Adobe Audience Marketplace: Creating a new Feed

The follow article describes how to create a new AAM Marketplace Feed. To be able to create a feed, you must first be an AAM Marketplace partner with an active integration. If you have not completed an AAM Marketplace Integration, go here for instructions on how to get started (the link may require logging into the Adobe Technology Partner Program to view).

The steps for creating a new feed are:

1. Set up a new Data Source. Each new feed requires its own Data Source.
2. Create your new trait taxonomy
3. Upload your data into AAM
4. Create the Marketplace feed

Step 1: Set up a new Data Source

A Data Source is a core object within the Adobe Audience Manager platform (AAM). You can think of it like a container for data. You will use this Data Source to hold your trait Taxonomies. One Data Feed in Marketplace can be created from one Data Source so if you want to create multiple Data Feeds you’ll need multiple Data Sources.

Log into your AAM account and go to Audience Data > Data Sources:

Click Add New:

Create a Data Source with the following settings (see Creating a Data Source for more information about the settings):

• Name: name that represents the data set (example, “Acme Demographics”).
  • For a Custom Feed, you may include the customer name here. This will only be displayed to you and the customer
• Integration Code: not required
• Description: not required
• Marketing Cloud Visitor ID version: 0
• ID Type: Cookie
• Data Export Controls:
  • For most cases it is strongly encouraged to check the box for “Cannot be tied to personally identifiable information”, however your use cases may warrant other control settings
• Data Source Settings:
  • Inbound: checked
  • Customer Visitor ID: selected if your User ID will be sent in the data files
  • AudienceManager Visitor ID: selected if the AAM User ID will be sent in the data files
• Outbound: not checked
• Share Enabled: checked
• Share associated visitor: checked

Step 2: Create your new trait taxonomy

A taxonomy is the collection of the audience segments which you offer in the marketplace as Data Feeds. It consists of the segments you are offering along with the categories, sub-categories that they belong to. In AAM, those audience segments are referred to as traits and the categories and subcategories are called trait folders.

All of your traits require trait rules for AAM to identify which user IDs qualify for which traits. For onboarded data, the most common method is to send the audience segment IDs in the file that you send to AAM (see step 3 below) and to set the trait rule to look for those segment IDs using the following format: ic=='segment ID'. See this page for more information on how you can set up the right trait rules for the type of data you want to send in.

There are three ways to create traits and trait folders in Audience Manager:

1. Using the Audience Manager UI (user interface) (this can be tedious if you have a lot of traits and trait folders)
2. Using the Audience Manager REST API
3. Using Bulk Audience Management tool (aka BAAAM tool)

BAAAM and the API require you to have an API Client ID and secret in addition to your AAM username and password. If you do not already have an API Client ID, you’ll need to request one from the support channel.

Be aware when setting up you taxonomy that it’s difficult to make changes once your feed is live. You will not be able to delete traits or move them while there are live subscribers. This limitation has been put in place to protect the customers from unexpected changes. In order to make changes, you will need all customers to unsubscribe from these data feeds. You’ll want to try to get your taxonomy as close to perfect as you can before you turn on your feed.

Step 3: Implement & Validate Data Transfers

Once you have created your taxonomy in Audience Manager, the next step is to send your data into AAM.

If you are using a data onboarder

If you are using a data onboarder company to send audience segment files to Audience Manager rather than sending them in yourself, you will need to communicate with the onboarder to give them the Data Source ID of the Data Source you created in step 1 and you’ll need to make sure that the taxonomy you set up in step 2 matches the data they’re sending in. They will handle the actual data transfer.

If you are sending in the data yourself

During your initial integration engagement, an Amazon S3 space was created for your company. You should send all files related to this integration with Audience Marketplace to that Amazon S3 server.

