Over the past year, we’ve embarked on a transformative journey at Westpac-migrating from Adobe Experience Cloud (AEC) to Adobe Experience Platform (AEP). This post shares our learnings so far, including challenges, strategies, and what lies ahead as we work to modernize our digital personalization stack.
Our existing stack
Before diving into the migration, it’s important to understand our starting point.
Westpac operates under a multi-brand structure, yet we’ve successfully managed to centralize our personalization stack using a single instance of Adobe Analytics, Audience Manager (AAM), and Adobe Target.
Personalisation at scale is at the heart of our digital strategy:
- Adobe Analytics provides near real-time behavioural data.
- AAM enriches these insights with CRM data to drive segmentation.
- Adobe Target then delivers personalized experiences using the combined power of Analytics and AAM.
Previous architecture overview
This setup has helped us deliver dynamic, data-driven personalization for millions of customers across web and mobile experiences.
The Migration: AppMeasurement to Alloy.js
Our migration is a gradual and complex shift. We have multiple branded digital properties (web and mobile), and rolling out changes simultaneously across all of them isn’t feasible. This has led us to adopt a co-existence model-maintaining both AEC and AEP systems during the transition.
Key goal:
- Ensure both ecosystems continue to receive data while preserving real-time personalization.
- Co-existence architecture
Why Co-Existence is Challenging
Migrating to AEP isn’t just a lift-and-shift-it involves rethinking how segmentation, identity, and activation work across systems.
Here are three core challenges we’ve faced so far:
1. Two Very Different Segmentation Models
Segmentation works fundamentally differently between AAM and AEP.
- In AAM, once a segment is published, it’s instantly available across the Adobe Experience Cloud.
- In AEP, segment destinations must be explicitly configured, and not all support real-time activation.
We ran multiple experiments to evaluate real-time segment qualification across destinations and found key differences in performance and latency. This was critical to shaping our co-existence strategy and ensuring Target could respond in real time.
2. Identity Handling is a Moving Target
A major hurdle has been managing identity stitching across systems.
AAM offers mature profile merge rules, allowing us to handle complex scenarios like shared devices and multi-brand journeys with precision.
AEP, while powerful, is still evolving in this area. Current identity handling lacks the same granularity and transparency we’re used to.
We’ve had to rethink how we manage identities across brands and devices in the absence of AAM’s rule-based control. A deeper dive into AEP’s identity service and its nuances is a topic I’ll cover in a future post.
3. Adobe Target Integration Differences
Adobe Target behaves differently depending on which ecosystem you’re working with.
When using AppMeasurement (at.js), Target cannot access AEP-based profiles or segments.
To work with AEP, you must use Edge-based Target via the Alloy.js library.
This difference has significant implications. How you configure your Target environments-and how you architect your data collection-is key to ensuring successful personalization during coexistence.
What’s Next: Activating AEP Segments in Target
Our next focus is on activating AEP segments within Adobe Target, replicating the real-time strategies we’ve perfected in AAM.
Key considerations include:
- Understanding the differences in segment qualification logic between AEP and AAM.
- Monitoring latency and response times when syncing AEP segments to Target.
- Ensuring audience parity and logic consistency during the transition.
Final Thoughts: A Mindset Shift
This journey is more than a technical migration-it’s a mindset shift.
We’re learning to rethink:
- Identity management in a privacy-first world
- Segmentation across evolving ecosystems
- Personalization in an era of real-time data and cross-channel experiences
Co-existence is not easy-but it’s necessary. We’re committed to a seamless transition that keeps our customers at the centre of everything we do.
If you’re navigating a similar journey-or planning one soon-I’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences.
In upcoming posts, I’ll share:
- Real-world identity stitching strategies
- Segment validation tips between AAM and AEP
- Lessons learned from our Adobe Target migration
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