Lessons Learned with Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK Event Forwarding

As a part of the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), server-side event forwarding has become an integral part of Third-Party Marketing Pixel implementation. Currently, as I help work through a project to migrate these pixels from a client-side integration to a server-side one there have been a couple lessons learned. Hopefully through the items in this blog post will provide some more information to help your Adobe Tags Event Forwarding implementations go smoothly.

XDM Object & the Free Form Data Object

One of the issues we faced is the client did not want any of the marketing pixel data to be passed with the XDM Object if it was not already being captured with analytics. That meant that there needed to be another way to pass that data along to the server side without being picked up and passed into Adobe Experience Platform, increasing costs to the company. With that in mind a different solution needed to be investigated to send those data points.

What was found is that there is another data object that can be sent alongside the XDM object. This data object is free form, and the data can be passed through this without populating that data into AEP. The ability to send necessary data points without having them captured in AEP will be something that most companies will want to leverage in the future, and having that functionality built into the XDM extension is a plus.

Can Still Leverage Custom Code

As part of the Adobe Tags Event Forwarding property, custom javaScript code can still be leveraged through either the data element or as a part of the rule condition. The javaScript has access to both the arc and utils variables to help capture data from the XDM Object or from the Free Form data object. Those data points can then be altered just as they could through Adobe Tags before being used in a rule. Similarly, the javaScript can be set as part of the rule conditions and provide control over when a rule should or should not fire. This together is a large plus as the processing can be done through the Event Forwarding property and does not need to happen solely on the Client-Side Tags property.

Facebook Conversion API Extension Learnings

One of the four non-Adobe Event Forwarding extensions is the Facebook Conversion API Extension and is the one extension that we implemented for Facebook pixel tracking. There is a fair amount of set-up needed between Facebook Events Manager and the extension inside the property. The first hurdle encountered was that the extension needed an API Key from the Facebook Event Manager. In our case we do not have access to our client’s instance of Facebook Events Manager, so we relied on them to generate and pass that API key over.

This extension also requires at least one Customer Information Parameter. This can be anything from a customer email, phone number, zip code, or any of the other fields that the extension provides to be filled out. There is one field that does not count towards the one parameter and that is the Client User Agent. While this is in the same section as the other Customer Information Parameters, a notification will be shown saying that a different parameter is needed for the pixel to function properly.

Once these problems were resolved the implementation went smoothly. The event forwarding rules were tested with the help of the Adobe Experience Cloud Debugger. Once those were verified as being passed, the data was also validated as coming through in the Facebook Event Manager tool. With both sides validated in a development environment they have been slated to be moved to production and take the place of the Client-Side pixel implementation.

Conclusion

Overall Adobe Tags Event Forwarding using the Experience Platform Web SDK is still very new to the implementation world. There is a lot to be excited about with this tool, but there’s still going to be some growing pains. Those pains lead to learnings that we’ll take forward for future implementations to make them go smoother. Hopefully these learnings can provide some insight for your utilization of the tool.