Deploying ActionIQ Composable CDP in Your Adobe Experience Cloud Stack 🚀

Over the past few years, we’ve spoken with many enterprises, both small and large. They all share one of the following traits:

1. Teams are using a (cloud) data warehouse as a single source of customer data truth.
2. Teams want to use a (cloud) data warehouse as a single source of customer data truth.

In either case, I have yet to find anyone who would argue against the following desires:

• Minimizing the data copies in our stack
• Maximizing the value of our existing and planned stack investments

Now, let’s put the following scenario into perspective. You are an enterprise brand that:

• Has invested (or is about to invest) in the deployment of a cloud data warehouse as part of your data strategy.
• Has heavily invested in the Adobe Experience Cloud, and regardless of the reasons, plans to keep these Adobe investments in place.
• Is considering adding a customer data platform (CDP) or customer data activation solution to your stack.

Do you recognize yourself in this scenario? Perfect, this blog post is for you!

The Rise of Composable CDPs

Much has been written about the rise of composable CDPs, with a great article from a16z providing detailed insights. The TL;DR on the concept and what differentiates it from traditional CDPs is the architectural approach: instead of copying and persisting data into the CDP application, the CDP can directly integrate with a data warehouse of choice.

We identified a few patterns for integrating with a data warehouse:

• ETL/ELT Pipelines: The typical approach of traditional CDPs, which consists in moving flat files between systems.
• Data Sharing: A faster option to move data into the CDP, where queries are still run inside the CDP vendor environment.
• Query Pushdown: The ability to push down the generated SQL query into a data warehouse.
• Query Federation Pushdown: Going a step further than query pushdown, with the ability to query across multiple source systems—including the CDP itself.

Which Composable CDP Pattern to Prefer?

Complete data centralization is a daunting task. The reality is that many brands may never achieve this ideal state.

However, there is no doubt that brands should minimize data copies whenever possible and reduce disruption whenever a data source system is migrated to a new location.

What does this mean? Query federation will provide you with optimal flexibility for your stack. No matter where data resides, you can provide a unified UI for business teams.

A Red Stack: Adobe Experience Cloud Deeply Present

Whether this was a love story at first sight or a relationship built over time, many enterprise organizations have invested in various products from the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem. I could share many reasons why these investments have been a great choice—we ❤️ Adobe too!

So, when looking to make an additional investment, it’s natural to go back to familiar places and get the latest shiny product on display. In the case of a CDP, I’m talking about Adobe Experience Platform and its Real-Time CDP.

Unfortunately, if you’ve done your research and decide that your ideal architecture requires the deployment of a composable CDP, you may feel disappointed. On the store shelf, the Adobe section displays “coming soon.”

Adobe Federated Audience Composition has just been released (July 2024) in Limited Availability. But if you have any track record of being an early adopter of Adobe’s new product, you understand that this journey would be long, expensive, painful.

This doesn’t mean you should give up on your ideal architecture. The good news is that there are proven alternatives that will perfectly fit between your data warehouse and Adobe Experience Cloud investments.

ActionIQ’s Composable CDP in your Customer Data Stack

ActionIQ launched its Composable CDP offering in September 2022, demonstrating that modern data warehouse technology can handle marketing workloads.

Let’s explore how ActionIQ can integrate with your data warehouse and Adobe investments.

Adobe Launch, ActionIQ Tag, Digital Data Collection (Website)

Adobe Launch (renamed Adobe Data Collection Tags) is used as the tag manager, generating the ECID cookie utilized across the Adobe Experience Cloud.

ActionIQ Tag can be deployed from Adobe Launch, offering benefits such as syncing a durable first-party cookie ID with paid media (identity providers, DSPs, and walled gardens) and sharing collected data in real-time with ActionIQ’s Composable CDP for real-time customer experiences.

Adobe Analytics, Web Analytics

Deployed via Adobe Launch, Adobe Analytics collects event data and pushes it into the warehouse.
A combination of Adobe Analytics and Triggers Core Service could be used for real-time integration with ActionIQ, but this isn’t necessary if the ActionIQ Tag is deployed.

Batch Source

In general, we expect all the batch sources to be centralized in the data warehouse of choice.

Data Warehouse

The data warehouse is where the single source of customer data truth is stored. We simplified the architecture considering only one storage system, but enterprise organizations may leverage different systems for various data sets, teams, or workloads (e.g., AI models).

ActionIQ, Composable CDP, Audience Segmentation, Orchestration

The ActionIQ platform integrates with its HybridCompute technology on top of your data warehouse(s). Every query is executed as close to the data as possible via a query federation solution. Business teams use a centralized UI to find insights, build audiences, and orchestrate customer experiences across all channels.

Integration patterns and activation details vary per use case and technology system. This blog provides some details around a few Adobe Experience Cloud systems.

Adobe Target, Web Personalization

Adobe Target is used by business teams for inbound web personalization. ActionIQ utilizes bulk profile update APIs when the client leverages the Target storage layer for web use cases (push integration).
Alternatively, ActionIQ’s Profile API can be integrated with the website to load data objects necessary for Target’s personalization decisions (pull integration).

Adobe Campaign or Marketo, Marketing Automation

Adobe Campaign and Marketo deliver outbound marketing campaigns via channels such as email, SMS, or mobile push. APIs are integrated for real-time use cases, while audiences and personalization attributes for batch campaigns are activated via batch files pushed to Adobe’s S3 buckets. Workflows are used on the Adobe side to ingest the data.

Adobe Ad Cloud, DSP

Audiences can be shared with Adobe Ad Cloud for clients leveraging Adobe’s DSP.
Adobe Audience Manager, built on third-party cookies, would be redundant with ActionIQ and unnecessary for your advertising use cases at this stage.

Adobe Experience Manager, CMS

Adobe Experience Manager is usually integrated closer to the delivery systems, such as Adobe Target, Adobe Campaign, and Marketo, serving the content for these customer experiences.

Adobe Workfront, Project Management

Adobe Workfront, the latest addition to the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem, is typically leveraged within the Adobe content supply chain, integrating with Adobe Experience Manager.

Other Non-Adobe Channels

Despite your heavy Adobe investments, clients often look to integrate with additional systems, in-house solutions, or other channels such as walled gardens. ActionIQ has built a strong ecosystem of integrations, and you can find more about typical integration patterns for activation as well as our complete integration catalog.

Choosing the Right CDP for Your Adobe Stack

You are not alone in being unsure about making a heavy Adobe Experience Platform investment, especially when some critical architectural desires can’t be met today.

At ActionIQ, we are committed to delivering the most flexible, integrated, scalable, and secure solutions for our clients. This commitment includes building seamless integrations with the Adobe Experience Cloud. More than half of ActionIQ’s customers leverage at least one product from the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem.

Learn more about our integrations with Adobe by downloading our solution brief: Increase the Value of Your Adobe Stack With ActionIQ and contact our experts for an opportunity to test ActionIQ’s composable CDP.