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Author targeted content using Targeting mode of AEM. Targeting mode and the Target component provide tools for creating content for experiences:
- Easily recognize the targeted content that is on the page. A dotted line forms a border around all targeted content.
- Select a brand and an activity to see the experiences.
- Add experiences to an activity or remove experiences.
- Perform A/B testing and convert winners (Adobe Target only).
- Add offers to an experience by creating offers or using offers from a library.
- Configure goals and monitor performance.
- Simulate the user experience.
- For more customization, configure the Target component.
You can use either AEM or Adobe Target as the targeting engine (you must have a valid Adobe Target account to use Adobe Target). If you are using Adobe Target, you must configure the integration first. See instructions for integrating with Adobe Target.
The activities and experiences that you see in Target mode reflect the Activites console:
- Changes that you make to activities and experiences using Targeting mode are reflected in the Activities console.
- Changes that are made in the Activities console are reflected in Targeting mode.
Note:
When you create a campaign in Adobe Target, it assigns a property called thirdPartyId to each campaign. When you delete the campaign in Adobe Target, thirdPartyId is not deleted. You cannot re-use the thirdPartyId for campaigns of different types (AB, XT) and it cannot be manually removed. To avoid this issue, name each campaign a unique name; campaign names can therefore not be re-used in different campaign types.
If you use the same name in the same campaign type, you will overwrite the existing campaign.
If while synchronizing, you encounter the error "Request Failed. thirdPartyId already exists," change the name of the campaign and synchronize again.
Use Targeting mode to add an activity to a brand. When you add an activity, it contains the Default experience. After you add the activity, you start the content targeting process for the activity.
You can also create and manage Adobe Target activities from AEM with the option of selecting the target engine - either AEM or Adobe Target - and selecting the activity type - Experience Targeting or A/B Test.
In addition, you can manage goals and metrics for all Adobe Target activities and manage your Adobe Target audiences. Adobe Target activity reporting, including converting of winners for A/B testing is also included.
When you add an activity, it also appears in the Activities console.
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In the Targeting engine drop-down menu, select your targeting engine.
- If you select ContextHub AEM, the remaining fields are dimmed and not available. Click or tap Create.
- If you select Adobe Target, you can select a configuration (by default, it is the configuration you provided when you configured the account) and Activity Type.
- If you are using the AEM/Adobe Campaign integration and are sending targeted content (newsletters), select Adobe Campaign. See Integrating with Adobe Campaign for more information.
Targeting mode enables you to configure several aspects of an activity. Use the following three-step process for creating targeted content for a brand activity:
- Create: Add or remove experiences, and add offers for each experience.
- Target: Specify the audience that each experience targets. You can target a specific audience and if using A/B testing decide what percentage of traffic goes to which experience.
- Goals & Settings: Schedule the activity and set the priority. You can also set success metric goals.
Use the following procedure to start the content targeting process for an activity.
Note:
To use the targeting process, you must be a member of the Target Activity Authors user group.
The Create step of content targeting involves creating experiences. During this step you can create or delete the experiences of the activity, and add offers to each experience.
After you start the targeting process, select an experience to see the offers that are provided for that experience. When you select an experience, the targeted components on the page change to show the offer for that experience.
Note:
An offer is the content of a targeted component.
Experiences are displayed in the Audiences pane. In the following example, experiences include Default, Female, Female over 30, and Female under 30. This example shows the Default offer of a targeted Image component.
When an experience is selected and the targeted component does not include an offer for that experience, the component displays Add Offer superimposed upon the semi-transparent default offer. When no offer has been created for an experience, the Default offer is displayed for the segment that is mapped to the experience.
The Default experience is also displayed when the visitor properties do not match any segments that are mapped to the experiences. See Adding Experiences using Targeting Mode.
Offers that are authored on the page and used for a single experience are called custom offers. The following image is superimposed on the content of a custom offer:
Offers that are added from an offer library are superimposed with the following image:
You can save custom offers to an offer library if you decide that you want to reuse it. You can also convert a library offer to a custom offer if you want to modify the content for an experience. After editing, you can once again save the offer back to the library.
