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Auto-Target
Auto-Target uses advanced machine learning to select from multiple high-performing marketer-
defined experiences to personalize content and drive conversions. Auto-Target serves the most
tailored experience to each visitor based on his or her individual customer profile and the
behavior of previous visitors with similar profiles.

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Auto-Target is available as part of the Target Premium solution. This feature is not available in
Target Standard without a Target Premium license. For more information about the advanced
features this license provides, see Target Premium .

While creating an A/B activity using the three-step guided workflow , you can choose to allocate
traffic using the Auto-Target For Personalized Experiences option:

Overview
The Auto-Target option within the A/B activity flow lets you harness machine-learning to
personalize based on a set of marketer-defined experiences in one click. Auto-Target is designed
to deliver maximum optimization, compared to traditional A/B testing or Auto Allocate, by
determining which experience to display for each visitor. Unlike an A/B activity in which the
objective is to find a single winner, Auto-Target automatically determines the best experience for
a given visitor (based on his or her profile and other contextual information) to deliver a highly
personalized experience.
Similarly to Automated Personalization, Auto-Target uses a Random Forest algorithm, a leading
data science ensemble method, to determine the best experience to show to a visitor. Because
Auto-Target can adapt to changes in visitor behavior, it can be run perpetually to provide lift. This
is sometimes referred to as "always-on" mode.
Unlike an A/B activity in which the experience allocation for a given visitor is sticky, Auto-Target
optimizes the specified business goal over each visit. Like in Auto Personalization, Auto-Target,
by default, reserves part of the activity's traffic as a control group to measure lift. Visitors in the
control group are served a random experience in the activity.
There are a few important notes to keep in mind when using Auto-Target:
You cannot switch a specific activity from Auto-Target to Automated Personalization, and
vice-versa.

You cannot switch from Manual traffic allocation (traditional A/B Test) to Auto-Target, and
vice-versa after an activity is live.

When using hosts and environments (host groups), models are built for the "Production"
environment only. All environments contribute data to build models for "Production"
campaigns.

You must use a minimum of two experiences.

Terminology
The following terms are useful when discussing Auto-Target:

Term Definition

Multi-armed bandit A multi-armed bandit approach to optimization balances

exploratory learning and exploitation of that learning.

Random Forest Random Forest is a leading machine learning approach.

In data-science speak, it is an ensemble classification,
or regression method, that works by constructing a large
number of decision trees based on visitor and visit at‐
tributes. Within Target, Random Forest is used to deter‐
mine which experience is expected to have the highest
likelihood of conversion (or highest revenue per visit) for
each specific visitor. For more information about Ran‐
dom Forest in Target, see Random Forest Algorithm .
 Term Definition

Thompson Sampling The goal of Thompson Sampling is to determine which

experience is the best overall (non-personalized), while
minimizing the “cost” of finding that experience. Thomp‐
son sampling always picks a winner, even if there is no
statistical difference between two experiences. For more
information, see Thompson Sampling .

How Auto-Target Works

Learn more about the data and algorithms underlying Auto-Target and Automated
Personalization at the links below:

Term Details

Random Forest Algorithm Target's main personalization algorithm

used in both Auto-Target and Automated
Personalization is Random Forest. Ensem‐
ble methods like Random Forest use multi‐
ple learning algorithms to obtain better pre‐
dictive performance than could be obtained
from any of the constituent learning algo‐
rithms. The Random Forest algorithm in the
automated personalization system is a clas‐
sification, or regression method, that oper‐
ates by constructing a multitude of decision
trees at training time.

Uploading Data For Target's Personaliza‐ There are several ways to input data for
tion Algorithms Auto-Target and Automated Personalization
models.

Data Collection for Target's Personalization Target's personalization algorithms auto‐

Algorithms matically collect a variety of data.

