custom audiences Data for segmentation and personalization in the journey

[Daniel_cardoso]

Hello everyone,

We have the following issue at the company: we receive external lists from various data sources as ad-hoc communications. These lists contain fields that we need to use either to segment a journey or to personalize email content, for example. It's important to note that these are cases where we don't have structured data in Adobe XDM, and they are sporadic occurrences.

Given this scenario, we opened a ticket with Adobe, E-001621243, inquiring about the use of data from custom audience sources for these purposes. We were informed that it was not possible.

However, upon analyzing the settings under Configurations > Data Sources, we saw that it's possible to create a field group and select custom audiences and their derived fields within it. Again, these are sporadic cases and will always be handled this way.

Our questions are:

• Is this considered a good practice by Adobe?
• Could we encounter future problems using this custom data in a journey?
• If this is not a viable option, does Adobe offer any features that cover this scenario?

Thank you for your input!

[SatheeskannaK]

@Daniel_cardoso Take a look at the custom audience upload approach to see if that works for your use cases.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer-learn/tutorials/profiles-audiences-subs...

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer/using/audiences-profiles-identities/aud...

[AnkitJasani29]

Hi @Daniel_cardoso ,

Is this considered a good practice by Adobe?

Yes - provided your custom fields are properly modelled on your XDM profile schemas, tagged with the appropriate data-usage labels, and within your license entitlements. AJO and the underlying AEP is explicitly built to let you segment on any XDM schema fields (standard + custom) for both real-time and batch audiences. Moreover, the Audience Portal docs remind you that applying data usage labels to the schema is the best practice.

Reference:

1. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer/using/audiences-profiles-identities/aud...
2. https://business.adobe.com/content/dam/dx/us/en/resources/sdk/ajo-capability-spotlight-profiles-and-...
3. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-platform/segmentation/ui/audience-portal

Could we encounter future problems using this custom data in a journey?

Potentially, if you don’t observe these guardrails:

Profile size & license entitlements: Ingesting large volumes of low-value or high-cardinality custom attributes can rapidly consume your AEP profile count or storage quota - leading to unexpected overage charges or data throttling.

Reference: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-platform/landing/license/data-management-best-...

Segmentation performance & guardrails: Batch Read Audience journeys expect audiences with predictable counts, mixing in ultra-dynamic or very large custom-data audiences can hit the maximum simultaneous-start limits or cause retries if too many runs kick off at once.

Reference: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer/using/orchestrate-journeys/about-journe...

Real-time constraints: If you push highly volatile custom fields into a real-time audience via Audience Qualification, you may encounter evaluation latency or throttling during peak traffic.

If this is not a viable option, does Adobe offer any features that cover this scenario?

Build and centrally manage audiences on AEP (including calculated traits), then activate them in AJO via Read Audience. This offloads heavy segmentation to Platform’s scalable engine.

Reference: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-platform/segmentation/faq

Also, use RT-CDP’s advanced identity stitching and audience composition, then share refined audiences directly into AJO for both entry and in-message personalization.

Reference: https://business.adobe.com/content/dam/dx/us/en/resources/sdk/ajo-capability-spotlight-profiles-and-...

Also, do accept the solution if answer worked for you so that anyone else also facing something similar can directly go to the right response.

Thanks

Ankit

[Sukrity_Wadhwa]

Hi @Daniel_cardoso,

Were you able to resolve this query with the help of the provided solutions, or do you still need further assistance? Please let us know. If any of the answers were helpful in moving you closer to a resolution, even partially, we encourage you to mark the one that helped the most as the 'Correct Reply.'

Thank you!