With Audience Discovery, you can explore and analyze a real-time graphical representation of both historical and live site visitor data and site visit behavior through the lens of your attributes. You can then click on the visual representations of this data to drill-down into deeper details about your site visitors and their browsing behavior with each site visit. The user interface provides tools that simplify the task of fine tuning and segmenting your audience into targeted visitor sets, which can then be used to guide and fuel other digital marketing tools.
This article covers the following topics:
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How it Works
Audience Discovery simplifies the discovery process by providing simple point-and-click tools with rich filtering capabilities. Audience Discovery uses your historical data and adapts to your visitor schema to display real time charts of the metrics, properties, and badges you define, as you define them.
Using the Audience Discovery interface, you can quickly and easily:
- Zoom in on the visual representation of your data to discover audiences that meet your filtering criteria
- Create specific audiences to target
- Filter a selected audience on-the-fly to fine tune your target visitor segment
- Overlay statistics to compare data
- View your audiences from a variety of perspectives
Before you begin, it is important to familiarize yourself with the components of the interface and how to navigate the Audience Discovery user interface.
Attributes, Audiences, and Perspectives
To filter your data for use with Audience Discovery, it is important to understand the differences between data attributes, audiences, and perspectives.
- Attributes
In Audience Discovery, attributes are used to define the data in your data layer that is associated to the properties of a visitor, the characteristics of a visitor session, and event data collected during the visitor session. For example, a visitor attribute contains event data specific to the visitor, such as the email address or member ID for the visitor, whereas a visit attribute contains event data specific to the site visit, such as a product category viewed or the date of the last visit.
- Audiences
An audience is a group of visitors that are identified by a shared set of attributes. Attributes assigned to an audience are used to identify distinct groups visitors to your site. The more attributes you select for an audience, the more specific your audience becomes. Audiences are used to trigger connector actions. Once an audience is created, that audience can be targeted with an email campaign, coupon, or other action.
- Perspectives
Perspectives are specific views of your audiences. For example, selecting, the Badge perspective enables you to view visitors from the perspective of the badges they are assigned, such as "Frequent Visitor".
Daily Visitor Query Cap
Visitors are sampled by capping the daily visitor count, which determines the sample size of visitors used to project results in Audience Sizing and Audience Discovery queries. The progress bar displays the progress of this calculation. The actual query runs on the total visitors matched, not just the capped visitors. Likewise, jobs also run on the total number of matched visitors, not just the sampled visitors.
The Sample Size of Daily Visitors to Process profile setting can only be modified by Tealium staff. To adjust this setting, contact your account representative.

Navigating the User Interface
The real-time visual representation of attributes in the interface provides insights into the behavior of your visitors. A live sampling of data displays visitors and attributes that meet your search criteria.
Use the interactive tools, as described in the following image and table, to define and filter your search. You can then use the presentation of matching visitors as a guide as you continue to narrow or broaden your query to reach the desired visitor segment and create highly defined, targetable audiences.

The following table describes the functions of each area of the interface labeled in the above image:
Image Label |
Description |
Toggle Between Audience Discovery and Audience Sizing Tabs
|
Click to toggle between the Audience Discovery and Audience Sizing tabs |
Expand or Collapse feature description
|
Click to expand or collapse a brief description of the current feature, Audience Discovery
|
Select, Edit, Add, or Save an Audience
|
|
Current View |
Click to view Live activity or Historic activity
- The Live view can only be used for visit-scoped attributes.
- The Historic view can only be used for visitor-scoped attributes.
|
Select Perspectives
|
Click to search or select from All, Visit, or Visitor-scoped perspectives |
Hover to highlight perspective
|
Hover over any bar in the chart to highlight details about the perspective depicted by that bar |
Drill-down into details of perspective
|
Click one of the features listed to display further details about the perspective you are viewing.
- Zoom In
Provides a more detailed breakdown of the perspective. You can continue to "drill-down" by zooming into the results until exhausted.
- Cross Tab Report
Provides a detailed breakdown of the perspective in the same bar chart format.
- View Attribute Definition
Displays the attribute definition or definitions used to create the results displayed. You can optionally double-click on the attribute to display the edit screen to edit the attribute on-the-fly or delete the attribute.
|
View, Edit, or Add Favorite Numbers |
Favorites Numbers allow you to select specific metrics to display along the bottom of the screen. Only numeric values are allowed.
From here, you can:
- Click a Favorite Number that is already defined to view the properties
- Add a new Favorite Number and define the properties to display
- Delete an existing Favorite Number
- Pin (overlay) Favorite Number results on the primary graph
|
Start Discovering
Now that you understand the basic concepts and are familiar with the user interface, you can get started. This section describes the basic steps required to define your audience. Once you are comfortable with the basics, you can move on to editing, copying, and deleting audiences. From there you can learn how to create and save favorites for easy access and view your audiences from different perspectives. Use the steps outlined in the following sections to begin filtering and analyzing your visitor data.
Add an Audience Filter
Use the following steps to add a new audience filter:
- In the left sidebar, click AudienceStream > Discover.
- Click the plus sign (+) to the left of the Audiences drop-down list.
- Enter the conditions for your filter.