Determining Traffic Allocation

Depending on the goal of your activity, you might choose a different traffic allocation between
control and personalized experiences. Best practice is to determine this goal before you make
your activity live.
The Custom Allocation drop-down list lets you choose from the following options:
 Evaluate Personalization Algorithm

Maximize Personalization Traffic

Custom Allocation

Activity Goal Suggested Traffic Tradeoffs

Allocation

Evaluate Personalization Algo‐ 50% Control / 50% Per‐ Maximizes accura‐

rithm (50/50) : If your goal is to sonalized Experience cy of lift between
test the algorithm, use a 50/50 split control and
percent split of visitors between personalized
the control and the targeted al‐ Relatively fewer
gorithm. This split gives the most visitors will have a
accurate estimate of the lift. Sug‐ personalized
gested for use with “random ex‐ experience
periences” as your control.
 Activity Goal Suggested Traffic Tradeoffs
Allocation

Maximize Personalization Traf‐ Best practice is to use a Maximizes num‐

fic (90/10) : If your goal is to cre‐ 10% - 30% Control / 70% ber of visitors who
ate an “always on” activity, put - 90% Personalized Ex‐ have a personal‐
10% of the visitors into the con‐ perience split ized experience
trol to ensure there is enough Maximizes lift
data for the algorithms to contin‐
ue learning over time. Note the Less accuracy as
to what the lift is
tradeoff here is that in exchange
for the activity
for personalizing a larger propor‐
tion of your traffic, you will have
less precision in what the exact
lift is. No matter your goal, this is
the recommended traffic split
when using a specific experience
as the control.

Custom Allocation Manually split the per‐ You might not

centage as desired. achieve the de‐
sired results. If
you are unsure,
follow the sug‐
gestions for either
of the preceding
options

To adjust the Control percentage, click the icons in the Allocation column. You cannot decrease
the control group to less than 10%.
You can select a specific experience to use as control or you can use the Random experience
option.

When should you choose Auto-Target over Automated

Personalization?
There are several scenarios where you might prefer to use Auto-Target over Automated
Personalization:
If you want to define the entire experience rather than individual offers that will be
automatically combined to form an experience.

If you want to leverage the full set of Visual Experience Composer (VEC) features not
supported by Auto Personalization: the custom code editor, multiple experience audiences,
and more.

If you want to make structural changes to your page in different experiences. For example,
if you wanted to rearrange the order of elements on your home page, Auto-Target would
be more appropriate to use than Automated Personalization.

What does Auto-Target Have in Common with Automated

Personalization?
The algorithm optimizes for a favorable outcome for each visit.
The algorithm predicts a visitor's propensity for conversion (or estimated revenue from
conversion) in order to serve the best experience.

A visitor is eligible for a new experience upon the end of an existing session (unless the
visitor is in the control group, in which case the experience that visitor is assigned on his or
her first visit remains the same for subsequent visits).

Within a session, the prediction doesn’t change, to maintain visual consistency.

The algorithm adapts to changes in visitor behavior.

The multi-arm bandit ensures the model is always "spending" a small fraction traffic to
continue to learn throughout the life of the activity learning and to prevent over-exploitation
of previously learned trends.

The underlying models are rebuilt every 24 hours using the latest visitor behavior data to
ensure Target is always exploiting changing visitor preferences.

If the algorithm can't determine winning experiences for individuals, it automatically

switches to showing the overall best-performing experience while still continuing to look for
personalized winners. The best-performing experience is found using Thompson sampling
.

The algorithm continually optimizes for a single goal metric.

 This metric could be conversion-based or revenue-based (more specifically Revenue per
Visit).

The algorithm does not support using Analytics as a data-source or a reporting endpoint.
Target automatically collects information about visitors to build the personalization
models.
For more information about the parameters used in Auto-Target and Automated
Personalization, see Automated Personalization Data Collection .

Target automatically uses all Experience Cloud shared audiences to build the
personalization models.
You don't have to do anything specific to add audiences to the model. For information
about using Experience Cloud Audiences with Target, see Experience Cloud Audiences

Marketers can upload offline data, propensity scores, or other custom data to build
personalization models.
Learn more about uploading data for Auto-Target and Automated Personalization .

How Does Auto-Target differ from Automated Personalization?

