☕[AT Community Q&A Coffee Break] 12/8/21, 8am PT: Robert Calangiu, Senior Product Manager for Adobe Target☕

[Amelia_Waliany]

Join us for the next monthly Adobe Target Community Q&A Coffee Break, 

taking place Wednesday, December 8th, 2021 @ 8am PT

Be sure to MARK YOUR CALENDARS with a link to this thread

We'll be joined by Robert Calangiu, aka @Robert_Calangiu,  Senior Product Manager for Adobe Target, who will be signed in here to the Adobe Target Community to chat directly with you on this thread about your Adobe Target questions pertaining to his areas of expertise:

• Target Setup and Admin UI
• A4T Integration
• AEM Integration
• General Adobe Target UI 

REQUIREMENTS TO PARTICIPATE 

• Must be signed in to the Community during the 1-hour period 
• Must post a Question about Adobe Target
• THAT'S IT!  *(think of this as the Adobe Target Community equivalent of an AMA, (“Ask Me Anything”), and bring your best speed-typing game) 

INSTRUCTIONS 

• Click the blue “Reply” button at the bottom right corner of this post
• Begin your Question with @Robert_Calangiu
• When exchanging messages with Robert about your specific question, be sure to use the editor’s "QUOTE" button, which will indicate which post you're replying to, and will help contain your conversation with Robert

**For those who have joined an Adobe Target Community Q&A Coffee Break before: please note that we are no longer using formal registration pages for these events - just be sure to Mark Your Calendars to sign in here to the Community on 12/8/21 @ 8am PT, and hop onto this thread for direct answers from Robert

Robert Calangiu is a Senior Product Manager responsible for evolving Adobe Target's UI.  He was in charge with redesigning the Admin UI and now he is focusing on improving the Activity UI as well as with enhancing the A4T integration. Previously, Robert worked as a product manager for Adobe’s TV Everywhere portfolio, leading Authentication & Fraud Management solutions. He is passionate about building customer centric products and helping customers solve the right problems.

Curious about what an Adobe Target Community Q&A Coffee Break looks like? Be sure to check out our past 2020 Adobe Target Coffee Breaks, covering a WIDE variety of Adobe Target topics, and our latest thread from our 9/8/21 Adobe Target Coffee Break with @vishalchordia  

[Jamie_Re]

@Robert_Calangiu Why do Target Dimensions (Target Experience, Target Activity) in Analytics not relate on a 1 to 1 basis to last touch attribution when trying to validate the data against custom evar data (set with javascript in the Target Activities) or unique visitors in funnels. I am trying to get a placement valuation on Target Customizations.

[Jamie_Re]

@Robert_Calangiu Do you have any insights into this? Or can you point me in the direction of someone who does?

[Robert_Calangiu]

Hi @Jamie_Re ,

I somehow missed your question, sorry about that.

When analyzing Target data in Analytics you need to use the "Same touch" attribution model because this model is used in Target reporting as well -> so when trying to compare data Target vs. Analytics you need to always set "Same touch" attribution model in Analytics.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/target/using/integrate/a4t/a4t-faq/a4t-faq-viewing-reports.h...

Let me know if this helps.

[davidl55903031]

@Robert_Calangiu Hi Robert - we don't yet have the A4T integration, and I've tried to evangelize the benefits to the application owners, but as a consumer they require me to submit project scoring to get it into the IT queue. My lay-person's reading of the documentation is that it will require very little dev time, or really just some Launch & Target admin time. Can you give me a geusstimate on labor hours for implementation? Does this require any help from Adobe support, or is it all on our end? And I'm correct in that there's no further cost for provisioning if we already have Analytics and Target?
Thanks, Dave

[gebae]

Hi David,

Thanks for your question!

As per the documentation,  How do I Implement Analytics for Target (A4T)? , there are two methods to the A4T implementation: Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK implementation and at.js implementation. This implementation does not require any help from Adobe, however, help is available. If implementation assistance is required, please reach out to your Account team in order to engage with an Adobe implementation consultant.

Also wanted to confirm that there are no further costs if you already have Analytics and Target.

[ForgotPassword4Times]

I think this response is not intentionally misleading, but is fairly misleading. There are more than two methods to deploy A4T but there are only two which are well documented - which creates a huge gap when trying to leverage a server side deployment.

[davidl55903031]

I already had the documentation link, but he did answer two of my three questions.
The unanswered one: can anyone give me an estimate of the dev time required for implementation and validation to help move my A4T setup request forward with our IT?