Using the Create step of the targeting process, you can add and remove experiences. In addition, you can duplicate an experience and also rename it.
Target a component to create offers for experiences. Targeted components provide the content that is used as offers for experiences.
- Target an existing component. The content becomes the offer of the Default Experience.
- Add a Target component, then add content to the component.
After a component is targeted, you can add offers for each experience:
The following tools are available for working with offers:
Target a component on the page to use it as the offer for the Default experience of the activity. When you target a component, it is enveloped in a Target component and its content becomes the offer for the Default experience.
When you target a component, only that component can be used in the offer. You cannot remove the component from the offer or add other components to the offer.
Perform the following procedure after starting the targeting process.
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The component content is the offer for the Default experience. When a component is targeted, its default node will be replicated for each experience. This is needed for editing the correct content node during experience specific authoring. For these non-default experiences, either add a custom offer or add a library offer.
Add a Target component to create the offer for the Default experience. The Target component is a container for other components, and components that are placed within it become targeted. When you use the Target component, you can add several components to create an offer. Also, you can use different components in each experience to create different offers.
See Configuring Target component options for information on customizing this component.
Note:
Offers that you create using the Offers console can also contain several components. These offers belong to an offer library and can be used for multiple experiences.
Because the Target component is a container, it appears as a drop area for other components.
In Target mode, the Target component has a blue border, and the drop-target message indicates the targeted nature.
When you add a component to the Target component, it provides content for a specific experience. To specify the experience, you select the experience before you add the components.
You can add a Target component to the page in Edit mode or in Target mode. You can add components to the Target component only in Target mode. The Target component belongs to the Personalization component group.
If editing targeted content, you must click or tap Start Targeting before you can do so.
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Note:
If set by your administrator, you may need to set the the location explicitly.
Administrators can decide whether setting this configuration is required at http://<host>:<port>/system/console/configMgr/com.day.cq.personalization.impl.servlets.TargetingConfigurationServlet
To require users to input a location, select the Force location check box.
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Create the offer:
- For the Default experience, drag components to the targeted drop area, and edit the component properties as usual to create the content for the offer.
- For non-default experiences, either add a custom offer or add a library offer.
Create an offer by authoring the content of a targeted component in Targeting mode. When you create a custom offer, it is used as the offer for a single experience.
If you decide that the offer can be used for other experiences, you can create a custom offer and add it to the library. For information about using the Offers console to create a reusable offer, see Add an Offer to an Offer Library.
Add an offer from the offer library to an experience. You can add any offer from the library of the brand that you are currently targeting.
You cannot add library offers to the Default experience.
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The offer picker lets you browse or filter for offers. When browsing or filtering, you may also want to sort the offers and change how you view them. The number in the upper right-hand indicates how many offers are available in the current library.
- Click or tap Browse to navigate to another folder. The navigation pane opens and you click the arrow to drill down into folders. Click or tap Browse again to close the navigation pane.
- Click or tap Filter to filter the offers against keywords or tags. You enter keywords and you select tags from the drop-down menu. Click or tap Filter again to close the filtering pane.
- Change how you sort the offers by clicking or tapping the arrow next to Newest to Oldest. Offers can be sorted newest to oldest or oldest to newest.
Add a custom offer to the offer library when you want to reuse it as the offer for multiple experiences. You can add offers to the library of the current brand that you are targeting.
For information about using the Offers console to create a reusable offer, see Add an Offer to an Offer Library.
Convert a library offer to a custom offer to change the offer for current experience and without changing the offer in other experiences.
Open a library offer from an experience in Targeted mode to edit the offer. The changes that you make appear in all experiences that uses the offer.
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Convert the library offer to a local/custom offer. See Converting a Library Offer to a Custom Library.
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Save it back to the library. See Adding a Custom Offer to a Library.
The Target step of the targeting process involves mapping audiences with the experiences that you worked with in the Create step. The Target page shows the audiences that each experience is targeting. You can specify or change the audience for each experience. If you are using Adobe Target, you can also create A/B tests that allow you to target percentage of traffic for an audience to a particular experience.
