Join us for the next Adobe Target Community Q&A Coffee Break!
We'll be joined by Adobe Target experts: Brent Kostak (@bkostak), Ryan Roberts (@Ryan_Roberts_), and Drew Burns (@Drburns27). We'll also be joined by Marisol St. John (@msamaniego) from Technical Support Engineering for extra support.
In this AMA (Ask Me Anything)- like event, the experts will be logged in to chat with you over this Discussion Thread, ready to answer any of your questions related to the topics covered in the 1/16/24 Webinar on the "Art of the Possible with Adobe Target."
WATCH THE WEBINAR RECORDING, and then join us 2/7/24 to bring your related Questions, Best Practices, or Hot Tips to this chat to share and discuss with the experts and your Target Community peers!
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Questions / Best Practices / Hot Tips should be geared around topics covered in this Webinar Part 1, specifically:
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During the hour, make sure to refresh this Coffee Break page periodically to catch new questions, responses, and recommendations.
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The Star Contributor opportunity:
Meet the experts:
Brent Kostak, Product Marketing Manager, Adobe
Brent brings data-driven personalization solutions to market that connect global brands to their customers. Adobe enables enterprise marketing and engineering teams to streamline data and create a single, personalized view of their customers to deliver exceptional digital experiences. Brent has over 10 years of experience helping organizations leverage software technologies and services to better compete and serve their mission.
Ryan Roberts, Principal Consultant, Adobe
Ryan runs pre-sales proof-of-concept engagements for clients across North America as an implementation and testing expert who helps clients verify how Adobe Target can meet their requirements and boost their digital marketing optimization efforts.
Drew Burns, Group Product Marketing Manager, Adobe
Drew has been an evangelist and a practitioner in the personalization and testing space for 15 years. He works with progressive enterprise companies across industries on building the foundation and maturing their optimization and personalization efforts, strategies and programs leveraging manual and A.I./ML capabilities. At Adobe, he works alongside the leading enterprise companies in retail/e-commerce, travel & hospitality, financial, media & publishing, B2B/ High Tech and other verticals to improve and grow their optimization and personalization efforts, strategies and programs.
Add your related questions below any time prior to or during the Coffee Break on Wednesday, February 7th @8am PT, when you can watch the page and be ready to add follow-up questions and discuss further with other community members!
How can I join the event?
Greetings @PASTROM ! Welcome to today's Target Community Q&A Coffee Break
I am looking for a link as well. What am I missing?
Greetings @trahulc ! Welcome to today's Target Community Q&A Coffee Break
Welcome everyone to today's Coffee Break event! Please submit your questions in the chat below!
What is the link to join this coffee break event?
@bkostak, @Ryan_Roberts_, @Drburns27
I have a question about Recommendations Custom criteria, if I can use any other data source to specify the scoring models. Currently we only have CSV possibility, I am trying to figure out if its possible extend this capability to read JSONs. Will there be any scope in future for this fucntionality.
Hi @pramodalapati, the custom criteria uploads are meant to just be uploading the results of the criteria. So a key and its corresponding recommended items. So a simple CSV type layout is the most simple way to pass this. There is no benefit to being able to nest or group objects in that upload. Hope that helps.
Welcome everyone to our Coffee Break! Go ahead and add your questions below.
Oops...that makes sense.
I'd like to hear suggestions on using AI activities when there's a publishing schedule that's shorter than the learning may take to build the model.
Hi @wozinga, there are couple of options. Sometimes it might be a good option to switch it to an Auto Allocate test which is optimized for speeding up the results of an AB test.
You could also use an AP activity with reporting groups - but that only helps if the offers are getting replace by newer versions.
Offer Reporting Groups in Automated Personalization would be an option for creating personalization models for each group based on the data. Reporting Groups helps solve by grouping similar offers with each model getting more data to train on.
ExL link for more details!
Glad to have you all join us this morning. Happy to hear your questions!
Is there any way to automatically remove extreme outliers from the A4T activity reports ? I know there's an OOTB feature to exclude extreme values for tests where Target is the reporting source - how do we achieve it for A4T ?
@ande2 Great question! This was covered in a separate thread on the Community - it's setting an exclusion from the AA side: Any ways to automatically remove outlier data from... - Adobe Experience League Community - 265170
Thanks @Drburns27. We were trying to use the same approach suggested in the other thread. My question is - how do we determine the reasonable range to create the segment? I know it will differ for different companies and different success metrics. Is there any best practice we should follow there? It'll be great to hear your recommendations
@ande2 Great question! As you mentioned, there is no established standard as it will depend on the data set. But 2 standard deviations from the mean should probably rule out outliers, especially in a smaller data set. But again, looking at the data in a graph format usually points to the appropriate deviation from the mean and represents outliers that do not match a majority of the data set.
Thanks @Drburns27 - What's the date range we should check the data for? last 3months/6months/1year - any standards there ?
Hey @ande2, there isn't one right answer to that question, other than "it depends". Generally speaking more data is better. The way Target's built in extreme order filter works is on the data within that activity only. But for your own custom outlier filter, adjusting the threshold you use for extremes on more data would usually be preferable. If the data is reasonably consistent during those different time frames then I'd lean to using more rather than less. If there is seasonality that may naturally affect order sizes you would want to consider that and adjust the window you use to define an extreme order.
Question on using customer attributes for personalization - what is a recommended testing approach when the sample size becomes small (after applying customer attrbutes) and you want to run a test for a short duration (say 4-6 weeks)? I am thinking of increasing the ramp to 50% but are there other approaches?
