Timming between audience refresh and AJO journeys execution | Community
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Level 3
August 25, 2025
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Timming between audience refresh and AJO journeys execution

  • August 25, 2025
  • 3 replies
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Hi,
I am using AJO and have a number of journeys scheduled daily at 8:00 AM. The scheduler is configured to refresh all audiences at 7:30 AM. If I check an audience individually, I see it was refreshed at 7:47 AM (Audience Properties /Last updated). However, when the journeys ran at 8:00 AM they took the previous day's audience members, and not the ones that show after the refresh.

How much time should be left between the audience refresh scheduled time and the journey's start, to be sure that all audiences are refreshed and ready to use? I understand that it depends on the data and how many audiences are defined, but I would like to get some guidance on how to best estimates the timing in such a way we don't run journeys on outdated data.

Best answer by Mayank_Gandhi

@gabrielana1 Journey Optimizer Read Audience Activity reads from the audience snapshot dataset, which is only updated after the export job finishes for a scheduled audience refresh. Even if the audience shows "Last updated" after evaluation, the journey will not pick up changes until the export/snapshot is complete.

If your journey starts before the export is complete, it will use the previous day's audience members, exactly what you observed.

Depending on your system’s data load and segmentation complexity, the export job may take from several minutes up to nearly an hour.


Leave at least 45–60 minutes between scheduled refresh/export and journey start for batch audiences. This buffer covers the worst-case for segmentation and export on heavy loads.

  • Example: If refresh is 7:30 AM, schedule journey after 8:30 AM, not at 8:00 AM.
  • If you have multiple audiences, or very large datasets: Test actual export durations for your audiences (monitor when the snapshot is available) and add a custom buffer.

3 replies

AnkitJasani29
Level 6
August 26, 2025

Hi @gabrielana1 ,

I'd leave 30-60 minutes after a daily audience refresh for journeys to pick up the new data and if the audience is composed/complex, allow up to 24 hours.

Reference: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer/using/audiences-profiles-identities/audiences/target-audiences

Thanks,

Ankit

SatheeskannaK
Community Advisor
Community Advisor
August 26, 2025

@gabrielana1 You might have noticed how long the audience evaluation and export job takes after the initial backfill. Verify this by checking the monitoring section. By reviewing the daily data load timings, you can gauge the time needed to complete the audience evaluation. Assume that all data loads take place daily before 5 AM, and I recommend scheduling the evaluation for 6 AM each day. In the worst-case scenario, it might take around 3 hours, so you might want to plan the journeys for around 9:30 or 10 AM daily. Furthermore, for journeys that rely on the read audience, consider selecting the "Trigger after batch audience evaluation" option to prevent sending outdated data.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer/using/orchestrate-journeys/about-journey-building/read-audience

Thanks, Sathees
Mayank_Gandhi
Adobe Employee
Mayank_GandhiAdobe EmployeeAccepted solution
Adobe Employee
August 27, 2025

@gabrielana1 Journey Optimizer Read Audience Activity reads from the audience snapshot dataset, which is only updated after the export job finishes for a scheduled audience refresh. Even if the audience shows "Last updated" after evaluation, the journey will not pick up changes until the export/snapshot is complete.

If your journey starts before the export is complete, it will use the previous day's audience members, exactly what you observed.

Depending on your system’s data load and segmentation complexity, the export job may take from several minutes up to nearly an hour.


Leave at least 45–60 minutes between scheduled refresh/export and journey start for batch audiences. This buffer covers the worst-case for segmentation and export on heavy loads.

  • Example: If refresh is 7:30 AM, schedule journey after 8:30 AM, not at 8:00 AM.
  • If you have multiple audiences, or very large datasets: Test actual export durations for your audiences (monitor when the snapshot is available) and add a custom buffer.
Michael_Soprano
Level 10
August 27, 2025

audience snapshot dataset

you mean profile snapshot dataset?

Mayank_Gandhi
Adobe Employee
Adobe Employee
August 27, 2025

@michael_soprano yes 🙂