Data Distiller/SQL Audiences -- Profiles dropping from Audience

[JohanneVi]

Hi,

I am wondering if anyone has come across a situation where the profile counts in their SQL audience is dropping incrementally? I created an audience using Query Service with 690 profiles, and in the last 8 days since it was created the profile count in the audience dropped down to 685. After looking into it further, those 5 profiles that dropped from the audience are still in the platform, and I'm unsure what would have changed to make them exit the SQL audience--I assumed that it would be static? Because it's a query that was run once to pull a list of unique ECNs as the identity for membership...and the profiles are not merging. Any possible insight/thoughts on this would be super helpful!

Thanks,

Johanne

[Asheesh_Pandey]

@JohanneVi when you create an audience using Query Service, the query is used to define membership, but the audience still lives in Profile + Segmentation, which means membership is continuously re-evaluated as profiles change. This behaviour is expected, membership can drop due to identity resolution, merge policy, data changes, or eligibility. 

Now if you need a truly static list, you first export the query results, store them in a static dataset and then build an audience that checks for existence in that dataset only.

Thanks,

Asheesh

[Devyendar]

@JohanneVi without really looking into the data it is difficult to provide an accurate reason but here are probable causes, do an reevaluation for each of them to rule out or isolate the issue.

Possible reasons an SQL audience count drop:

• Audience UI uses estimates
  Counts shown in the Audience UI are sampled/estimated and can fluctuate slightly over time even when real membership hasn’t changed.

• Difference between UI count vs SQL re-run count
  If the drop is only seen in the UI, it is most likely due to estimation.
  If the same SQL query now returns fewer rows, then something changed in the underlying data which change the audience qualification and dropped count on the audience. (it might also be GDPR requests, causing data deletes or data lifecycle, data hygiene processes if they are running the background)

• Audience expiration (unlikely here)
  SQL audiences behave like external audiences and can expire (often ~30 days), but this is very unlikely at just 8 days unless explicitly configured.

• Profile merges
  Profile could have merged causing the overall profile count to be lower, the individual identities are there in the data lake but they are merged in to a single profile on profile store.

[Devyendar]

@JohanneVi hope this answers your question. Can you mark the response as 'Correct Answer' for help the community engagement.