You can send files to the S3 server as frequently as you need to. Audience Manager will ingest those files every 12 hours. Learn more >

Types of audience files

You can send two types of audience files to marketplace:

• Sync (incremental) files: used to incrementally add segments to the users listed in the file. Users not included in the file are not altered.
• Overwrite (full) files: used to replace all known segments for the users listed in the file. Users not included in the file are not altered. Note: to remove a user, you would send in an ID with no segments attached.

You can choose to send only sync files, only overwrite files, or both.

Audience file naming format

Audience Manager only accepts files with specific file names. This article describes what the names of your files ought to look like. Read the article carefully to ensure you understand how the naming scheme works because AAM will reject files that don’t conform to the right naming scheme.

In general your file names should look like the following:

ftp_dpm_[DATA SOURCE ID FOR SYNC TABLE]_[DATA SOURCE ID FOR TAXONOMY]_[TIMESTAMP][.sync or .overwrite][.SPLIT_NUMBER][.gz]

• The [DATA SOURCE ID FOR SYNC TABLE] tells AAM what user ID type your file contains. If the file contains your own cookie IDs, this should be the ID of the Data Source that you created in your initial integration setup to store your ID sync table (See this article for more details—may require logging into the Adobe Technology Partner Program to view). If you have forgotten what that Data Source ID is, log into AAM and go to Audience Data > Data Sources. Search for a Data Source called “_Your Organization Name_ ID sync”. Use the ID of that Data Source. For mobile device IDs, there are two universal sync tables:
  • Use ID 20914 in your data file name if the file contains Android IDs (GAIDs).
  • Use ID 20915 in your data file name if the file contains iOS IDs (IDFAs).
• The [DATA SOURCE ID FOR TAXONOMY] is the Data Source ID that you created for your Trait Taxonomy in step 1 of this guide.
• [TIMESTAMP] is the unix timestamp of your file creation or upload time
• [.sync or .overwrite] Your file can either be an incremental upload (.sync) or an overwrite (.overwrite)
• [.SPLIT_NUMBER] If your file exceeds the size limits, then it will need to be split into multiple numbered files. The numbering starts at 0.
• [.gz] The files should be gzipped

So if

• The ID of the Data Source that AAM is storing your ID sync table in is 98765
• The ID of the Data Source that you set up for your traits in step 1 is “12345”
• You're uploading your files on 04/07/2020 at 10:26pm (UTC)
• You're doing an incremental update
• You didn't need to split the files because they come in under the limit

then the file names should look like this:

• Your Cookie IDs: ftp_dpm_98765_12345_1586298384.sync.0.gz
• Android IDs: ftp_dpm_20914_12345_1586298384.sync.0.gz
• iOS IDs: ftp_dpm_20915_12345_1586298384.sync.0.gz

Read this article for best practices and limitations on file size and file compression.

Audience file content format

Audience Manager processes look for file content in a very specific format. This is to ensure data consistency in ingestion. This article describes the formatting requirements and how the segment IDs in your file should be set up.

Validation

Once the files are picked up by Audience Manager ingestion process, you can easily check how successful the audience ingestion was. Log into your Audience Manager Marketplace account and go to Analytics > Onboarding Status to check the status of your files. Learn more about that report here.

Check out this article for information on how to troubleshoot data upload problems.

Step 4: Create Audience Marketplace Feed

Once you’ve set up your data source, traits, and your traits have been populated with data, you are ready to create your Marketplace Feed.

A Feed is a group of Traits/Segments that buyers can purchase as a single product.
The Traits/Segments that make up a Feed should have the same business rules associated with them.

For example:

• They can be priced using the same rate

• They are sold under the same brand

• You have to pay royalties to the same supplier for these segments

• They are fundamentally the same kind of segments (ie: demographics).