@trahulc Auto-Allocate is an excellent option when there are low traffic requirements, as the multi-armed bandit will divert traffic over the course of the test to the winning variant. This activity is built for multiple experiences as well. What is an Auto-Allocate Activity? | Adobe Target
Auto-allocate would ideally divert traffic based on the primary success metric which we specify in the test. What if we conclude/analyze a test results based on performance of more than one success metrics? Is there any way Auto-allocate can divert traffic based on multiple success metrics ?
Agree but the problem with that approach is we look at multiple metrics to determine a winner and auto-allocate looks at only 1 primary metric to determine the winning variant. Isn't it? In such a scenario, what do you suggest?
@trahulc This can be done in 3 ways, from my perspective. Auto-Allocate does have built-in capabilities to show 95% confidence, where you could compare the multiple metrics performance at that point, training the model on the primary metric. You could do phased auto-allocate activities in succession or with a portion of the population to compare multiple metrics at significance point. Or you could train the auto-allocate activity based on a compound metric from analytics, selecting that metric as your primary in the activity.
Is it possible to use calculated metric from Analytics for Auto-allocate activities?
@ande2 calculated metrics have been enabled for A4T, such as revenue.
Hi @trahulc,
Another idea might be re-running the AB test for just the small audience (after the applying of the customer attributes). Of course this also sort of starts over your reports. Maybe (warning could be a crazy idea here) after reaching a conclusive result for the broader audience, but not your smaller audience, you could continue the test but exclude the non-smaller audience. In other words the majority of the audience could start seeing their new winner, but you continue the test on the smaller audience by simply adjusting the entry audience condition on the activity.
Hello there, so if I understand well this is a chat only event, is that correct? Or there is a link to join a call?
Correct @JoseD_Q, and welcome! By posting in this thread, you are participating
that is correct. This is a chat/thread only event.
Thanks for joining us today @Ryan_Roberts_ @Drburns27 @bkostak @msamaniego ! The question below was posted by ben_mrm:
Looking for some support/insight from anyone that has utilized the Auto-Target feature within an A/B test. My test has been running for quite some time and I've reached the necessarily visitors and conversions levels needed for my algorithms to begin learning, 1,000 visits and 50 conversions (7,000 overall visits and 350 overall conversions) as I understand them. However, my reporting is still stating that the models have not been built yet - as indicated by the clock icon still next to my experiences. I'm also not seeing the Important Attributes report nor the Automated segment reports that are supposed to come along with this tool....presumably because the models are still being indicated as not finalize yet?
This test has been running for over 80 days and it seems to be collecting the right information, but no models and no reports yet, any ideas? Are the experiences just too similar for the AI to pick up anything and create a model from? Appreciate any thoughts or comments!
Link to Original Question
Hi @ben_mrm,
There can be cases where your models build but are valid. This could be because of a few things.
How efficient is it to use audience segmentation through 3rd party tool? We use ABM account and I want to use the segments build in that ABM account as the audience in the target (we have integration set up already via launch) but not sure how efficiently it will work?
@JyotiSharmaV we have many companies who do this, and you can set how often these audience segments should be updated through customer attributes or bulk profile upload via api.
Hi @JyotiSharmaV,
Are you thinking efficiency from an implementation perspective or a post-implementation using the 3rd party segments perspective?
I am thinking of efficiency in terms of the audience pool and whether using 3rd party tool for the audience would reach correctly to the desired audience group or not.
How can we pull category affinity into Analytics? This could be beneficial for product-based B2B companies to understand affinity users and target them with personalized experience.
Are you thinking you'd like to breakdown a report in AA by a visitor's category affinity preference?
In theory you could pass the value in a response token and then client side have Analytics pick it up in an evar.
Yes, this is exactly I am looking for. Great to know that we can pick it up. I will give it a try
It is said that you have to create a feed to feed data to recommendation activity in target. But it has a step where you have to provide a URL link. What is that? How to create that URL path whether it's via csv, google, or analytics?
@JyotiSharmaV The URL you’re asked to provide is the location of the data source for your feed. This could be a CSV file, Google product Search feed
How Do I Use Feeds in Target Recommendations? | Adobe Target
That's what I am asking. If I have the csv feed ready with me on my local desktop. Then do I need to upload it somewhere or anything else to provide path?
Hey @JyotiSharmaV,
Yes, you will need to upload the CSV from your laptop to a hosted location with a URL. Target checks that URL for updates to the feed at a schedule of your choosing. That's why you need it to be in a hosted location.
Can we have a separate event or webinar on recommendation activity as a topic as this is a big challenge and the most demanding thing which everyone can achieve via Target @Amelia_Waliany
Hi @JyotiSharmaV - great to see you here today in the thread! And as Drew mentioned - great timing for this question! We have two related Recommendations-focused events upcoming:
(1) 2/13/24 Webinar on Recommendations (Personalization Maturity Series Part 2)
(2) 2/28/24 Coffee Break as an extended Q&A for the 2/13 Recommendations Webinar
Please do mark you calendars, register for both events, and share the information out with colleagues who may be interested in diving deeper into Target Recommendations
@JyotiSharmaV Good timing! Recommendations is our next webinar in our Maturity series: https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-target-discussions/upcoming-webinar-2024-2-13...
Hi Jyoti! Great timing as we are hosting a webinar next week specifically on recs. Links below for webinar and coffee break:
https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-target-discussions/upcoming-webinar-2024-2-13...
https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/target-community-events/at-community-q-amp-a-coffee...
Would you have specifics for follow up on challenges, so we can make sure to address them? Thanks!