Why should brands need to move to AEP Web SDK from traditional Appmeasurement.js?

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Web analytics is an important martech stack for brands, web analytics tools or solutions are helping brands to better understand their customers, improve website performance, measure marketing effectiveness, optimize the customer journey, and track website KPIs. This information is essential for making informed decisions and staying ahead of the competition.

One of the Industry leading solutions and my favorite is Adobe Analytics.

You might already know that Adobe analytics works on a javascript library called Appmeasurement.js.

We deploy this script either through a TMS(Tag Management Solutions) or directly on the website

Similarly, if you are using Adobe Target, Adobe Audience Manager, and Visitor Identification solutions, each of these solutions has its own independent scripts, different cookies, and different endpoints.

However, recently Adobe has come up with the concept of one javascript library, one endpoint, and first-party data collection. Replacing all of the above javascript libraries with one called Alloy.js

This Alloy.js script is wrapped and put into Adobe Launch(Tags) as an extension called the AEP WEB SDK extension.

The Endpoint of Alloy.js is called as Edge network and it is in the format of (*.edge.adobedc.net)

This blog will help you understand why you should move to the new method of data collection for solutions like Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and AAM.

Below are several reasons why brands may want to consider moving from AppMeasurement.js to an AEP Web SDK. Here are some key factors to consider:

1. Improved Performance:

Customers want sites to load as fast as possible. Independent JS libraries and edge networks create performance lag and code weight. AEP Web SDK is designed to be faster and more efficient than AppMeasurement.js. This means that brands can capture data more quickly and accurately, reducing the likelihood of data loss or discrepancies.

2. Better Data Privacy:

AEP Web SDK includes privacy features such as consent management, which enables brands to comply with data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. Alloy.js is completely first-party, which makes data collection more secure and compliant to privacy laws.

3. Easy of implementation:

One library, One SDK, and One destination help to reduce the operational and implementation cost by decreasing the number of libraries to manage, time to implement, cost of ownership and the number of vendors. Send to one single location, the Adobe Experience Platform Edge Network.

4. Standardized data collection:

Standardize all your data and send it where it needs to go across the adobe products, at scale

5. Sending data to non-adobe solutions:

Brands always struggle to deploy pixels separately directly on the websites or through the TMS. However, with Alloy.js you can send data to 3rd party solutions as well. Otherwise, brands have to deploy pixel scripts or marketing tools on the websites. Now with server-side forwarding of Adobe, you can send data outside of the Adobe ecosystem.

This server-side forwarding of data by Edge network is called Event forwarding.

Now that you understood the value proposition and the advantages. Let me talk about how data collection works in AEP WEB SDK

I would not be able to explain it without this amazing diagram by Adobe

Let's start from the left, For example, it is a website, I will be deployed on the website using a TMS and sending data in the format of key-value pairs to the edge network. The blue part does this job and once the data reaches the edge network, these key-value pairs are then forwarded to the Adobe Solutions server side by the edge itself.

AAM and Target are bidirectional because they need to respond back with a payload based on the request sent to the server like a personalization offer to show on the website

Now that, we understood why we need to move to new and advanced data collection methods.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions regarding AEP Web SDK or any suggestions on what my upcoming blogs should cover.