Data Activation uses specific terms to describe how customer data flows from collection through to action in your marketing tools. This glossary explains the key concepts you'll come across when setting up and using Data Activation, so you can get oriented quickly and understand how the different pieces work together.
Data and profiles
These are the types of data you can collect.
Unified customer profile: A single, consolidated view of a person built from all available data sources, such as website behavior, CRM attributes, purchase history, or other attributes you import. As new data arrives from different systems, it's merged into one profile, giving you a consistent picture of each customer across channels and devices. See Identity resolution and profile model.
Profile attributes (also known as facts): Persistent descriptive information about a person, such as loyalty tier, subscription status, contract end date, or consent preferences. Unlike events, attributes stay true until they're updated. Profile attributes have only one version (state) and they get overwritten every time with every new update. They are not time-bound. Profile attributes typically come from your CRM, billing system, or data warehouse. See How to ingest profiles from business systems.
Events (also known as engagements): Time-stamped actions a person has taken, such as viewing a product, adding something to their cart, or completing a purchase. Events capture what someone is doing right now and are used to build audiences and trigger journeys. You can get event data using the self-serve data ingestion directly on the Supermetrics Hub. If you’d like, you can also use a script on your website to track events. See How to set up web tracking and event collection using base script.
Identifiers: The values that link a person's activity across different systems and devices. These can be customer IDs, email addresses, or device IDs. Data Activation uses identifiers to connect signals from different sources to the same profile, and to send profiles to the right destinations. See Identity resolution and profile model.
Data collection
These are the methods to collect the data.
Web tracking: The method of collecting behavioral events from your website in real time using a tracking script, sometimes referred to as a tracking pixel. Web tracking is the process by which anonymous visitor behavior, such as page and product views, enters Data Activation before a customer is identified. See How to set up web tracking and event collection using base script.
Server-side events: Events sent directly from your backend systems, apps, or services using an API. Server-side events are useful when you need reliable data collection that isn't affected by browser restrictions or ad blockers. See How to capture and send server-side events.
Profile ingestion: The process of bringing customer attributes from business systems, such as your CRM, data warehouse, or billing platform, into Data Activation. Profile ingestion lets your audiences and journeys reflect real customer context, not just website behavior. For easy setup, use the self-serve data ingestion directly on the Supermetrics Hub. You can also ingest profile data from various business systems. See How to ingest profiles from business systems.
Identity resolution: The process of linking different identifiers to the same unified customer profile. When a visitor logs in or submits a form, Data Activation connects their anonymous browsing history to their known customer record, so targeting and journeys can operate on the right person. Data Activation only links identifiers when a deterministic signal is available. See Identity resolution and profile model.
Audiences and journeys
After you have identified the data you need and how to get it, you can start building your audiences and journeys that include and exclude profiles based on events and conditions.
Audience: A dynamic, rule-based list of profiles that match specific criteria. Profiles enter the audience when they match your conditions and exit when they no longer do. Use audiences when you want to keep an up-to-date list of who qualifies for targeting or suppression, and when the destination platform handles the messaging or campaign logic. See How to build audiences.
Journey: A multi-step, timed sequence triggered by a specific event or profile change. Journeys let you react to real-time behavior with precise control over timing, branching, and channel sequencing. Use journeys when the use case involves multiple steps, different outcomes based on what happens next, or sequencing across channels. See Journey orchestration.
Entry condition: The rule that determines when a profile qualifies to enter an audience or journey. Entry conditions can be based on profile attributes, events, or both. See Entry and exit conditions.
Exit condition: The rule that removes a profile from an audience or journey. For audiences, profiles exit automatically when they no longer match the entry conditions. You can also set an explicit exit condition for a specific event, such as a completed purchase. For journeys, exit conditions are always explicit. See Entry and exit conditions.
Historical processing: The ability to look back in time when you create a new audience or journey, so it's populated with profiles that would’ve qualified in the past. Historical processing means you can start activating data immediately without waiting for new events to come in. See Historical processing.
Variables: Profile-level attributes you can store and pass along to destinations for personalization, for example, the last three products a customer viewed, or their preferred language. Variables let you use dynamic, person-specific data in your messages and campaigns. See How to use variables.
Tags
Tags are used on your website to track user activity.
Tag: A container for tracking and personalization logic that fires on your website. Tags define what data gets collected and sent to Data Activation. These include, for example, a product view event or a profile attribute update. Tags are managed through the tag management section of the platform. See Tag management.
Tag Management System (TMS): A simple interface allows you to implement, manage, and maintain tags on your digital properties. Supermetrics Data Activation offers a server-side Tag Management System as part of our platform. Other TMS examples include Google Tag Manager and Adobe Tag Manager. See Tag management.
Targeting rules: Conditions that control which pages or visitor contexts a tag fires on. Targeting rules let you make sure the right data is collected in the right context, for example, only capturing a purchase event on the order confirmation page. See How to use tag targeting rules.
Deduplication markers: Settings that prevent the same event from being counted more than once. Markers are used when an event should be recorded only once per session or per customer, such as a form submission. See How to deduplicate with markers.
A/B testing (experiments): A way to test different versions of a journey or personalization against each other to measure which performs better. Data Activation routes a defined percentage of profiles into each variant and tracks outcomes so you can compare results. See How to run A/B testing with experiments.
Tag Status Window: A built-in diagnostic tool that lets you inspect what's happening on your website in real time, such as which tags are firing, what data they're capturing, and whether the right identifiers are present. Use it to validate your tracking setup before going live or to investigate unexpected behavior. See How to publish tags.
Destinations
After you’ve collected data, you can send that to the data activation destination so that your audiences and journeys are based on up-to-date data.
Destination: An external platform that receives audience membership updates or journey actions from Data Activation. Examples include ad platforms, email service providers, or CRMs. Destinations are where your orchestration decisions are put into action. See Data Activation destinations.
Audience connector: A type of destination connector that sends profile membership updates to a platform. When a profile enters or exits an audience, the connected platform updates the corresponding list or segment to add or remove that profile.
Event streaming: A type of destination connector that sends a specific event to a platform when a journey step fires. Event streaming is used when you need to trigger a precise action at a precise moment — for example, sending a conversion signal when a purchase is completed. See How to use event streaming.
Custom connector: A destination connector you configure yourself to send data to a platform or endpoint that doesn't have a pre-built connector. Custom connectors give you flexibility when you need to integrate with tools outside the standard destination library. See How to use custom connectors.
Partner type: The category that tells Data Activation which kind of identifier to use when sending a profile to a specific destination. Each destination expects a particular type of identifier, such as an email address, a device ID, or a platform-specific customer ID, and the partner type setting ensures the right one is used for each connection. Data Activation partner types and partner numbers.
Privacy and compliance
Consent handling: The way Data Activation respects your customers' consent choices. Tags can be configured to only fire when a visitor has given the appropriate consent, so data collection stays aligned with your consent management setup and regional privacy requirements.
PII handling: How personally identifiable information (PII), such as email addresses and phone numbers, is managed when used as identifiers. When profiles are sent to destinations that require PII-based matching, the platform handles the necessary preparation to meet that destination's requirements. Many ad platform destinations use non-PII identifiers such as device IDs, which avoids transmitting personal data entirely.