Define an audience using a segment. The cloud configuration for the page detemines determines the segments that are availble to you. When the page is not associated with an Adobe Target cloud configuration, AEM segments are available for defining audiences. When the page is associated with an Adobe Target cloud configuration, you use Target segments.
For information targeting engines, see Targeting Engine.
An audience must not be used by more than one experience. A warning symbol appears next to an experience when it is mapped to an audience that is mapped to another experience.
Use the following procedure to associate an experience with an audience when using AEM targeting (or Adobe Target experience targeting):
If you have an A/B test activity, audiences are on your left, the percentage that each experience is viewed is in the middle, and the experiences are on the right.
You can change the percentages as long as they add up to 100 percent. An audience can be used by multiple experiences in A/B testing.
The Goals & Settings step of the targeting process involves configuring the behavior of the brand activity. Specify when the activity starts and ends, as well as the activity priority. In addition, you also track goals. Specifically you can decide what you want to measure with your activities.
Goal Metrics are only available if you use Adobe Target for your targeting engine. You must define at least one goal metric. If you have Adobe Analytics configured and have an A4T Analytics cloud configuration, you can select whether you want the reporting source to be Adobe Target or Adobe Analytics.
The goal metrics are only measured for the published campaign.
If using Adobe Target as the targeting engine and you have A4T Analytics configured for the account, you have an additional Reporting Source drop-down menu:
| Conversion | The percentage of visitors who clicked on any part of the experience being tested. A conversion can either be counted once per visitor or each time any visitor completes a conversion. The conversion metric is set to one of the following:
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| Revenue | Revenue generated by the visit. You can choose from the following revenue metrics:
For any of these options, whether an mbox was viewed indicates that the goal has been reached. You can define the mbox or multiple mboxes. |
| Engagement | You can measure three types of engagement:
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In addition, there are advanced settings that let you determine how to count success metrics. Options include counting the metric per impression or once per visitor and choosing whether to keep the user in the activity or removing them.
Use the advanced settings to determine what happens after a user encounters the goal metric. The following table shows the available options.
| After a user encounters this goal metric... | You select the following to happen... |
| Increment Count & Keep User in Activity | Specify how the count is incremented:
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| Increment Count, Release User & Allow Reentry | Select the experience the visitor sees if they reenter the activity:
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| Increment Count, Release User & Bar Reentry | Determine what the user sees instead of the activity content:
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See Adobe Target documentation for more information on success metrics.
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To specify when the activity starts, use the Start drop-down menu to select one of the following values:
- When Activated: The activity starts when the page that contains the targeted content is activated.
- Specified Date & Time: A specific time. When you select this option, click or tap the calendar icon, select a date, and specify the time to start the activity.
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To specify when the activity ends, use the End drop-down menu to select one of the following values:
- When Deactivated: The activity ends when the page that contains the targeted content is deactivated.
- Specified Date & Time: A specific time. When you select this option, click or tap the calendar icon, select a date, and specify the time to end the activity.
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To specify when the activity starts, use the Start drop-down menu to select one of the following values:
- When Activated: The activity starts when the page that contains the targeted content is activated.
- Specified Date & Time: A specific time. When you select this option, click or tap the calendar icon, select a date, and specify the time to start the activity.
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To specify when the activity ends, use the End drop-down menu to select one of the following values:
- When Deactivated: The activity ends when the page that contains the targeted content is deactivated.
- Specified Date & Time: A specific time. When you select this option, click or tap the calendar icon, select a date, and specify the time to end the activity.
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In the Goal Metric area, under My Primary Goal select the success metric you want to track - Conversion, Revenue, Engagement - and enter how that metric gets measured (or what action the audience takes to indicate a goal has been reached). See definition of the goal metrics in the previous table and see Adobe Target documentation on success metrics.
You can rename the goal by clicking the three dots in the upper right corner and selecting Rename.
If you need to clear all the fields, click the three dots in the upper right corner and select Clear all Fields.
All metrics also have advanced settings you can define. Select Advanced Settings to access those. See definition of how success metrics are counted in previous table and see Adobe Target documentation.
