Tag Refresh Rules - Analyzing Old Tags

Have you ever tried to analyze an older tag and found that some insights aren’t being generated? Or have you tried to activate an audience built from an older tag and find that you’re not able to? Resonate has rules built into our methodology that exist to keep data fresh and accurate, but these efforts can cause your older tags to lose their luster. Let’s explain what happens when you try to perform different actions with older tags and why these results occur. 

When Do Resonate Tags Collect Data? 

The first thing to know is that when collecting tag data through the Ignite Platform, attributes are connected to Resonate Consumer IDs (RCIDs) at the time of the tag hit. This means that when a person visits a tagged asset or page, only the attributes that are being recorded by Resonate at that time are connected to the people who hit that tag to generate insights. 

Analyzing Audiences From Older Tags  

Because attributes are recorded at the time of the tag hit, and not at the time of analysis, as Resonate continues to add and inactivate or deprecate attributes over time, some tags may produce no insights in key areas when you analyze their audience. When this occurs, it is because the tag data being analyzed is old, and that old tag may have recorded none or only some of the attributes that are currently used to generate insights. 

You may see that some insights will still be generated from this older tag data, but many others won't because the attributes that produce those insights were not recorded at the time of the tag hit. An example of this can be seen below, where an old tag did collect attribute data on an audience of RCIDs around social media networks, newspapers and hours spent online, but did not collect data on streaming devices or tv networks, producing no insights for those specific categories. 

Activating Audiences From Older Tags 

If you try to activate an audience built from an older tag, you may find that you are not be able to activate. This is because RCIDs that are connected to a tag that hasn’t been visited in over 30 days cannot be used as a targetable audience. If you try to use an audience from a tag that hasn’t been visited in over 30 days, your estimated total IDs will return as 0.

This does not mean that no insights can be generated into this audience, but it does mean you cannot activate that audience. 

Knowing this 30 day limit, how do you check to see the last time your tag was hit? First, add your tagged audience into a new analysis. Visit the Intelligence Center and look to the left rail where your audience list lives. Under your tagged audience, you will see a start and end date for that tag. The end date is the final day that tag received a hit. If the end date listed is more than 30 days ago, you should expect to see an estimated targetable IDs as 0 when you analyze it for insights. Insights will still be generated as discussed above, but activating on that audience will not be possible. 

Minimum Tag Hits to Produce Insights 

If you see that the last day of a tag hit is within the past 30 days and your estimated targetable IDs are still 0, this is likely because even though the tag was hit, there were less than 100 hits on that day. If a tag gets less than 100 hits in a day, it is insufficient for insight generation and is treated in our methodology as if there were 0 hits on the tag that day to ensure a minimum level of data quality. 

When there aren’t enough tag hits to meet our minimum threshold, insights will also not be generated as the audience is too small to be analyzed.  

Ground Rules for Analyzing Tags 

In summary, here are some ground rules to remember when placing and analyzing Resonate tags: 

1. Make sure any tag you place will meet the minimum 100 tag hit daily threshold so that insights can be generated on that audience. 
2. If your tag can be analyzed but some insights are missing, this is likely because the tag is old. The missing insights are due to the attributes that inform those insights not being recorded at the time of the last tag hit. 
3. If your tag can be analyzed, but has an estimated targetable IDs of 0 for activation, this is because your last hit on that tag was likely over 30 days ago.  
4. If the last hit on your tag was within the 30-day limit but still produces a 0 for estimated targetable IDs, this is because your tag did not hit the 100-tag hit daily threshold necessary to generate insights on that audience. 

Tag Status Between Segmentation and Intelligence Centers 

When a tag is either too old to analyze insights on an audience or has engagement that doesn’t reach our minimum tag hit threshold for analysis, it may not be clear when you are building an audience in the Segmentation Center that this is the case. The Segmentation Center shows your list of tags, but it doesn’t determine that the tag is too old or too small to be analyzed. Only in the Intelligence Center will the platform recognize this and notify you of this lack of usable data.  
 
This can be a frustrating experience, since a tag in the Segmentation Center can be added to your analysis just to move to the Intelligence Center and have the platform inform you that the tag is not able to be analyzed. When this occurs, you should assume that the tag doesn’t meet the requirements listed above. As such, you will not be able to analyze the audience from that tag, even if in the Segmentation Center the audience was able to be added to your analysis.