribute weighting to "nudge" the algorithm. Marketers can influence the algorithm based on important description or metadata about the content catalog. Apply a higher weighting to these on-sale items so they show more often in the recommendation. Non-sale items are not completely excluded, but they display less often. Multiple weightings can be applied to the same algorithm, and the weightings can be tested on split traffic in the recommendation.

These new weights have automatically been applied to all activities.

Recommendations

Set the Time for Feed Processing

Specify the time when you want a feed to update.

See Create Feed.

Recommendations

Use the Feed List to Set a Feed to Never Run

From the feed list, set a feed to never run if you do not want to update that feed.

See Create Feed.

Recommendations

Set a New Criteria Type Based on Content Similarity

An item-based criteria that can be used for the following:

• Current items with similar attributes
• Last purchased item with similar attributes
• Custom attributes that match a specified entity.id and use items with similar attributes
• Last viewed item with similar attributes
• Most viewed item with similar attributes

New Activity List Filters

Several filters have been added to help you show the activities you are most interested in seeing in the Activities list.

See Activities.

Recommendations

Enhancement: Industry-Relevant Criteria Configuration

Irrelevant options during setup have been eliminated. In the past, some setup options for some industry verticals, such as Media, were not always relevant.

Recommendations

New Out-of-the-Box Criteria

• More Videos Like This
• More Articles Like This
• More Content Like This
• More Slideshows Like This
• More Products Like This

See Criteria.

Enhancement: Improved reporting details shown when using Analytics as your reporting source.

The details shown by default in an Analytics report when using A4T now match the details shown in the Target report.

Feature

Description

Mobile Web Experience Composer

View your site as it looks on various mobile devices and different screen sizes. Set responsive site breakpoints once and use them across your activities to make sure your optimization activities look great on all the devices your visitors use.

See Mobile Viewports for Responsive Experiences.

Location targeting on form-based activity creation

Apply targeting to your mbox locations to limit where your activity displays.

See Form-Based Experience Composer.

Background color selection in Visual Experience Composer for MVT and Automated Personalization activities

A color picker enables you to set background colors when editing Automated Personalization and Multivariate Test activities.

This feature was previously only available for A/B and Experience Targeting activities.

See Visual Experience Composer Options.

Rich Text and HTML editing in Visual Experience Composer for MVT and Automated Personalization activities

Text and HTML formatting in a word processor-like window when editing Automated Personalization and Multivariate Test activities.

This feature was previously only available for A/B and Experience Targeting activities.

These actions provide rich-text editing capabilities by adding HTML tags or applying styles. These modifications by the rich-text editor for any action can be seen in its source view. Users can press the HTML button in the rich-text editor to see the source view. The styles added by the rich-text editor can interfere with customer websites' styles. In this case, users can go to the source view and edit the modifications to align them with their websites' styles.

See Visual Experience Composer Options.

Recommendations

Form-based recommendations

Create recommendations activities for non-site locations including emails, consoles, kiosks, etc.

See Form-Based Experience Composer.

Recommendations

Display information about the key in the design

Show the key item in your Recommendations design.

Automated Personalization

Conversion-based report

If the optimization goal is a conversion metric, then the Offer Detail report now shows the impact of the top predictive variables in lift and incremental conversions. This report was only revenue-based before, so this ability ensures that activities with no revenue data still produce relevant and actionable insights.

See Automated Personalization Reports.

Adobe Campaign e-mail integration with Target Standard

Previously, it was required to use Target Classic to set up a targeted e-mail campaign using Adobe Campaign. With the release of two new features in Target Standard (form-based activity creation and redirect offers) it is now possible to use Target Standard to set up a targeted e-mail campaign with Adobe Campaign.

Redirect Offers in Form-Based activity creation

Support for the redirect offers functionality of Target Classic added in Target Standard form-based activity creation flow.

See Form-Based Experience Composer.

Enhancement: Experience URLs in activities no longer use on-site cookie

The preview experience URLs available per activity are now more reliable. Easily copy the URLs and share with other team members, even if they don't use Adobe Target.

Note: Updated experience URLs only work on activities created after July 30, 2015. Older activities continue to use the cookie-based preview functionality.

Reporting enhancement for Analytics as the reporting source for Target

Click to view the full Analytics report directly from the activity report page.

Activity List performance improvements

Greatly improved the load time for activities in the list. Searching and filtering are much faster, particularly when there are a lot of activities in the list.

Feature

Description

Activity change log

The change log lists changes made to an activity. The action and the user are listed with a timestamp for each change.

See Activity Change Log.

Multipage activity

A multipage activity enables you to create a story over multiple pages, with a design that is specific to each page.