Auto-Target frequently requires less traffic than Automated Personalization for a
personalized model to build.
Although the amount of traffic per experience required for Auto-Target or Auto Personalization
models to build are the same, there are usually more experiences in an Automated
Personalization activity than an Auto-Target activity. For example, if you had an Auto
Personalization activity where you've created two offers per location with two locations, there
would be four (2 = 4) total experiences included in the activity (with no exclusions). Using Auto-
Target, you could set experience 1 to include offer 1 in location 1 and offer 2 in location 2, and
experience 2 to include offer 1 in location 1 and offer 2 in location 2. Because Auto-Target allows
you could choose to have multiple changes within one experience, you can reduce the number of
total experiences in your activity.
For Auto-Target, simple rules of thumb can be used to understand traffic requirements:
When Conversion is your success metric: 1,000 visits and at least 50 conversions per
day per experience, and in addition the activity must have at least 7,000 visits and 350
conversions.

When Revenue per Visit is your success metric: 1,000 visits and at least 50
conversions per day per experience, and in addition the activity must have at least 1,000
conversions per experience. RPV usually requires more data to build models due to the
higher data variance that typically exists in visit revenue compared to conversion rate.

Auto-Target has full-fledged setup functionality.

Because Auto-Target is embedded in the A/B activity workflow, Auto-Target benefits from
the more mature and full-fledged Visual Experience Composer (VEC). You can also
 leverage QA links with Auto-Target.

Auto-Target provides an extensive online testing framework.

The multi-arm bandit is part of a larger online-testing framework that allows our data-
scientists and researchers to understand the benefits of their continual improvements in
real-world conditions.

In the future, this test bed will allow us to open our machine learning platform to our data-
savvy clients so that they can bring in their own models to augment Target's models.

Reporting and Auto-Target

For more information, see Auto-Target Summary Report in the Reports section.

Auto-Target Frequently Asked Questions

What are best practices to set up an Auto-Target activity?
Decide if the business value of a Revenue per Visit (RPV) success metric is worth the
additional traffic requirements. RPV typically needs at least 1,000 conversions per
experience for an activity to work versus conversion.

Decide on the allocation between control and personalized experiences before beginning
the activity based on your goals.

Determine if you have sufficient traffic to the page where your Auto-Target activity will run
for personalization models to build in a reasonable amount of time.
If you are testing the personalization algorithm, you shouldn’t change experiences or
add/remove profile attributes while the activity is live.

Consider completing an A/B activity between the offers and locations you are planning to
use in your Auto-Target activity to ensure the location(s) and offers have an impact on the
optimization goal. If an A/B activity fails to demonstrate a significant difference, Auto-Target
likely will also fail to generate lift.
If an A/B test shows no statistically significant differences between experiences, it is
likely the offers you are considering are not sufficiently different from each other, the
locations you selected do not impact the success metric, or the optimization goal is
too far in the conversion funnel to be affected by your chosen offers.

Try not to make substantial changes to the experiences during the course of the activity.

Do the check marks indicating a model is built for that experience update if the report date
range changes?
No, check marks for model generation show only the models built to date. There's no way to go
back and see when a model was completed.
If a visitor does NOT see the Auto-Target activity and converts, does the conversion count
in my activity?
No, only visitors who qualify for and view the Auto-Target activity are counted in reporting.
My Auto-Target activity doesn’t seem to be generating any lift. What is going on?
There are four factors required for an Auto-Target activity to generate lift:
The offers need to be different enough to influence visitors.

The offers need to be located somewhere that makes a difference to the optimization goal.

There must be enough traffic and statistical “power” in the test to detect the lift.

The personalization algorithm must work well.

The best course of action is to first make sure the content and locations that make up the activity
experiences truly make a difference to the overall response rates using a simple, non-
personalized A/B test. Be sure to compute the sample sizes ahead of time to ensure there is
enough power to see a reasonable lift and run the A/B test for a fixed duration without stopping it
or making any changes.
If an A/B test's results show statistically significant lift on one or more of the experiences, then it
is likely that a personalized activity will work. Of course, personalization can work even if there
are no differences in the overall response rates of the experiences. Typically, the issue stems
from the offers/locations not having a large enough impact on the optimization goal to be
detected with statistical significance.
When should I stop my Auto-Target activity?
Auto-Target can be used as “always on” personalization that will constantly optimize. Especially
for evergreen content,there is no need to stop your Auto-Target activity.
If you want to make substantial changes to the content in your Auto-Target activity, the best
practice is to start a new activity so that other users reviewing reports will not confuse or relate
past results with different content.
How long should I wait for models to build?
The length of time it takes for models to build in your Auto-Target activity typically depends on the
traffic to your selected activity location(s) and your activity success metric.
For Auto-Target, simple rules of thumb can be used to understand traffic requirements:
When Conversion is your success metric: 1,000 visits and at least 50 conversions per
day per experience, and in addition the activity must have at least 7,000 visits and 350
conversions.

