Recommendations Catalog: Persistence of entity attributes after feed is turned off

[davidl55903031]

Here's our situation: we set up our Recommendations catalog and entity attributes with both input from mbox parameters capturing on-page data and a feed using the Analytics Product Classifications import. For various reasons, we have 90%+ rows in the Classifications that are not saleable on the website. We'll work on cleaning that up, but until then, we're wondering how best to clean up the Reco catalog.

We looked at using the API to remove entities, but the docs state that un-accessed entities will wash out of the catalog after 61 days, so maybe we can do nothing:

How Do I Use Feeds in Target Recommendations? | Adobe Target

So if we turn off the Classifications feed, any products not recorded in Target (or Analytics?) page views should be removed. However, the classifications are quite useful in making Collections and Exclusions. Will the entity attributes originally brought in with the Classifications feed persist as long as the product is still active?
 Specifically, this scenario: Say we have a live product A123 and a dead product B456. Initially, the live product has both attributes from the mbox parameters (the standard ones like name, etc.) and some additional ones from the Classifications (custom attributes); the dead one exists only in Classifications, so only has the custom attributes (or none).

Entity	Standard Attributes (mbox parameters)	Custom Attributes (Classifications Feed)
entity.id	entity.name	entity.categoryId	(…)	entity.margin	custom1	custom2	custom3
A123	Live product	ABC	(…)	10	Bus Unit 1	Product Group 1	Product Family 1
B456	Dead product				Bus Unit 2	Product Group 2	Product Family 2

If we now turn off the feed and wait 61 days, will we have these values, retaining the custom attributes on the live entity?

Entity	Standard Attributes (mbox parameters)	Custom Attributes (Classifications Feed)
entity.id	entity.name	entity.categoryId	(…)	entity.margin	custom1	custom2	custom3
A123	Live product	ABC	(…)	10	Bus Unit 1	Product Group 1	Product Family 1
B456

Or will we have these values, retaining only the mbox parameters on the live entity?

Entity	Standard Attributes (mbox parameters)	Custom Attributes (Classifications Feed)
entity.id	entity.name	entity.categoryId	(…)	entity.margin	custom1	custom2	custom3
A123	Live product	ABC	(…)	10
B456

[kandersen · Accepted solution]

Hi @davidl55903031 

AFAIK, the 65 days apply regardless how the product is ‘imported’ into recs. 

An alternative to letting it ‘expire’ would be to add an attribute you can use to filter or exclude on. In other words you’ll still be importing the products by you be excluding them from showing up in your recs. 

Stopping the feed from AA, will not remove the attributes. They’ll continue to apply. Though, those attributes will only be update if they are passed as part of the mbox request, otherwise they’ll stay the same as when received from AA. 

[davidl55903031]

Thanks, Mr. Andersen - 
 ...add an attribute you can use to filter or exclude...
Yes, we have that, was just concerned with general housekeeping and the possibility that having too many irrelevant entities in the Recs catalog may slow down the Recs selection or make them less accurate. If the AA Classifications attributes persist on active entities, that's perfect for our case.