You can use Audience Builder to define the full audience for a segment. The full audience is the intersection, union or exclusion between Datasets. Once you have defined your full audience, you can use Segment Builder to define your target audience, called a segment. A segment is the full audience filtered by category and attribute-based criteria, for example  “in market for car” and “earning more than 30k”.

In order to query and activate Datasets, you need to use Audience Builder first and then Segment Builder. Both are a graphical way of analyzing data that can also be done using the Query Tool. However, the Query Tool’s IQL language is more versatile and does not place a limit on the number of Datasets or criteria that can be included in a query.

Table of contents

Navigating between Collaborations

Creating an audience

Saving your audience

Navigating between Collaborations

In the Audience Builder, you will see a tab at the top next to the page title which shows the available Collaborations that your company is a part of. Click on it to view them all, and click on the X to leave Collaborations and see your company owned Datasets (and legacy permissions)

Creating an audience

Adding Datasets

1. Go to the Data tab and select Audience Builder.
2. Ensure you are in the correct Collaboration environment
3. Drag and drop the Datasets you are interested in to the Datasets row.
   

• Datasets Total shows the number of Datasets you have selected, as well as the maximum number of Datasets you can select for an audience (i.e. 7).
• Total Rows shows the number of records that sits in the selected Datasets (the row counts shown in the example screenshots may differ from those returned by the Platform).
• The Datasets that appear under Data Sources are the list of Datasets that are available in that Collaboration.

By default, Audience Builder uses the Platform’s automatic choice of best key for matching and counting based on the highest fill rate and unique records for any connection between Datasets. Users can override this behavior using Key Override. 

You can define your audience as follows:

• Union - to combine the audience from both Datasets.
• Intersect - to only use people that appear in both Datasets 
• Exclude - to only use people that appear in one Datasets but not in another 

To combine Datasets with other Datasets click the + below the Datasets box to create another row. The new row can be used to intersect or exclude another row of Datasets.

Use the Statistics pane to show the categories in a selected Datasets. Click on the (i) icon on a Dataset to see their keys and categories

Enriching your Datasets

If the category you are interested in is not in either Dataset, you can work with a partner who holds this information. You can then use their Dataset to enrich your filters with additional categories that are not in your defined audience. For example, to use a Personal Income category to find customer records in the intersection with a salary over 30k if none of your selected Datasets hold this category.

Enriching your Datasets with a data partner that holds Personal Income for the intersection, as shown:

Note: An enrichment Dataset does not change the total rows of your defined audience. This is because the enrichment Dataset is applied to the defined audience only. 

Linking Datasets

The same individuals may appear in different Datasets, but will not be matched unless their records share a common key in all Datasets. The LINK WITH row allows you to specify bridge Datasets that hold additional keys that are used to match records common to all Datasets. You can work with identity partners to use their Datasets containing 2 or more identifier types to match when two Datasets do not share a common identifier type or have a low match rate or overlap using an Identity Bridge partner.

For example, if your Datasets contains only email and your partner’s contains only mobile advertising IDs, you do not share a common identifier type. By adding an Dataset from an Identity Bridge partner of emails and mobile advertising IDs to the Link With section, you can now match to your partner’s Dataset. Identity Bridge partners can also be used when common keys do exist to leverage their identity graph to maximize or increase match rates between parties.

Don’t forget to press calculate to see the impact of a Link With Dataset.

Setting key overrides

Key overrides let you override the Platform’s automatic choice of the best key for matching based on the highest fill rate and unique records for connected Dataset. To specify a key override:

1. Add a new row to the Key Overrides section.
2. In the Connect fields, select the source and destination path between Dataset, and the path direction.
3. From the using prioritized keys field, select the prioritized key to match on. 

Overriding the Platform’s automatically selected key creates a lower match rate, but adding multiple common keys in the prioritized key field can improve the match rate. If you choose to match on multiple keys, a match on any key counts toward the total rows (with multiple matches for a record counted only once) because it uses the OR function. If the Dataset contain duplicates, changing the order of the keys can change the count total.

Setting multiple key overrides

You can set more than one key override by adding more rows, as shown:

Saving your audience

When you have finished defining your audience, give it a name and select the Save Audience button to make it available to Segment Builder, where you can drill down to the target audience. Once you have defined the target audience, it can be activated to a desired destination.

To revisit a saved audience, go to the Data tab and select it from Audiences.

On this tab, you can search by name any Audience and also use filters to find the correct Audience. 

An Audience can have 4 status:

1. Ready: This audience is ready to be used
2. Pending: This audience is being calculated
3. Failed: The platform couldn't save your audience
4. Invalid: Dataset permissions have changed and this audience is now invalid and cannot be used