For example, you might want to test an offer for free shipping with purchases above a certain amount. You might want that offer to appear on your landing page, a category page, and certain product pages, but you want it to be a different size and in a different location on each page type. You could display a prominent offer on your home page, then reinforce that offer with smaller offers on other relevant pages.

You can also use a multipage activity to define different layouts for your desktop and non-responsive mobile sites.

See Multipage Activity.

Form-based activity creation

Create an activity without using the Visual Experience Composer. Instead, choose locations and offers through a form. With this, Target Standard activities can be delivered in emails, mobile apps, kiosks, and other places that don't work with a Visual Experience Composer.

See Form-Based Experience Composer.

Configurable success metrics

Fine-grained options let you determine how to count success metrics. Options include counting the metric per impression or once per visitor, and choosing whether to keep the user in the activity or removing them. This is equivalent to the "advanced options" for success metrics available in Target Classic.

See Success Metrics.

Enhancement: Experience Targeting experience limit removed.

The previous limit of ten experiences in Experience Targeting has been removed.

Real-time profile syncing for 3rdPartyId data

When a site visitor logs in mid-session and gets a 3rdpartyId, all previously-loaded profile attributes tied to the 3rdPartyId are now immediately available. See Visitor Profile.

Recommendations Premium: Facet Name Search

You can now search for a facet name.

Automated Personalization: Post-goal metric tracking

Previously, Target restarted an experience when the visitor hit the modeling goal. Now, users can be kept in the activity for tracking purposes after reaching the modeling goal.

For example, often an Automated Personalization activity is used to improve click-rates, and that is set as the modeling goal. However, it's important to see how increased click-rates lead to final conversion, so tracking through the final conversion is essential.

See Automated Personalization.

Feature

Description

Visual Experience Composer compatibility improvements

A new account-wide setting to make it easier for Target to generate the right CSS selectors. For example, it can be specified if Target should use classes or IDs. This improves compatibility with AEM. This setting can be overridden per activity

Experience Targeting support for Analytics as a reporting source

You can now use Analytics as a reporting source for Experience Targeting activities.

Automated Personalization: Visual indication of model status

Once a predictive model passes the required quality criteria and is deemed valid, it is considered ready and is used to calculate a personalized score for offer decisioning. A clock icon changes to a check mark when the model is ready and Target is able to begin delivering personalized content. Since lift is expected only after the models are ready, the visual indication allows you to set the right expectation. Use the traffic estimator in the Visual Experience Composer to get a guideline of when the models will be ready.

Premium Recommendations: Browse and Navigate in the Visual Experience Composer

Allows you to open the visual experience composer on one page, and then follow links and form submissions to reach other pages on your site, such as a shopping cart. Once on the page you want to test, flip the Visual Experience Composer back to "Compose" mode and create your experiences. For example, you can change a message on the Shipping page, then test it against the default.

Premium Recommendations: Faceted Catalog Search

Provides a more robust way to search your catalog. Also makes it easier to narrow down the search results to very specific set of products.

Show external campaigns in the Target Standard Activities list

You will now see Target Classic campaigns within the Target Standard Activities list. If you want to filter out Target Classic campaigns and only view Target Standard you can use the "Source" search filter option. For example, to view only Adobe Target Standard activities select the source filter and type "Adobe Target" as the source. The ability to view activities created in Recommendations Classic or Adobe Mobile Services will be added in a future release.

You can activate and deactivate activities created in other solutions using the Target user interface. For all other changes you will be need to edit the activities in the source solution.

For activities created in other solutions, audience information is not visible on the Overview page. View the audience information in the solution where the activity was created.

See Activities.

Feature

Description

Custom code entry and editing in Visual Experience Composer

Enables you to see, edit, and add new actions using a code editor within the Visual Experience Composer.

See Code Editorfor more information.

Add JavaScript and CSS to the top of your page

Add JavaScript code to your page(s) right below the <body> tag, without requiring the selection of an element on your page.

See Code Editorfor more information.

New Audience Creation Options

You can now target by the following (located in the Geo section when creating an audience):

• ISP
• Network domain
• Connection speed (options are: broadband, dialup, mobile, t1, t3, satellite)

See Audiences.

Recommendations Premium New Features

• New Preview mode to view designs with JavaScript

• Catalog Search now supports free search for English language

• Account-level support for inputting a static, base url to prepend to all relative entity.thumbnailUrl values

Recommendations Premium Enhancements

• Improvements to design preview in VEC

• Layout improvements on out-of-the-box designs

• Collection shown in targeting diagram

Recommendations Classic functionality now supported in Recommendations Premium

• Partial template rendering

  See Content Settings.

• Specify backup rules per criteria

• Support FTPS for product feeds

• Custom algorithms now appear automatically as criteria

• Hourly automatic reindexing of product catalogs for customers without feeds

Automated Personalization: QA links added

You can now preview how your experiences will look when delivered. View and share links to your AP experiences on your site to get a "true preview" of the experiences outside of Target's Visual Experience Composer.

