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Results & analytics

Why some visitors see the original

You published a personalization, someone opens the page, and they see your original content. Usually that is adfit doing exactly what you asked it to. Here are all the reasons and how to tell which one applies to you. If you turned on an A/B test for the campaign, start with the first one.

Your A/B test is showing them the original

A campaign starts without an A/B test, so this only applies if you turned one on. If you did, start here. When a campaign runs as an A/B test, a share of matching visitors (the holdback) gets your original page on purpose, so adfit has something to compare against. At the recommended 50% holdback, 50 of every 100 matching visitors see the original.

You can change the share, or switch A/B testing off for a campaign, under A/B settings on the Performance page. With A/B testing off, every matching visitor sees the personalized version, and adfit can no longer tell you whether it works better. See Reading A/B results.

The visitor did not match the campaign

A personalization is only shown to visitors whose address matches its targeting. Everyone else gets your original page, which is what you want: a visitor who arrived from an unrelated source should not see a message written for a different ad.

  • The link they used carried no adfit token and none of the UTM values you configured.
  • You generated a new token for the campaign, and an older ad still links with the old one.
  • The campaign targets other pages than the one they landed on.
  • Your targeting uses All of these, so a visitor needs every rule to be true at once.

Check this on Targeting and the test link. The Performance page also has a card Ad visits without a matching personalization with the most common reason for these visits.

The personalization is not live

  • It is still a draft. Only published personalizations reach visitors.
  • It was unpublished, or replaced by a newer version and archived.
  • The page was removed from the campaign.

See Personalizations for publishing and restoring a version.

adfit is not running on the page

If the snippet does not load, nothing can be personalized and every visitor sees your original page. Common causes are a caching plugin serving an old page, a content security policy that blocks the script, or the snippet sitting on some pages of the site but not on all of them.

Start with Verify your connection, then Troubleshooting.

Your plan or your site paused delivery

  • You reached your monthly pageview limit. adfit shows the original page until the start of the next month or until you move to a larger plan. See Pageview usage.
  • The site is paused or was deleted.
  • Your subscription is inactive. See Payments & invoices.

Part of the page stayed original

If a visitor sees some changes but not all of them, adfit found the page different from the version it learned. It never rewrites an element it can no longer identify with confidence, because guessing would be worse than leaving your text alone.

The Delivery health card on a personalization shows how often changes were applied, how often they were skipped, and the top reason (for example Element not found on the page or The original text changed on the page). Update the baseline or edit the change, and the campaign is back to full delivery.

The same person, a day later

Without a consent signal, adfit recognizes a visitor only within one UTC day. Someone who returns the next day is a new visitor for the experiment and can end up in the other group, which means they can see the original today and the personalized version tomorrow.

If your site asks for tracking consent, connecting it lets adfit keep a visitor in the same group for 30 days. See Consent and visitor tracking.

The original was only visible for a moment

On the first page a visitor lands on, adfit hides the elements it may change until it knows what to show, so there is no visible swap. When a visitor moves to another page inside a single page app for the first time in a session, the original text can be visible for a brief moment before the change applies. That is a flash, not a missed personalization. See Snippet behavior.

Two things that are never the cause

Test links and opt outs always show the personalization

A campaign's test link always shows you the personalized version, whatever the holdback is. And a visitor who used window.adfit.optOut() also always sees the personalized version: they are excluded from the measurement, not from the experience.

So if you open a test link and still get your original page, the cause is somewhere else: the personalization is not published, the snippet is not running on that page, or the link points at a path the campaign does not cover.

Turning measurement off for a site is not a cause either. adfit then stops measuring, but your personalizations keep running.

How to tell which one it is

  1. Open the test link

    If the personalized version shows up, delivery works and you are most likely looking at a targeting mismatch or, if the campaign runs as an A/B test, the holdback. If it does not, the cause is on your page or in the campaign state.

  2. Check the campaign on the Performance page

    The status line tells you whether the run is Running, Ended, A/B test off or Page changed, and which holdback it uses.

  3. Check the banners at the top of the page

    Pageview limit reached, This site is paused or Your subscription is inactive each explain a full stop of delivery.

  4. Check Delivery health on the personalization

    It shows whether adfit is applying your changes or skipping them, and why.

  5. Run a connection check

    On the site's Snippet screen, confirm the snippet is installed and reachable on the page in question.

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