What Is Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) Web SDK?

Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) is Adobe’s suite of products that allow for real-time personalization and user interaction, and it is likely new to many development and IT teams. This article is going to discuss one of the foundational aspects of AEP, which is AEP Web SDK, a JavaScript SDK and tag extension that can dramatically simplify deploying Adobe technologies – especially those related to AEP. 

Since AEP is relatively new to the market, we’re going to start with a brief overview of what AEP is and how it works.  There are three primary tools in AEP: 

• Customer Journey Analytics (CJA): Enables data analysis across multiple channels, including offline, allowing businesses to form a comprehensive picture of the customer’s journey while also identifying critical user data. 
• Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO): Allows companies to deliver connected and contextual experiences to their users, with the goal of ensuring that the customer’s journey through the website is optimized specifically for their needs at the time. 
• Real-time Customer Data Platform (RTCDP): Brings together data from multiple sources to create customer profiles that are then used to provide personalized experiences. Since the data used in RTCDP is from multiple sources, schemas are required to ensure all the data is mapped consistently across platforms and devices. 

AEP is intended to aggregate and utilize user interaction data from every channel to create detailed user profiles. AEP then uses artificial intelligence to evaluate real-time data to serve users unique and comprehensive experiences across every channel. 

What is AEP Web SDK? 
AEP Web SDK is a way to deploy Adobe technologies, including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and more. It is a JavaScript library that is part of the Adobe Experience Platform Edge Network. This is a central hub at Adobe that routes data to different places via datastreams that have been defined by the users. The AEP Edge Network is made up of 3 components: 

• Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK: A JavaScript SDK and tag extension that has smaller file sizes and has less effect on load time than previous JavaScript libraries.   
• Adobe Experience Platform Mobile SDK: An extension to the v5 mobile SDK to allow customers to use the new deployment methodology 
• Adobe Experience Platform Edge Network: A global distributed network of servers that enable a new methodology of deploying Adobe products 

AEP Web SDK specifically was built to replace four other legacy JavaScript libraries: 

• Visitor.js 
• AppMeasurement.js 
• AT.js 
• DIL.js 

By using schemas, AEP Web SDK allows Adobe platforms to interact with each other, and combines existing legacy Adobe products (Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Visitor ID Service, and Setup Process) into one request (even prior to implementing any part of AEP). 

You can use AEP Web SDK in conjunction with a tag manager to simplify the implementation process. If you are using Adobe Tags (formerly Launch) then you can use an extension that streams data into the platform, synchronizes identities, processes customer consent signals, and automatically collects context data. 

Using AEP Web SDK to deploy Adobe technologies is a new approach, and Adobe now recommends it as a best practice for new implementations. 

What are schemas? 
At its heart, a schema in AEP is a representation of how the data from a particular source is expected to be formatted. It's basically your way of telling Adobe the kinds of data that will be fed into AEP. Schemas ensure that data is mapped consistently across systems and/or platforms. Each platform will collect a variety of data – some of which will be unique to that platform, and some of which will have crossover with other platforms. It’s important that each system recognizes and organizes the data in the same way, mapping it to the corresponding values and locations in the other platforms. 

When it comes to AEP Web SDK, schemas ensure that all the web event data follows the same standard. AEP Web SDK sends the data to the Platform Edge Network, which ultimately forwards it to the Adobe Experience Cloud platforms that are part of the AEP system. 

In AEP Web SDK, schemas use a structure called Experience Data Model (XDM). This format/structure is not unique to Adobe and is used across many different applications and industries to provide structure to data. Using a specified structure, like XDM, ensures that data comes into the system in such a way that it can be immediately organized and available to the system for processing or application. 

In a nutshell, schemas are a foundational part of all AEP, including AEP Web SDK. They define and standardize the data model for the entire system, ensuring that the customer data can be used immediately by downstream applications (CJA, AJO, and RTCDP). 

COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT AEP WEB SDK 

Do I have to purchase AEP to be able to use the AEP Web SDK?  
One of the most common misconceptions about AEP Web SDK is that you need to purchase AEP to be able to use the Web SDK. This is actually not the case. You can use AEP Web SDK to implement any of the Adobe analytics platforms. Additionally, using AEP Web SDK sets up your system to transition to AEP more easily down the road. Essentially, it allows you to have a faster set up now and provides you with additional capabilities in the future should you decide to implement AEP. 

Can I implement AEP without it?  
In most circumstances, yes. If a client doesn’t plan to use real time functionality in their AEP set up, then both AEP Web SDK and the legacy set up will work for implementation. However, to be able to use the analytics data in real time, as with Real Time CDP, you need to use AEP Web SDK. 

It’s worth noting that AEP will be substantially less robust without real time data processing. This aspect of AEP provides the real-time data that Sensei (Adobe’s AI platform) needs to refine immediate personalization. While AEP will certainly work without it, the personalized user journey won't occur in real-time; it will require multiple visits to the site to implement the personalization. 

Does AEP Web SDK have any limitations? 

One of the main limitations we see with AEP Web SDK is that it doesn’t work with many existing analytics plug ins. This can be very limiting for companies as they may have to decide between using AEP Web SDK or maintaining their current analytics plug ins. It’s important to note that these limitations will still apply, even if the customer has invested in AEP. 

Why should I use AEP Web SDK? 
While one of the primary reasons to use AEP Web SDK is performance, there are actually several other benefits. AEP Web SDK can resolve timing issues among different Adobe products. Additionally, it aligns the organization’s data collection with Adobe’s recommendations for data collection in the future. This will help reduce the risk that an organization will have to rebuild aspects of their system if/when legacy analytics libraries are sunset. 

AEP Web SDK is a great, new tool out of Adobe that will help as more and more companies begin moving toward using AEP to help deliver personalized experiences for their customers. While there are many other tools and aspects that are part of an AEP implementation, AEP Web SDK is one of the primary foundations of the platform. If you have any questions about implementing Adobe Experience Platform, please reach out. We have a team of dedicated developers who are trained in implementing Adobe's entire suite of analytics platforms, including AEP.