Destinations and Activation
Destinations are where audiences and profiles leave RTCDP. Know the categories: profile/audience export destinations (e.g., cloud storage like S3, SFTP, advertising, email, CRM) and edge/streaming destinations (e.g., Adobe Target, Adobe Campaign, web/mobile personalization). A trap is treating all destinations as batch; some are streaming/edge and require different data availability.
Activation flow: create a destination → authenticate → configure → map source attributes/identities to target fields → select audiences → set a schedule → activate. Mapping is a common question area: identity mapping determines how the destination recognizes the person; attribute mapping determines what payload is sent. Export behavior (full vs. incremental) matters - some destinations support incremental, others full refresh.
Data governance at activation: data usage policies and consent are evaluated against the destination's marketing action. If a policy blocks a labeled attribute, activation will exclude or fail for that data. Consent (e.g., opt-out) filters profiles out of the export. This is a very common exam trap: “the audience was activated but some profiles are missing” - often governance/consent filtering, not a bug.
Also know destination monitoring (flow runs, success/failure, records exported) and the difference between a dataflow (the pipeline) and a flow run (an execution).
Rule of thumb: when an activation question asks “why is data missing or blocked,” check in order: (1) audience membership/evaluation, (2) identity mapping, (3) attribute mapping, (4) governance/consent, (5) destination-side errors. Most exam “missing data” scenarios resolve at governance or mapping.