Why some visitors see the original

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 parameter and none of the UTM values you configured.
• You gave the campaign a new adfit parameter, 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• It was unpublished, or replaced by a newer version and archived.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.
• This site is paused or was deleted.
• No active plan, Your subscription is paused, Your first payment hasn't gone through or There's a problem with your payment. See Manage your subscription.

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 many visitors in the personalized group entered on that page, how many issues adfit hit when it skipped a change, and the most common 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

Which version a matched visitor sees is kept in their browser, for as long as your Variant persistence setting remembers it: until they close the tab with Session, for up to 30 days with Persistent, and not at all with None. A visitor who matches the campaign again after that is assigned to a group again. If the campaign runs as an A/B test, they can end up in the other group, so they can see the personalized version on one page or visit and your original on the next.

Tracking consent does not change this. Connecting your consent tool changes how long adfit can recognize a visitor for measurement, not which version they see. See Variant persistence and 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.

What the test link and an opt out change

So if the page you open through its test link still shows your original, 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. 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. 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. 3

   Check the banners at the top of the page

   Pageview limit reached, This site is paused, No active plan, Your subscription is paused, Your first payment hasn't gone through or There's a problem with your payment each explain why adfit is not personalizing on your site right now.

4. 4

   Check Delivery health on the personalization

   It shows how many visitors in the personalized group entered on that page, how many issues adfit hit when it skipped a change, and the most common reason.

5. 5

   Run a connection check

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

Related

• Reading A/B results: the holdback, and what the numbers mean.
• Targeting and the test link: who matches a campaign.
• Troubleshooting: a snippet that will not connect.