Is a real-time audience scoped to hit/visit/visitor?

[#1]

Dear all,

I have been trying out real-time audiences. I understand that a real-time audience can be created from Analytics eVars, events and props (recently added). This is what I did:

1) In the web properties, I populated a customer eVar to hold authenticationStatus. The value is either 'logged in' or 'logged out'. I set this eVar in DTM as part of page loading rule. I also populated a customer prop to the same value as the eVar. I validated in Experience Cloud debugger that both variables have the right value set on each page load.

2) I then created two real-time audiences in Audience Library: RTA: visitors who have logged in before (eVar1 equals 'logged in') and RTA: visitors who are currently logged in (prop1 equals 'logged in').

3) I then created a Target Experience activity and tried with both of the above segments.

This is what I observed:

1) With real-time audience RTA: visitors who have logged in before (eVar1 equals 'logged in'), I saw the targeted experience after login. However, the targeted experience stays even after I log out. Once logout, I did set the eVar1 to 'logged out'. However, the targeted experience stays there until I clear the cookie. If the real-time audience is evaluated at hit level, shouldn't I see the default experience after logout?

2) I got the same result after changing to real-time audience RTA: visitors who are currently logged in (prop1 equals 'logged in'). If I am right, prop value is held only for a hit. Somehow the new prop value, 'logged out', isn't evaluated correctly in the audience.

Did I miss something or was my audience library not provisioned correctly?

Many thanks!

Paul Rao

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hey Paul,

Realtime audiences are most closely related to the visitor level of Analytics. Essentially, you are configuring a set of rules that are applied at the Experience Cloud level. Any hit that comes into a tracking server that you've enabled server-side forwarding on, will pass through the system monitoring these rules.

Any time the hit meets all the conditions configured within your rules, the 'MID' value is added to the audience. The audience membership expiration is 30 days. Meaning, if a visitor does not send another hit that renews their membership in the audience, they will be removed from the audience 30 days later.

For you specific use cases, the visitor is still in the real-time audience for "logged-in" so you are being show the target activity even though they've logged out.

[#3]

Hi Jantzen,

Thanks so much for the answer in great detail. Very much appreciated!

Paul Rao