Note:
You must have at least one goal defined.
Note:
If there is information missing in your metric, a red line surrounds the metric.
After configuring, you can view the performance of your activities that use Adobe Target (either experience or A/B test targeting). In addition, with A/B test targeting, you can convert the winners.
Simulate a visitor's experience to verify that the page content appears as expected according to the design of your targeted content. When simulating, load different user profiles and see the targeted content for that user.
The following criteria determine the content that appears when simulating a visitor's experience:
- The data in the user's session store (via Context Hub).
- The Activities that are On.
- The rules that define the segments.
- The content of the experiences in the Target components.
- The configuration of the Targeting engine.
If unexpected content appears on the page when you load a profile, check the configuration of each item in this list.
Note:
If you are using A/B testing, when simulating experiences are shown based on traffic percentage. This is controlled by Adobe Target, which may lead to unexpected results for authors. (The _author activity is synchronized with specific settings that allow re-evaluation during simulation.) Authors may need to refresh to see the other experiences based on their traffic settings.
To simulate the visitor's experience, use the following tools:
- The simulation Activity in Targeting mode: The page displays the offers for the user that is currently selected in Context Hub. You can edit the offers that target the user.
- Preview mode: Use Context Hub to select the users and locations that satisfy the criteria of the segments that your experiences are based on. When your Context Hub selections change, the targeted content changes accordingly.
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Option Description Location The location is a string that gives the targeted content location a name and connects offers with places (or locations or components) on the page where those offers should be placed.
This field is a generic value.
If you put an offer into a component, the offer remembers the location ID. When the page is executed, the engine evaluates the user's segments and based on this, it resolves the experiences from the active campaigns that should be displayed. Then, it checks the location IDs on the page and tries to match offers with those location IDs to them.
Engine Select between Client side Rules (without tracking), Adobe Target, ContextHub, and Adobe Campaign depending on which engine you would like to use. 
Option Description Accurate targeting Enabling accurate targeting tells the component to wait for client context or context hub data to be available before sending the request to Adobe Target. It may increase load time. For authoring, accurate targeting is always enabled.
If you select the Accurate targeting check box, the mbox performs an mboxDefine first and an mboxUpdate later resulting in an Ajax request once the data is available.
If you do not select the Accurate targeting check box, the mbox performs an mboxCreate resulting in a synchronous request right away (in this case, not all context data may be available yet).
Note: Enabling or disabling accurate targeting on a specific component does not affect the settings you have set globally. You can always override global settings by selecting Accurate Targeting in the component.
Include resolved segments Selecting this check box includes all resolved segments in the mbox call and any parameters configured in the page and in the framework.
This only works in situations with XML API where you are synchronizing AEM segments. If you have segments in AEM that are not handled by Adobe Target (like script segments), then this option allows you to resolve the segment in AEM and send information to Adobe Target that the segment is active.
Inherited context parameters Lists context parameters inherited from the Adobe Target framework, if any, associated with the selected page. Context Params Click or tap Add field to configure additional context parameters (same as what is available in Target framework). Context parameters added to the component apply only to the component and not to other component as would be the case if you added context parameters directly to the framework. Static Params Click or tap Add field to configure additional static parameters (same as what is available in Target framework). Static parameters added to the component apply only to the component and not to other component as would be the case if you added static parameters directly to the framework. Static parameters do not come from context (client context of content hub). Note:
When you select a component and make it target-able, AEM also replaces the component and injects an Adobe Target component. (The Adobe Target component is not only used when you add it manually to the page, but also when you target an existing component.)
Option Description Options for client side - Strategy Select from one of the following:
- First: The topmost experience in the list as ordered in the campaign.
- Random: Any experience is used.
- Clickstream Score: The tags and related tag hits that are tracked in the client context are used. The hit rates for tags defined on the teaser page are compared.
You select Adobe Campaign as the engine if you are integrating AEM with Adobe Campaign. See Integrating AEM with Adobe Campaign for more information.
Select ContextHub as the engine if you are using ContextHub for targeting. See Configuring ContextHub.
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