See Automated Personalization.

Analytics-powered MVT: Preview experience from Performance report

When using Analytics as the reporting source for multivariate tests, you can preview your MVT activities from the Performance report.

A/B tests and Experience Targeting: three-step activity creation flow

Create A/Band Experience Targetingactivity in three steps instead of four. This change makes the process of creating these activities more like the workflow of other activities types, such as Automated Personalization and Multivariate Tests.

Analytics as a reporting source is available with most activity types.

The A/B with Analytics activity type no longer exists. The option of using Analytics as your reporting source is now available on the Goal & Settings page for all activity types except Automated Personalization and Experience Targeting. As a result, there is no longer a separate activity type called A/B Test with Analytics Data.

Show external campaigns in the Target Standard Activities list

You will now see Target Classic campaigns within the Target Standard Activities list. If you want to filter out Target Classic campaigns and only view Target Standard you can use the "Source" search filter option. For example, to view only Adobe Target Standard activities select the source filter and type "Adobe Target" as the source. The ability to view activities created in Recommendations Classic or Adobe Mobile Services will be added in a future release.

See Activities.

Export Order Audit Report

Ability to export/download Order Audit Report added to Target reports.

Beta: A4T lift and confidence

Lift and confidence now available for Analytics' standard metrics and custom events.

Feature

Description

Visual Experience Composer improvements

Content that only appears on hover, such as flyout menus and mini-carts, is now selectable for editing in the Visual Experience Composer.

See Experiences.

Automated Personalization: Traffic Estimator

The Traffic Estimator, formerly available only in the Multivariate Test activity type, is now available for Automated Personalization activities.

See Estimate the Traffic Required for Success.

Automated Personalization: Visual Preview

Visually preview every content combination inside the Visual Experience Composer.

See Preview Experiences for an Automated Personalization Test.

Recommendations: Improved content viewing

You can now see every item that qualifies for a collection or exclusion when viewing or editing the collection.

Recommendations: Improved search results

The total number of items that meet each search string is displayed.

Upload Customer Attributes in Adobe Analytics

Analytics users who capture enterprise customer data in a customer relationship management (CRM) database can upload that data into the Experience Cloud.

Once the data is in the Experience Cloud, you can, for example, create an audience segment in Analytics that includes customer attributes in the segment definition, and then share that audience with Target.

Note: Target is not yet able to consume raw customer attributes directly.

Feature

Description

New activity type: Recommendations

Recommendations activities automatically display products or content that might interest your customers based on previous user activity. Recommendations help direct customers to relevant items they might otherwise not know about.

Recommendations is available as part of the Target Premium solution. It is not included with Target Standard without a Target Premium license.

Feature

Description

New activity type: Multivariate test

A full-factorial multivariate test compares all possible combinations of offers in your content areas to help you determine the best possible combination of content. Multivariate tests also show which content in which areas most contributes to activity success. A common use of multivariate tests is to optimize an entire page after you've used an A/B test to determine an optimal layout. With the multivariate test, you can optimize the individual assets on the page (such as the main image, headlines, or promotional content).

For an introductory video, see https://my.adobeconnect.com/p2k6u8iiu6l/.

Browse to pages and in-page elements in the Visual Experience Composer

Allows you to open the visual experience composer on one page, and then follow links and form submissions to reach other pages on your site, such as a shopping cart. Once on the page you want to test, flip the Visual Experience Composer back to "Compose" mode and create your experiences. For example, you can change a message on the Shipping page, then test it against the default.

The Browse mode also lets you interact with a page to get to the right state, such as going through an image carousel, open a mini-cart, or close a pop-up. Once the page is in the state you need, flip to "Compose" mode and create your test.

Currently works with A/B tests, experience targeting, and A/B tests with Analytics.

See Experiencesfor more information.

Mobile device targeting

You can select mobile device options when creating an audience.

See Audiencesfor more information.

Click tracking (Automated Personalization)

You can now track clicks in Automated Personalization.

mboxTrace debugging utility

Examine details about your Target page implementation and activity/experience delivery status for improved troubleshooting.

See Troubleshooting Content Deliveryfor more information.

Feature

Description

Redirect offers

Redirect an experience to a different URL so you can test one page against another page. See Create a Redirect Offer.

Apply targeting on success metrics

Choose a saved audience to apply on a success metric. With this feature you can limit what actions count for a particular success event. An example might be limiting conversions to when the order is more than $0, or only counting success when a user views a particular page in the same session as entering the activity.

Automated Personalization: Select and report against RPV/AOV metrics

You can now select the RPV and AOV metrics in the Automated Personalization experience creation flow. For more information about creating n Automated Personalization activity, see Automated Personalization.

