- Segmentation Service overview
- Segmentation data types
- Segmentation guardrails
- Segmentation API
- Segmentation UI
- Segmentation methods
- Audience types
- Tutorials
- Create a segment definition
- Create a segment definition (Video)
- Create a dynamic segment definition (Video)
- Create a multi-entity segment definition (video)
- Multi-entity segmentation
- Honoring consent
- Evaluate a segment definition
- Create a dataset to export data
- Enforce data usage compliance for audiences
- Profile Query Language
- Frequently asked questions
- API reference
- Platform release notes
Audience Composition UI guide
To use this feature, you must have the following permissions:
- Manage Segments
- Manage Profiles
- Manage Merge Policies
More information about permissions within Platform can be found in the access control overview.
This guide explains how to create audiences using Audience Composition. To learn how to create audiences through segment definitions using the Segment Builder please read the Segment Builder UI guide.
Audience Composition provides a workspace to build and edit audiences, using blocks that are used to represent different actions.
To change the details of the composition, including the title and description, select the 
button.
The Composition properties popover appears. You can insert details of your composition, including the title and description here.
If you do not give your composition a title, it will have a title of “Composition” followed by the creation date and time by default. Additionally, each composition must have its own unique name.
After updating your composition’s details, select Save to confirm these updates. The audience composition canvas re-appears.
The audience composition canvas is comprised of four different types of blocks: Audience, Exclude, Rank, and Split.
Audience
The Audience block type allows you to add the sub-audiences that you want to use to compose your new larger audience. By default, an Audience block is included at the top of the composition canvas.
When you select the Audience block, the right rail displays controls for labeling the audience, adding audiences to the block, as well as building custom rules for the audience block.
You can either add audiences or create a custom rule. These two functionalities cannot be used together.
Add audience
To add audiences to the Audience block. select Add Audience.
Please note that only audiences defined using the default merge policy will appear.
Additionally, only published audiences created using Segment Builder can be used. Audiences created using Audience Composition and externally generated audiences are not available.
A list of audiences appears. Select the audiences you want to include, followed by Add to append them to your audience block.
Your selected audiences now appear within the right rail when the Audience block is selected. From here, you can change the merge type of the combined audiences.
| Merge type | Description |
|---|---|
| Union | The audiences are combined into one audience. This would be the equivalent of an OR operation. |
| Intersection | The audiences are combined, with only the audiences that are shared in all of them being added. This would be the equivalent of an AND operation. |
| Exclude overlap | The audiences are combined, with only the audiences that are shared in one, but not all of them being added. This would be the equivalent of a XOR operation. |
Build rule
To add a custom rule to the Audience block, select Build rule.
The Segment Builder appears. You can use the Segment Builder to create a custom rule for the audience to follow. More information about using the Segment Builder can be found in the Segment Builder guide.
After adding a custom rule, select Save to add the rule to your audience.
Exclude
The Exclude block type allows you to exclude a specified sub-audience or attributes from your new larger audience.
To add an Exclude block, select the + icon, followed by Exclude.
The Exclude block is added. When this block is selected, details about the exclusion appear in the right rail. This includes the block’s label and exclusion type. You can exclude by audience or by attribute.
Exclude by audience
If you exclude by audience, you can select which audience you want to exclude by selecting Add Audience.
Only published audiences created using Segment Builder can be used. Audiences created using Audience Composition and externally generated audiences are not available.
A list of audiences appears. Select Add to add the audience you want to exclude to your exclude block.
Exclude by attribute
If you exclude by attribute, you can select which attributes you want to exclude by selecting the 
icon within the Exclusion rule section. Excluding the attribute lets you exclude any profile that contains this attribute from your resulting audience.
A list of profile attributes appears. Select the attribute type you want to exclude, followed by Select to add them to your exclude block.
When excluding by attribute, you can only specify one value to exclude. Using any sort of separator, like a comma or semicolon, will only result in excluding that exact value. For example, setting the value as red, blue will result in excluding the term red, blue from the attribute, but will not result in excluding either the term red or blue.
