Raw Analytics Data in Collecting Data State for over a Week

[runam35821892]

When creating Raw Analytics Data Audiences, it seems to take forever for my Audiences to come out of the "Collecting Data" state.

Attached is an example of a Raw Analytics Data Audience that I last updated on the 17th of May (2017) and we are now the 25 of May (2017). A week seems excessive to Collect Data?

What is the acceptable time to wait for the data to populate? TIA. 

Runa.

[jantzen_b]

Hi Runa,

I'm trying to track down the details of when this message appears. I know it appears when you first create an audience, but I also know there are a few other scenarios that make it appear. 

As for your specific audience, are you certain that data has been received that matches that description? I believe real-time audiences will display that message until data is received. A few things I'd recommend checking:

• Run an Analytics report using the same conditions as the audience to ensure you're seeing data
• Check the tracking server on the site and contact customer care to ensure that that tracking server has been enabled for server side forwarding. Raw analytics data based audiences require server-side forwarding.
• Try qualifying for the audience yourself and triggering the experience (assuming you've got a Target experience setup to fire based on that audience membership)

I'll continue looking around for the official reasons that message occurs.

Thanks,
Jantzen

[jantzen_b]

Runa,

Were you able to run any of the tests that I suggested in my previous reply?

Cheers,
Jantzen

[jantzen_b · Accepted solution]

Hi Runa,

I was able to speak with the product team to verify when this message appears. Essentially, it appears when there isn't a number to be shown. This could be because the audience has no data yet, or it could be that the system just hasn't updated since receiving the data.

With Historical Audiences shared via an Analytics segment, your audience may show collecting data for 24-48 hours. This is because data from Analytics takes 24-48 hours to be exported, imported, and updated in the UI. With Real-time audiences created in the Audience Library interface, there should only be ~30 min delay from the initial creation.

Keep in mind, both of the scenarios above are assuming that the audience has qualified visitors. Obviously, if your Analytics segment contains zero visitors, Audience Library is going to show "collecting data" until the Analytics segment receives a qualified visitor and the 24-48 hours have passed. If your real-time audience contains zero visitors upon creation, it will show collecting data until it receives it's first qualified visitor and the Audience Library UI updates.

The Audience Library UI updates once per day in the morning time PST. This does not mean your audience updates only once a day, it's simply the reporting UI.

----

For Troubleshooting:

Historical Audiences

1. Ensure that your Analytics segment contains visitors in the Analytics UI
2. Ensure the segment doesn't contain more than 20 Million unique visitors - Documentation
3. Ensure that 48 hours have passed since the segment was shared
4. If you've checked the above and your audience is still showing "collecting data", contact Customer Care. They will verify that the data is flowing on the backend

Real-Time Audiences

1. Ensure that 45 min has passed since the last modification of the audience conditions
2. In a private/incognito browser window, run through the steps to qualify for the audience while verifying the Analytics beacons contain the required values
3. Either wait until the reporting UI is updated the following morning or create a Target activity that is targeted at this real-time audience
4. If the UI still shows "collecting data" or if the target activity isn't being triggered, contact Customer Care and ensure you have server-side forwarding enabled for the tracking servers being used in your implementation.

I hope this helps. Please let me know If I can clarify anything.

Cheers,
Jantzen

[runam35821892]

Thanks Jantzen - this is extremely helpful.

In my haste, I deleted the Audiences that were still in "Collecting Data" State, but here are the steps I did take:

• Run an Analytics report using the same conditions as the audience to ensure you're seeing data --> Yes this was done prior to the creation of the audience.
• Check the tracking server on the site and contact customer care to ensure that that tracking server has been enabled for server side forwarding. Raw analytics data based audiences require server-side forwarding. --> Just finished chatting with client care and they will get back to me on this. Will update this string when I hear more.
• Try qualifying for the audience yourself and triggering the experience (assuming you've got a Target experience setup to fire based on that audience membership) --> No Target Experience at this time, but next time I do come across this issue, I will try to qualify for the audience,

I suspect that this may be due to the limitation of 20 million unique members. The audience was simply someone with 1 or 2 pageviews and unique visitors would definitely exceed 20 million uniques based on the lookback selected. In your opinon, would that be one of the reasons why it remained in "Collecting Data" mode?

Also, the documentation states that 20 is the max number of Audiences that can be shared from Analytics. Is this the case for all Account types? We were told that 20 was the limit for standard users.

Thanks!

[jantzen_b]

Yeah, if your audience was shared from Analytics, being over 20 million uniques would definitely cause a problem. I don't think there is a limit on real-time audiences (created in Audiences Library or AAM) because they are passed to the edge as a set of rules rather than a batch of IDs.

As for the max number of Audiences, each client can have 20 segments shared from Analytics at any given time per report suite. I'm not aware any variations of that number. Just to be sure, I'll double check with product management and get back to you.

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Update: Analytics Premium customers do not get any additional shared segments. Each customer can have 20 Analytics segments per report suite shared with the Experience Cloud. Real-time Audiences created within Audience Library and AAM do not have a limit.

Maybe you're confusing it with Customer Attributes? Limits for customer attributes below:

• Analytics Standard: 3 total
• Analytics Premium: 200 per report suite
• Target Standard: 5
• Target Premium: 200