• You would represent them as a separate folder in our user interface

• You want to see billing broken out by these segments separate from others segments

• You want to offer them to multiple buyers

A feed can be of three types: Public, Private-Branded or Private-Unbranded:

• Private means that the buyer will not see any details of the Feed (ie: # of segments, 30-day user counts, overlap against 1st party data) without first requesting access from you. The request is facilitated in your Audience Marketplace UI. E.g. Custom Feeds must be of type Private.
• Branded means your company name shows up in both the Audience Marketplace screens and the Manage Datascreens of Buyers. The Audience Marketplace screens are where buyers go to subscribe to your data (the Buyer version of the UI you have access to now) and the Manage Data screens are downstream screens in Audience Manager (ie: where they build other segments using your segments, or apply your data to campaigns).
• Unbranded means your company name is never exposed to the Buyer in either the Audience Marketplace screen or any Manage Data screens.

See the documentation to learn more. Note that these settings (private vs public and branded vs unbranded) cannot be changed once you’ve created the feed. Take special care in deciding which types you want your feed to be.

Creating a Feed

Creating an active Feed will make your data offering visible to potential buyers in the Marketplace.

The following items must be filled out when you create your feed:

• Name

• Description

• Data Source

• Contacts

• Pricing for each use case

• Availability & Settings

• Feed Name: The Feed name is a text label that will be seen by potential data buyers as they browse in the Marketplace. It is also a field used in the search feature of the Marketplace. The following are recommendations for your need name:
  • Keep it to 90 characters or less (technical limit)
  • Begin the Name with your brand, like “Acme - Demographics”
  • Include something short but descriptive about the nature of the data, like “Acme - Demographics”
  • Use key words that buyers might use in a search
  • See the specifications to name a Custom Feed
• Feed Description: the Feed description is a short paragraph viewable to Marketplace buyers. It should help them understand how your data is valuable and different from other offerings. It is not a place to describe each Trait/Segment in the Feed – that is to be done in the Trait descriptions. Recommendations:
  • Use 2047 characters or less (technical limit)
  • Include information about the geo coverage of the data
  • Give some information about the quality or uniqueness of the data

• Data Source: selecting the Data Source is how you identify which Traits/Segments that you are offering in the Feed. All Traits associated with the Data Source you select will be accessible to buyers that subscribe to the Feed. Only one Data Source can be selected for your Feed and it cannot be modified after you save – so choose carefully.

• Feed Contacts: contacts can be specified to receive email notifications about subscription activities, such as:
  • Requests for more information and discounts. See documentation.
  • Access requests (private feeds only). See documentation.
  • At least one contact is required and contacts can only be chosen from existing AAM users within your account. If you have a Distribution List or a group email for the purpose, create a user using that email address and choose that user as the contact.
• Feed Pricing: pricing in the Audience Marketplace is done at the Feed level —not for each Trait/Segment. This means that you’ll want to group your Traits/Segments in Feeds based on similar value in addition to similar data categorization.
  • Every feed is required to have a Segment and Overlap plan at a $0 flat fee to allow potential customers to see the number of users in your feed that overlap with their users. Please make sure you add this plan to each feed separately.
  • See this documentation for help with creating your pricing plans.

Availability & Settings: you must make the following selections for your Feed:

• Inactive vs. Active - only active Feeds are visible to buyers in the Marketplace. You should leave your Feed “Inactive” until you are sure everything is set correctly.
• Public vs. Private - Refer to the “What is a Feed” section for more information
• Branded vs. Unbranded - Refer to the “What is a Feed” section for more information

Note that the last two settings (private vs public and branded vs unbranded) cannot be changed once you’ve created the feed. Take special care in deciding which types you want your feed to be.

Resources for Marketplace Partners with active feeds

That’s it! Your new feed should be up and running now. Here are some helpful resources for working with your feeds in the AAM Marketplace:

• Feed Setup and Promotion FAQ
• Feed Contracts and Pricing FAQ
• Troubleshooting Your Adobe Audience Manager Data Uploads
• Editing Existing Data Feeds
• Receivables and Payments FAQ
• Adobe Audience Manager - Login Issues
• Information on AAM ID Formats