It appears that you're experiencing issues with using an Adobe Analytics audience in an A/B test in Adobe Target, specifically with the "Mobile visits" audience only being effective for return visits and not first-time visits. This behavior can be attributed to the way audiences are processed and shared between Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target.
Here’s what might be happening:
Audience Evaluation Time: Audiences from Adobe Analytics are updated every four hours, and it takes up to eight hours for the total process and sharing to take effect. This is due to the time required for data export and ingestion into the Experience Cloud. Therefore, if a user qualifies for the "Mobile visits" audience based on their behavior in Adobe Analytics, there might be a significant delay before this audience is actionable in Adobe Target. This delay primarily affects first-time visitors since their data has just been captured and needs to go through the process before being recognized and actionable.
Real-Time versus Historical Audiences: In your case, it seems that the audience based on "Mobile visits" created in Adobe Analytics falls under historical audiences, which are not suitable for real-time targeting and are more appropriate for return visitors. This is because these audiences are evaluated and updated in batches, leading to a delay. On the other hand, real-time audiences created directly in Adobe Target are evaluated immediately, which is why your audience created directly in Adobe Target works as expected.
First Visit vs. Return Visits: Since historical audiences from Adobe Analytics are updated every few hours, new visitors (first-time visits) who should fall into the "Mobile visits" audience might not be immediately recognized for this segment during their first visit. However, by their return visit, the audience data has been updated, and they are correctly identified and targeted.
Solution:
Immediate Solution: Continue using the audience created directly in Adobe Target for real-time targeting, especially for scenarios requiring immediate action, like your A/B test, differentiating between all visits and mobile visits.
Long-term Approach: Consider the time delay associated with Adobe Analytics audiences for future strategies. If real-time targeting is essential, create and manage these audiences directly within Adobe Target. This approach ensures that the audiences are evaluated in real-time, making them immediately actionable.
Validate and Monitor: Ensure that the definitions for "Mobile visits" are consistent across Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target. Also, monitor the audience performance and update intervals to better understand the timing and any potential delays.
By understanding the differences between historical and real-time audiences and the inherent delays in data processing and sharing between Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target, you can better plan your segmentation strategies and A/B tests to achieve the desired outcomes.
More information can be found here: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-cloud-kcs/kbarticles/ka-16471
