Ways to Update an Existing Audience

As long as you keep the field names consistent between all files, segment refreshes and full refreshes do not affect existing distributions. Any refreshed segments that were being distributed will continue to be distributed, but with the newly refreshed data. You do not need to set up the distribution again.

Because the number of distinct values can accumulate with each additional file that's ingested in an audience using the "incremental" update option, enumerated fields can become raw fields over time in audiences that use that update option. This would then cause there to be two fields with the same name in Connect: the original enumerated field and a new raw field. If the original enumerated field is being distributed, that field will not get refreshed with the new data. If this occurs, you can create a support case to try to remove any unused values or have LiveRamp perform a segment refresh to change the overall number of distinct values. For more information, see "How Accumulated Values Can Create Raw Fields".

Most LiveRamp customers update their files on a monthly basis, but we can also handle more frequent file uploads. However, if you select the “full refresh” option, uploading new files too frequently (such as more than once a day) can result in files inadvertently overwriting each other. For example, yesterday's file might still be in the process of importing into LiveRamp due to its large file size. If today's file imports quickly (because the file size is much smaller than yesterday’s file), today's file will inadvertently be overwritten once yesterday's file is finally processed.

Another way to help keep data in an audience fresh is by setting up the audience to have older files automatically deleted. For more information, see "Automatically Delete Older Files".