Understanding The Nuances: Adobe Real‑Time CDP Collaboration vs. Adobe Real‑Time CDP Connections

Marketers and business analysts are constantly challenged with taking data from various sources and bringing them together to create meaningful profiles of their prospects and customers.  Customer Data Platforms (CDP) help connect these data sources.  Adobe has built a robust set of products that can help address these challenges.

Available today is Adobe Real-Time CDP Connections, a data collection and event forwarding offering. Adobe also recently introduced Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration as a new offering within the Real-Time Customer Data Platform Product Portfolio, which lets advertisers target audiences without relying on third-party cookies. With two powerful tools in Adobe’s CDP offerings, we want to explore the differences between and intentions of the two products, and how they can benefit marketers and business analysts alike.

What is Adobe Real-Time CDP Connections?

Adobe Real-Time CDP Connections is an event-forwarding offering that has been part of Adobe’s ecosystem since 2022. It seeks to combat evolving data management challenges surrounding cookies, simplifying the process of gathering real-time customer behavioral data while ensuring industry-leading privacy and security.

Typically, CDP users are accustomed to gathering or collecting data from mobile or web applications and packaging it through a request to the Edge Network. With Real-Time CDP (RTCDP) Connections, however, such requests can be automatically forwarded to Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, etc. Essentially, RTCDP Connections allows users to seamlessly send different event data to various repositories. This facilitates greater efficiency via data collection and syndication.

Without RTCDP Connections, CDP users must expel many third-party tags and third-party solutions on the client slide. Not only is this inefficient, but it can potentially cause negative performance impact on sites. The role of RTCDP Connections is to streamline what is delivered to the browser app and facilitate the offloading of those requests to what is on the server side.

Key Features of Adobe Real-Time CDP Connections:

• Controlled, Scalable Data Collection and Integration: Seamlessly amalgamates data from a myriad of sources, including online and offline channels, in real-time, ensuring that the customer data is comprehensive and up-to-date.
• Event Forwarding: Enables real-time collection and forwarding of event data server-side to internal data warehouses or third parties.
• System Interoperability and Real-Time Activation: Capable of connecting with diverse platform types enables businesses to leverage data insights easily.
• Rapid Implementation: Quick-start workflows, SDKs, plug-and-play extensions, and tutorials make setup quick and easy.

What is Real-Time CDP Collaboration?

Adobe’s Real-Time CDP Collaboration—which is expected to be available by the end of 2024—facilitates the discovery of new audiences, campaign activation, and ROI measurement within a privacy-compliant environment and without relying on third-party cookies.

Because marketers have traditionally relied heavily on data from third-party cookies, Real-Time CDP Collaboration is an impactful step toward more effective, yet compliant, collaboration among marketing partnerships. For example, it allows a marketer to set up a clean room collaboration with external partners to gain new insights, create audiences, and measure results, without sharing their internal first-party data with the partner. 

Key Features of Real-Time CDP Collaboration Include:

• Unified View of Customer Data Across Cross-Functional Teams: Ensures that desired teams have access to the same real-time data, facilitating more informed, aligned decision-making and strategy.
• Data Collaboration without Third-party Cookies: Simplifies how advertisers and publishers can effectively collaborate without using third-party cookies. It allows users to find high-value audiences and measure advertising effectiveness, emphasizing customer privacy. 
• Secure and Scalable Activation: Publishers can securely access and activate advertiser segments across numerous channels, scaling reach using identity partners and look-alike modeling. Advertisers can reach and guide desired audiences through the funnel, and suppress converted audiences for efficient spending.
• Collaborative Measurement Tools: Enable the ability to conduct split and incrementality testing for refined insights and consistent measurement across Adobe and non-Adobe products.

The Interplay Between Collaboration and Connection

While Real-Time CDP Collaboration focuses on publishing, marketing, and authoring collaboration using data, Real-Time CDP Connections focuses on data collection and organization. The emphasis on Real-Time CDP Connections is on data integration and synchronization, enabling marketers to gain a comprehensive understanding of customer interactions as they happen.

Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration, on the other hand, emphasizes teamwork and cooperation within an organization. It enables different teams and departments, such as marketing, sales, and customer service, to work together effectively using the unified customer data available in the CDP and includes features such as shared dashboards, workflows, and communication tools designed to facilitate cross-functional collaboration and decision-making based on real-time customer insights.

In essence, while Real-Time CDP Connections focuses on data integration and unification, Real-Time CDP Collaboration emphasizes leveraging that unified data for collaborative decision-making and action across departments. A thorough understanding of the nuances between the two can help Adobe users make informed decisions about how to best leverage the products for specific use cases ahead of Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration’s upcoming launch.