- Under Conditions, select a value from the drop-down list.
In this example, Lifetime Visit Count is selected.
- Select an Operator from the drop-down list.
In this example, greater than is selected.
- Select an Option from the drop-down list.
In this example, Custom Value is selected.
- In the blank field, enter the custom value.
In this example, the number three (3) is used.
- You can optionally add additional AND or OR conditions using the drop-down lists provided.
- Click Save.
- Click the Audiences drop-down list in the upper right of the screen and select the Save tab.
- In the As a new audience field, enter a descriptive name for your audience.
The name must not exceed 250 characters and must contain only ASCII characters (codes 0-127).
In this example, the name Over 3 Visits is used.

- Click Save.
- Click Save/Publish to save and publish.
Edit an Audience Filter
Use the following steps to view your audiences filters and edit the settings to meet your needs:
- In the left sidebar, click AudienceStream > Discover.
- From the Audiences drop-down list in the upper right of the screen, click the Load tab.
- Select an audience to view.

In this example, the Over 3 Visits audience you created in the previous step is selected.
- Click the pencil icon to edit the audience filters.
The Edit Audience dialog displays.
- Edit the filter criteria to meet your needs.
For example, change the custom value from 3 to 10.
- Click Save.
- Click Save/Publish to save and publish to the appropriate environments.
Delete an Audience Filter
Use the following steps to delete an audience filter:
- In the left sidebar, click AudienceStream > Discover.
- From the Audiences drop-down list in the upper right of the screen, click the Load tab.
- Scroll down to select the audience to delete and click the adjacent X.
- From the Delete Audience dialog, click Yes.
The audience filter is removed from the list of filters.
- Click Save/Publish to save and publish.
View and Adjust Audience Filters
The unique views and actionable interface in Audience Discovery allow you to analyze your audience in real-time, using your attributes as a guide. This section describes how to view the ways in which your audiences are currently segmented and make any needed adjustments.
Use the following steps to view and adjust audience filters:
- In the left sidebar, click AudienceStream > Discover.
- From the Audiences drop-down list in the upper right of the screen, click the Load tab.
- Select an audience to view.
- Toggle between the Historic and Live views to gain insight about current visitors and visit behavior or behavior over a period of time.
- Live
The Live view is the default view and displays current activity.
You can optionally drill-down into sections of the bars in the chart for a more granular view.
- Historic
The Historic view displays a drop-down calendar in the To and From fields that allows you to select a date range.
- You can optionally drill-down into sections of the bars in the chart for a more granular view and then use your learnings from one or more of the views to further fine tune your audience to meet your needs.
- Apply changes or additional conditions and then click Apply to save.
The display changes to meet the new criteria immediately.
- Click Save/Publish to save and publish.
Using Favorite Numbers
Favorite Numbers are created using number attributes only and provide a quick view of filtered numerical results as they relate to Visits or Visitor attributes.
In the results display for Favorite Numbers, only the attributes are updated, the filter is not updated.
When a Favorite Number contains multiple columns and only one (1) column is selected, both the perspective and the filter is updated when you click to zoom into the subsection
Favorite Numbers display directly under the main dashboard and are used as follows:
- Clicking a Favorite Number updates the perspective and refreshes the display of the data in the column.
- Hovering over any Favorite Number highlights the column in the primary display related to that favorite.
- You can optionally click a favorite and pin (overlay) the results over the current display for comparison.
Add a Favorite Number
Use the following steps to add a favorite number:
- In the left sidebar, click AudienceStream > Discover.
- Under Favorite Numbers at the bottom of the screen, click + Add a Number.
The Add a Number dialog displays.
- Use the Search field to search for a specific attribute or filter the available attributes by Visit or Visitor attributes to locate and select.

- Click an available attribute to select it.
The new Favorite Number displays as a selection on the bottom of the screen.
Delete a Favorite Number
Use the following steps to delete a favorite number:
- In the left sidebar, click AudienceStream > Discover.
- Scroll down to the Favorite Number section and hover over the item you want to delete.

- Click the X on the upper right of the Favorite Number border.
The Favorite Number no longer displays.
Pin or Unpin Overlay Details
To compare data, you can pin or unpin the details of a favorite number to overlay the details of the favorite view onto the primary graph being displayed.
Use the following steps to pin or unpin overlay details:
- In the left sidebar, click AudienceStream > Discover.
- Hover over the Favorite Number for which you want to pin overlay details in the primary graph.

- Click the pin icon on the lower right of the Favorite Number border.
The Favorite Number results now display on the main image as overlay details for comparison.

- To unpin the overlay details, click the pin icon on the lower right of the border.
If the pin icon is pointed downward, the overlay details are not pinned. If it is pointed upwards, the details are pinned.
Viewing Your Audience Data from Different Perspectives
Once you have created audiences, with or without favorite numbers, you can choose from a variety of perspectives from which to view your audience data. Viewing your data from different perspectives provides insights into audience behavior to help you pinpoint target audiences.
Use the following steps to choose a perspective from which to view your audience data:
- In the left sidebar, click AudienceStream > Discover.
- Next to Perspectives, click the default value Badges, to display a list of available perspectives from which to view your audience data.
- Use the Search field to search for a specific perspective, or filter the available perspective by Visit or Visitor scope.

- Click an available perspective to select it.
In the following example, the default value, Average visit duration in minutes is selected as a perspective from which to view the currently displayed audience data.

- View your data from a variety of perspectives to analyze the data and refine your audiences to best fit your needs.