Microsoft’s lead program manager, recently posted an article on the Technology Community blog stating that starting in Q3 2023, standard and extended audiences will not, therefore, fall back to ecological audiences in the event of insufficient data.
Duchesne said it recently modified the way driver metrics are built, eliminating certain evaluation conditions (e.g., driver crashes and hangs <= 15.00 in Windows components) as metrics for classifying different audiences.
Duchesne indicated that drivers such as kernel mode (KM) and user mode (UM) will be removed from the ecosystem audience metric attribute to more accurately measure the scope of the audience.
The following will no longer be used to evaluate and segment audiences:
- Devices in drivers on standalone GPUs that cause blue screens
- Devices in drivers on integrated GPUs that cause blue screens
- Devices with TDR in the driver on the standalone GPU
- Devices with TDRs in drivers on integrated GPUs
- Driver crashes and hangs in communication and collaboration applications
- Driver crashes and hangs in creative applications
- Driver crashes or gets stuck in Microsoft Edge (Chromium)
- Crashes or gets stuck in the Microsoft Photos app
- Driver crashes in Windows components
- The driver rolled back or reinstalled within 2 days of installation
- WinML: Wrong device at runtime (GPU sessions only)
The official Microsoft description is as follows:
Driver Metric Properties
Microsoft’s set of metrics typically share properties in their construction and computational logic. These properties exist throughout the metric workflow: from the collection of telemetry data to the aggregation process to the way Microsoft evaluates the metric. Each metric definition has a “Metric Properties” section, which lists the values of its properties.
Audience Type
Microsoft defines an audience as a group of computers that can download drivers that have been externally tested, rolled out, or released. These drivers can be distributed to computers through Windows Update (WU) or third-party downloaders. There are 3 types of audiences: Standard, Extended, and Ecosystem audiences.
Standard Audience
The Standard Audience metric collects telemetry data only from computers that meet the following characteristics: receive drivers directly from WU and meet the driver target constraints (e.g., HWID, CHID, OS lower and upper limits) set during the submission process.
Extended Audience
The Extended Audience metric collects telemetry data from computers that meet the following characteristics: meet the driver target constraints and receive drivers from any source, including third-party downloaders.
Ecosystem Audience
Ecosystem audience metrics extend data collection beyond the driver’s target constraints to mitigate sampling interference and improve the statistical significance of the metric. These metrics collect telemetry data from computers that meet the following characteristics: downloading drivers from any source, including non-target computers that download the same version of the driver.
A driver is considered identical to another driver when they have the same driver INF version, driver INF date, and architecture.