Enrich
At this point in time, enrichment attributes can only be used in downstream Adobe Journey Optimizer scenarios.
The Enrich block type allows you to enrich your audience with additional attributes from a dataset. You can use these attributes in personalization use cases.
To add an Enrich block, select the + icon, followed by Enrich.
The Enrich block is added. When this block is selected, details about the enrichment appear in the right rail. This includes the block’s label and the enrichment dataset.
To select the dataset to enrich the audience with, select the icon.
The Select dataset popover appears. Select the dataset that you want to add for enrichment, followed by Select to add the dataset for enrichment.
The selected dataset must meet the following criteria:
- The dataset must be of record type.
- The dataset cannot be of event type, be system-generated, or be marked for Profile.
- The dataset must be 1 GB or smaller.
The Enrichment criteria section now appears on the right rail. In this section, you can select the Source join key and the Enrichment dataset join key, which lets you link the enrichment dataset with the audience you’re trying to create.
To select the Source join key, select the icon.
The Select a profile attribute popover appears. Select the profile attribute you want to use as the source join key, followed by Select to choose that attribute as your source join key.
To select the Enrichment dataset join key, select the icon.
The Enrichment attributes popover appears. Select the attribute you want to use as the enrichment dataset join key, followed by Select to choose that attribute as your enrichment dataset join key.
Now that you’ve added both of your join keys, the Enrichment attributes section appears. You can now add the attribute you want to enhance your audience with. To add these attributes, select Add attribute.
The Enrichment attributes popover appears. You can select the attributes from the dataset to enrich your audience with, followed by Select to add the attributes to your audience.
Rank
The Rank block type allows you to rank and sort profiles based on a specified attribute and include these ranked profiles to your composition.
To add a Rank block, select the + icon, followed by Rank.
When you select the block, details about the ranking are shown in the right rail, including the block’s label, the attribute to rank by, the ranking order, and a toggle for limiting the number of profiles to rank.
To select which attribute to rank the audiences by, select the icon.
A list of profile attributes appears. On this popover, you can select the attribute type you want to rank your audience by. Select Select to add it to your rank block. Please note that the selected attribute can only be numbers.
After selecting the attribute, you can select the order to rank it by. This is either in ascending (from lowest to highest) or descending (from highest to lowest) order.
Additionally, you can limit the number of profiles returned by enabling the Add profile limit toggle. When this toggle is enabled, you can set the maximum number of profiles returned within the Included profiles field.
Split
The Split block type allows you to split your new audience into various sub-audiences. You can either split this audience based on percentage or by an attribute.
To add a Split block, select the + icon, followed by Split.
When splitting your audience, you can either split by percentage or split by attribute.
Split by percentage
When splitting by percentage, the audiences will be randomly split, based on the number of paths and percentages provided.
Alternatively, you can also provide an identity, which would make the percentage-based split persistent. Available identity types include all the identity namespace available on your organization.
Split by attribute
When splitting by attribute, the audiences will be split based on the provided attributes. To select the attribute to split by, select the Split block, followed by the icon.
A list of profile attributes appears. Select the attribute type, followed by Select to add it to your split block.
After selecting the attribute, you can choose which profiles will belong to which sub-audience by adding the values within the Values field.
Additionally, you can enable the Other profiles toggle to create a sub-audience that comprises of all the non-selected profiles.
Publishing your audience
When publishing your audience composition, please note that it may take up to 48 hours for it to be evaluated and activated for usage in downstream services such as a Real-Time CDP destination or Adobe Journey Optimizer channel.
After creating your composition, you can save and publish it by selecting Publish.
If there are any errors in creating the audience, an alert appears, letting you know how to resolve the issue.
Next steps
Audience Composition provides a rich workflow allowing you to create compositions from the different block types. To learn more about other parts of the Segmentation Service UI, please read the Segmentation Service user guide.
