Web banners: FAQs

How to test web banners?

1. The easiest way is to create an URL condition containing

/?{testphrase} 

When opening the URL when the banner is supposed to appear - just type your condition behind the URL.

For example, for: /?meiro

web banner will appear on: https://www.myweb.io/?meiro 

2. The second way is to create the testing cookie.

In the example above: 

-cookie is “meiro”,

-value is “test”.

This cookie needs to be set in the dev tools of your browser. This can be done either manually or through the console input: document.cookie=”meiro=test”

After this, the page needs to be hard refreshed and the web banner will appear.

Why the active web banner is not visible on the website?

There are several reasons why the user might not be able to see the web banner on the website:

1. A user is expecting the web banner to be displayed on the URL which is not specified in the web banner conditions.
2. A user reached a total global cap count for pop up web banners or individual pop up web banner frequency cap for his meiro cookie. This can be circumvented by opening a new private browsing session.
3. A user is using a different device/browse etc. which is not specified in the web banner conditions.
4. The time specified in the web banner conditions has not yet passed or expired.
5. User’s IP address is matching the restriction in the ‘Device: IP address’ web banner condition. User can either delete the condition or connect to the mobile hotspot or VPN.
6. The SDK has not been cached yet in the user’s browser. More information is in question below.

Will a web banner appear immediately to the user after it is set?

The SDK is cached in the user’s browser with an expiration limit—this might be up to 30 minutes, depending on the setting for a particular instance. This means that if the user has just opened your website and received the SDK, they will not receive any changes to the SDK for the duration of the expiration interval. Therefore, while some users will see the new banner immediately, it might take some time for all users to be able to see the new banner.

What will happen if multiple web banners have the same priority set, settings and conditions?

Pop up web banners

The banner which has been shown to this user the least number of times will be selected or the one that has been shown the longest time ago.

Embedded web banners

The banner that has been displayed the least number of times during user's session.

For example, in case of  3 banners A,B, C, each starting at 0 impressions:

- first page view, banner B will be selected (randomly), impression for banner B in current session is 1,

- second page view, only banner A or banner C can be displayed as they have 0 impressions in current session, banner C will be randomly selected from these two, impression set to 1,

- third page view in current session: only banner A has 0 impressions, will be displayed and impression set to 1

- fourth page view in current session, each banner has same impression set to 1 so the algorithm starts same again as in point 1 when all of them have 0 impressions.

What will happen if I have multiple containers on the website with the same ID? Where embedded web banner will be displayed?

First of all it is  not a valid HTML document, because there can be only unique IDs on a single webpage of the website.

In this case SDK uses document.getElementById method for finding element by ID, it will find the first one in HTML document and place the banner there.

What will happen if I have no conditions set for the web banner?

If no conditions are set, the banner will always be considered for display and will only be limited by frequency cap (for pop up web banners) and priority settings (both for pop up and embedded web banners or number of impressions).

Who is considered "user" in web banner settings?

What is the definition of "session" in pop up web banner frequency?

If a web banner is re-named which name is used in reporting or in attributes?

Usually it is the latest name that is used in attributes or reporting, but each individual name can be tracked as well (to discuss details contact the Meiro team). 

How embedded/ pop up web banners affect the speed/ performance of the website?

The SDK is loaded asynchronously so it does not block page loading. Issues may be caused when a lot of web banners are set for a certain page with HTTP request conditions. In this case, it can eat up to 6 network connections and the browser can handle only 4 more for other requests (e.g.  for Chrome).

How embedded/ pop up web banners affect web vitals?

Web banner conditions consist of two types which we can call “offline” and “online”.

“Offlines” are evaluated immediately, but the “online” ones request API.

We optimized conditions evaluation in a way that “online” conditions are evaluated only if “offline” conditions pass.

There are three core web vitals metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Both types of web banners can affect the LCP metric if you make the banners the biggest element on the website page. You need to keep in mind that the SDK needs to evaluate a set of conditions for each enabled web banner and if you have a lot of web banners set for a certain page with “online” conditions, it takes some time.

FID metric is not affected.

CLS metric can be affected in the case of embedded web banners but can be resolved by specifying the dimensions of the embedded web banner container.

How container (element ID) will behave if Meiro displays embedded web banners with a delay?

It can be done in two ways:
1) A container is an empty div, invisible in the layout.

Once the banner is selected, it’s placed inside the container, and the content shifts in some way (because a new element with dimensions is added).

2) A container is an empty div but has dimensions.

In this case, there can be some loading indication programmed which will be covered by a loaded banner later.

In this case, there needs to be some fallback if SDK is not loaded or there is not a banner fulfilling conditions.