Adobe Target

Adobe Target is an A/B testing and personalisation platform inside the Adobe Experience Cloud. It lets you modify what visitors see on your website — without changing your source code — and measure which version performs better.

How Adobe Target works

Target delivers experiences through one of two libraries running on your page: at.js (the traditional implementation) or Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK(the modern unified library, also called Alloy). When a visitor loads your page, the library fires a request to Target's delivery API. Target responds with the modifications for that visitor's assigned experience, and the library applies them to the DOM.

Experience Lab generates Custom Code that runs inside this same delivery mechanism. Your generated script executes after Target has received and applied the activity — so you can safely manipulate the DOM knowing the page is ready.

Key concepts

Activity — A campaign in Target. An activity defines who sees what experience and how success is measured. Types include A/B Test, Experience Targeting (XT), Multivariate Test (MVT), and Recommendations.

Experience — One variant within an activity. In an A/B test you have at least two experiences (Control and Variant). In Experience Targeting you have one experience per audience segment.

Audience — A segment of visitors who qualify for an experience. Audiences can be based on geography, device, behaviour, profile attributes, or custom parameters passed via mbox parameters.

Offer — The content or code delivered in an experience. In the VEC, offers are DOM modifications or Custom Code blocks. In the Form-Based Composer, offers can be HTML fragments or JSON.

Goal / Success Metric — What Target measures to determine which experience wins. Typically a conversion event — a click, a page view, or a custom mbox call you fire in your code.

VEC (Visual Experience Composer) — Target's browser-based editor. It loads your page in an iframe and lets you point-and-click to modify content. Custom Code blocks in the VEC are where you paste Experience Lab-generated scripts.

mbox — A request sent to Target's delivery API. The global mbox fires automatically on page load via at.js. Named mboxes are fired manually for specific interactions or pages.

VEC vs. Form-Based Composer

Visual Experience Composer (VEC)

Point-and-click page editing
Works on any page that loads in an iframe
Custom Code block for injecting scripts
Where Experience Lab scripts are pasted
Best for: modals, banners, on-page changes

Form-Based Composer

Code-first, no visual editor
Works on pages that block iframes
Delivers HTML or JSON offers to named mboxes
Best for: server-side, SPAs, iframe-blocked pages

💡Not sure which to use?

Use the VEC if your page loads in an iframe. Use Experience Lab's VEC Preflight Checker to confirm before you start building an activity.

How at.js and Web SDK fit in

Your site runs either at.js or Web SDK — not both. If you see requests going to *.tt.omtrdc.net in DevTools Network, you're on at.js. If requests go to *.adobedc.net, you're on Web SDK.

Experience Lab-generated scripts work identically in both environments. The Custom Code execution model in the VEC is the same regardless of which library delivers the activity.

📝New to Adobe Target?

Adobe's free Experience League courses at experienceleague.adobe.com are the best structured introduction. The "Adobe Target Business Practitioner" certification path covers everything above in depth.

💡 New to Adobe Target? Let's get you set up.

Experience Lab offers onboarding sessions for marketing teams — Target account setup, first A/B test, audience configuration, and reporting walkthrough. Go from zero to live in a day.

Book a session