Destinations Overview destinations

In Audience Manager, a destination is any third-party system (ad server, DSP, ad network, etc.) that you want to share data with. Destination Builder is the tool you used to create and manage cookie, URL, or server-to-server destinations.

Purpose and Advantages purposes

Destinations and Destination Builder let you create destinations and send information about segmented users to your data partner. This helps you:

  • Protect data value: Rather than send all user data to a destination, Destination Builder lets you share specific information about qualified users only.
  • Take action on your data: Sending data to a destination partner helps them quickly develop and target qualified audience segments.
  • Reduce technical overhead: Business users can set up destinations safely in the Destination Builder interface. This helps reduce the time required for pre-deployment testing. With Destination Builder, you create, manage, and delete destinations as your business needs change, all without working through a long development cycle.

Technical Considerations technical-considerations

Data delivery depends on how your data partner wants to, or can, receive destination information. Technical or engineering constraints may prevent a destination from receiving data via URL, cookie, or server-to-server processes. Work with your third-party partner to determine which method they can use.

Business Considerations business-considerations

Business decisions for selecting one delivery method over another depend on the technical capabilities of your destination partner and what you want to do with qualified user information. For example, technical constraints can limit your options if a destination cannot receive data by a particular delivery method. However, if there are no technical issues, you can send information based on how you want to take action on that data. For example:

  • URLs and cookie-based destinations work almost synchronously with user actions on a page.
  • Server-to-server methods are good for building deep audience segments over time.

Destination Types and Typical Uses destination-types

The examples in the following table can help you understand when to use a particular destination and the differences between each type.

Destination Type
Typically Used When
Example
Considerations
Adobe Experience Cloud Destinations
You need to send data to other Adobe Experience Cloud solutions.
Sending data to Adobe Analytics.
People-Based Destinations
You need to send audience segments to people-based environments, such as Facebook.
Delivering personalized offers to existing customers, based on their purchasing history
Audience targeting is done through hashed identifiers. See People-Based Destinations.
Device-Based Destinations (Server-to-server)
  • Immediate data transfer is not required.
  • Collecting data to build a large audience pool of qualified users.
Collecting data over time (hours or days) to use it in a campaign set to run at a later date.
  • Transfers data about new and previous site visitors.
  • Visitors don’t have to be seen again to qualify for other segments.
Custom Destinations (URL or Cookie)
You need to transfer data immediately so a destination can take action on a qualified user right away.
Sending data from a ticket purchasing site. Use a URL or cookie destination to qualify user and immediately re-target.
  • Transfers data about new visitors only.
  • Visitors must be seen again to qualify for the segment.
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