Improved permission controls

Only users with sufficient permissions can edit audiences.

Feature/Enhancement

Description

Allow insertion and editing of JavaScript

Added the ability to edit and inject custom JavaScript in the experience editor when you choose Edit HTML from the actions menu.

Automatic audience import

Audiences are automatically imported in the background when a user opens the audience list and the imported audiences are more than 10 minutes old.

Increased size of HTML offers than can be synced to Target Classic

Increased the former 64KB limit to 256KB.

Feature/Enhancement

Description

Enhanced syncing of HTML offers with Target Classic by increasing the character limit

Raised the character limit of an HTML offer created under Content to align with the 256 KB limit of HTML offers synced to Target Classic.

Improved user experience when an error is created in the Experience Editor.

The Experience Editor displays a message when DOM structure changes on the page breaks the selectors.

Feature

Description

Adobe Analytics-enhanced reporting for Adobe Target

Adobe Analytics customers can select Analytics as the default reporting source during the test set-up process. Selecting all success metrics or audiences you want to use to filter your results is no longer required. Within reporting, you can select any success metric or audience segment defined in Analytics and retroactively apply it to your reporting for extensive filtering and drill-down analysis of your optimization results.

Note: To request access to this feature, visit https://survey.adobe.com/jfe/form/SV_ekBHTLSoP5Zki2y.

Master marketing profile real-time audiences

Leverage the master marketing profile that unifies visitor IDs and data into a single, actionable profile for use across solutions. A checkbox during the segment creation process in Adobe Analytics allows the segment to be available within the Adobe Target's custom audience library. A segment created in Analytics or Audience Manager can be used to target visitors in Target.

Note: To request access to this feature, visit https://survey.adobe.com/jfe/form/SV_ekBHTLSoP5Zki2y.

Experience targeting activity type

Target different experiences to different audiences in one activity.

Note: This provides similar functionality to the Landing Page campaign in Target Advanced.

Multi-page testing

Choose to run a test or targeted activity across a set of webpages. You can now deliver tests to every product page, or modify your global nav on every page of the site. Use a simple rule builder to specify what the group of pages should be.

Feature

Description

Localized versions available

Target Standard has been localized in French, German, Japanese, and Spanish

Simplified implementation

Target Standard has been improved to make it easier to implement for existing Target Advanced users. The new implementation uses your existing global mboxes to run Adobe Standard activities.

Feature

Description

Activity collisions

Target Standard now provides a list of activity collisions. An activity collision occurs when multiple activities are set up to deliver content to the same page. If an activity collision occurs, you may not see the expected content on your page because you've entered a different activity.

All activities on the same URL are listed, regardless of any audience targeting in each activity.

If your activity contains collisions, a Collisions tab is available the on the activity overview page. Open this tab for a list of activities that are colliding. Click an activity in the list to view the overview page for that activity.

See Activity Collisions.

New targeting options: Profile, User

You can now target profile and user parameters. See Audiences.

Insert elements

You can now add any kind of element to your page in addition to modifying existing content. Add text, code, lists, and more to create entirely different experiences to test.

See Visual Experience Composer Options.

Feature

Description

Estimate revenue lift

Target can estimate the revenue lift you would attain if all users view the winning experience.

This estimate calculates the amount of lift achieved by the winning experience and your total number of visitors over the life of the test, and shows the lift you might achieve if every visitor sees the winning experience, if the trends continue as they have during the test.

The accuracy of the estimate depends on a number of factors, including projected figures if current trends continue. These values are estimates based on past performance and should not be used for financial guidance. Future results may vary.

Undo/Redo

You can undo changes you make to your activities during an editing session. You can also redo undone changes.

See Visual Experience Composer Options.

Move element

You can move elements on your page. Unlike Rearrange Elements, Move does not shift other elements to make room for the element being moved. Use your arrow keys to fine tune the move.

See Visual Experience Composer Options.

Resize element

You can resize an element on your page. When you select Resize, a handle appears in a corner of the element that lets you drag that corner to resize.

See Visual Experience Composer Options.

Target a location when setting up an audience

When creating an audience, you can select a location (mbox) and specify parameters for that location.

See Creating a New Audience.

Preview links (Enhancement)

Preview links work as expected.

Feature

Description

Geo-targeting

Target on Country, State, City, Zip code, or DMA.

Use the Visual Experience Composer to rearrange elements.

You can rearrange child elements inside their parent element using the Visual Experience Composer.

Preview experiences directly on your site.

Once you save an activity, you can preview it directly on your site, even if the activity is not live. This allows you to see how it will appear, without serving it through an iFrame. You can copy links to each test experience to view those experiences in your browser or to send them to your team members for them to view. People who view these pages will not be counted in the reports.