When Revenue per Visit is your success metric: 1,000 visits and at least 50
conversions per day per experience, and in addition the activity must have at least 1,000
conversions per experience. RPV usually requires more data to build models due to the
higher data variance that typically exists in visit revenue compared to conversion rate.

One model is built in my activity. Are the visits to that experience personalized?
No, there must be at least two models built within your activity for personalization to begin.
When can I start to look at the results of my Auto-Target activity?
You can begin to look at the results of your Auto-Target test after you have at least two
experiences with models built (green checkmark) for the experience that have models built.
Can I specify a specific experience to be used as control?
You can select an experience to be used as control while creating an Automated Personalization
(AP) or Auto-Target (AT) activity.
This feature lets you route the entire control traffic to a specific experience, based on the traffic
allocation percentage configured in the activity. You can then evaluate the performance reports of
the personalized traffic against control traffic to that one experience.
For more information, see Use a specific experience as control .

Troubleshooting Auto-Target
Sometimes activities don't go as expected. Here are some potential challenges you may face
while using Auto-Target, and some suggested solutions.
My Auto-Target activity is taking too long to build models.
There are several activity setup changes that can decrease the expected time to build models,
including the number of experiences in your Auto-Target activity, the traffic to your site, and your
selected success metric.
Solution: Review your activity setup and see if there are any changes you are willing to make to
improve the speed at which models will build.
If your success metric is set to RPV, can you change to conversion? Conversion activities
tend to require less traffic to build models. You will not lose activity data if you change the
success metric from RPV to conversion.

Is your success metric far down the sales funnel from your activity experiences? A lower
activity conversion rate will increase the traffic requirements needed for models to build, as
a minimum number of conversions is required.

Are there some experiences you can drop from your activity? Decreasing the number of
experiences in an activity will lessen the amount of time to build models.

Is there a higher-traffic page on which this activity would be more successful? The more
traffic and conversions in your activity locations, the quicker models will build.

My Auto-Target activity isn't generating any lift.

There are four factors required for an AP activity to generate lift:
The offers need to be different enough to influence visitors.

The offers need to be located somewhere that makes a difference to the optimization goal.

There must be enough traffic and statistical “power” in the test to detect the lift.
 The personalization algorithm must work well.

Solution: First, make sure that your activity is personalizing traffic. If models aren't built for all of
the experiences, your Auto-Target activity is still randomly serving a significant portion of visits to
attempt to build all models as quickly as possible. If models aren't built, Auto-Target is not
personalizing traffic.
Next, make sure the offers and the activity locations truly make a difference to the overall
response rates using a simple, non-personalized A/B test. Be sure to compute the sample sizes
ahead of time to ensure there is enough power to see a reasonable lift and run the A/B test for a
fixed duration without stopping it or making any changes. If an A/B test results show statistically
significant lift on one or more of the experiences, then it is likely that a personalized activity will
work. Of course, personalization can work even if there are no differences in the overall response
rates of the experiences. Typically, the issue stems from the offers/locations not having a large
enough impact on the optimization goal to be detected with statistical significance.
Any metric dependent on conversion metric never converts.
This is expected.
In an Auto-Target activity, once a conversion metric (whether optimization goal or post goal) is
converted, the user is released from the experience and the activity is restarted.
For example, there is an activity with a conversion metric (C1) and an additional metric (A1). A1
is dependent on C1. When a visitor enters the activity for the first time, and the criteria for
converting A1 and C1 are not converted, metric A1 is not converted due to the success metric
dependency. If the visitor converts C1 and then converts A1, A1 is still not converted because as
soon as C1 is converted, the visitor is released.

Training video: Understanding Auto-Target Activities

This video explains how to set up an Auto-Target A/B activity.
After completing this training, you should be able to:
Define Auto-Target testing

Compare and contrast Auto-Target to Automated Personalization

Create Auto-Target activities

Auto-Target Tests in Adobe Target

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