[davidl55903031]

@Robert_Calangiu Hi Robert - we have a global mbox set up, which seems to be the modern default, but I'm wondering if there's still a use case to create div-based mboxes. For example, if we want to A/B test something that's site-wide, like our global navigation, then won't putting anything else on any page create a collision? So I guess we can resolve that with priorities, but that would mean sacrificing one or the other activity on those pages.

Also, the current Target goal metrics around Revenue don't seem to be functional; the only choice is What action was taken by your audience to indicate your goal has been reached? > viewed an mbox (global only is available). Should we set up a separate individual mbox around eCommerce, or can we use the global mbox and just set up Launch to push some eCommerce variables into the data layer Looks like it here: orderTotal, orderId, and productPurchasedId
https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/target/using/implement-target/client-side/global-mbox/global...

[Robert_Calangiu]

Usually you could create div-based mboxes when using the Form-based Composer for authoring your Target activities so that you know exactly what part of the page you are modifying.

If you want to A/B test something that's side-wide (like global navigation) you can use the "Page Delivery settings" to add a Template rule to match the URL or the entire domain and apply the changes across.

See the screenshot below:

If you have other activities that are running on other parts of the page then those can be applied as well (when having a global-mbox changes are stashed).

[davidl55903031]

Thanks @Robert_Calangiu, yes we use the Template rules. I guess I misunderstood how collisions work. I don't understand this: "...(when having a global-mbox changes are stashed)."

[Robert_Calangiu]

If you have two activities with the same priority running on the global-mbox, one is changing the global navigation and the other one is changing the footer for example, both changes will be applied and displayed to users.

If both activities would change the global navigation then only the latest activated activity changes will be displayed to users.

[davidl55903031]

 @Robert_Calangiu  Target Audience Creation – Category Affinity. We'd like to set this up for personalization, wondering if we should add a new Categories metadata tag to the pages with the appropriate values, or if we can parse existing page data into the user.categoryId variable, or can we leverage existing Analytics variables like "site section". Any advice on setup for beginners?

[Brian_Hawkins_MiaProva]

I played with this countless ways and what you describe it definitely doable but what I found to be the most scalable and the quickest to market is to not overload the affinities by expanding it to the entire site via site:section values.  If site:section values had a nice naming convention and available at the top of the page as a variable, I'd use "if statements" to limit the scope to 20 or so and then pass the values as user.categoryId via TargetPageParams 

[davidl55903031]

 @Robert_Calangiu Target Goals - Conversion > Clicked on an Element

Is it possible to select an element on a page other than the one(s) you're doing the activity on?

[Robert_Calangiu]

I'm not sure what you mean by "on a page other than the one you're doing the activity on". 

Do you mean that you start authoring a web page (URL) and then in Goals you want to select an element from a different URL than the one just authored?

[davidl55903031]

Yes, for example, two different pages on our website. The user has A/B experience on one page, then say clicks a CTA on another page. When I navigate in the VEC and click Browse, it says Browse to desired page then go back to Compose; when I do, a warning pops up saying This action will remove all tracked clicks added to the last URL. (Cancel/Discard Modifications).

If I choose Discard and select an Element, it completes the Conversion goal dialog, but there is no indication that the selector refers to any specific page. I guess I'll try it once to see if it works where there's any matching element later clicked, but it'd be better to "target" it

[Brian_Hawkins_MiaProva]

Hi David - this functionality exists today and works fine (except for the 60-second limitation for Analytics to capture that data in Activity Conversions).  

[aablank1]

Hi @Robert_Calangiu – There are some frustrating limitations in Target regarding calculated metrics.  1) Auto-allocate - We would love to experiment with auto-allocate, but can’t use the calculated metrics we need.  Specifically it is recommended by Adobe that we use unique metrics (Unique Visitors with a conversion) rather than raw counts (all conversions) to avoid biasing the results with multiple converting visitors (we always use the Unique Visitor counting methodology).  2) Reporting - The reporting includes lift and confidence in both Target and Analytics (with A4T), but only for standard and custom metrics.  The reason given usually for not being able to use calculated metrics is that it is a continuous metric and can’t be used.  All that does is force us to calculate them manually. 

Could Adobe give calculated metrics (and us) some love by granting them equal rights?

[Robert_Calangiu]

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@aablank1 wrote:

Hi @Robert_Calangiu – There are some frustrating limitations in Target regarding calculated metrics. 

---

You are totally right that we currently have limitations regarding calculated metrics support in A4T reporting. This is something that we are looking into for next year.  

[aablank1]

@Robert_Calangiu – Are there any plans for a sequential testing option (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_analysis) in Target?  It is a method that is quicker than classic A/B testing but is much more informational than multi-armed bandit.  We plan on doing it manually to make business decisions more rapidly, but would love to have it offered in the tool.