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BrandonFa6
Level 2
May 12, 2026
Question

Significant Change in Email Opens

  • May 12, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 23 views

We are seeing a significant dropoff in open rates and we suspect there was a recent change to how AJO handles auto opens. AJO has always included auto opens, mostly from iOS mail protection, as part of the unique open metric. While this inflated open rates, it has been that way for quite some time. 

 

Now, we are seeing a new Estimated Email Opens metric which seems to no longer include auto opens. 

 

Can this be confirmed? This is a significant change to the optics of how open rates are reported. If this change was made, can we please understand how an open is classified as an auto open? Just because someone has mail protection enabled does not mean that every email they are opening is an auto open. We need to better understand the logic behind this change if it was made. 

    1 reply

    Pulkit_Jain_
    Adobe Employee
    Pulkit_Jain_Adobe Employee
    Adobe Employee
    May 13, 2026

    ​@BrandonFa6 I think you’re referring to the change due to “Estimated Email Opens” in AJO.

    AJO no longer counts auto‑opens (like Apple MPP prefetches) as real unique opens. Estimated opens are calculated by separating real‑open users from bot‑open users, computing the real‑user open rate, applying that rate to bot‑only users, and adding the result back to the confirmed real opens. This change was introduced last year with the updated reporting experience to fix inflated open rates.

    You can read more about this here- https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer/using/reporting/channel-report/campaign-reporting/campaign-global-report-cja-email#:~:text=Estimated%20Opens%3A%20Estimate%20of%20total,only%20opened%20by%20mail%20servers. 

    B
    BrandonFa6Author
    Level 2
    May 13, 2026

    Thank you. Yes, that is what I am referring to. I understand the point of the change but reporting is now completely different than what we’ve seen. Is there more documentation about how Estimated Email Opens is being determined? It would be helpful to understand the logic behind the metric. 

    Pulkit_Jain_
    Adobe Employee
    Pulkit_Jain_Adobe Employee
    Adobe Employee
    May 14, 2026

    The more detailed algorithm Adobe uses internally ( bot detection or modeling rules) is not published externally, and therefore no additional public documentation exists beyond what Experience League provides. 

    This documentation explains that Estimated Email Opens- https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer/using/reporting/channel-report/campaign-reporting/campaign-global-report-cja-email

     

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