Debugging Integration Issues
This guide discusses common problems and how to resolve them.
Missing or incorrect anonUserId
anonUserId
The Problem
Promoted uses anonUserId
to create personalized recommendations. anonUserId
is also used as part of the key in the Delivery page database. If the anonUserId
is not specified, Promoted does not know how to differentiate one user from another. If the anonUserId
changes during paging, Promoted treats these as two completely different paged Requests.
To be safe, when anonUserId is missing, Promoted defaults to falling back to client-specific retrieval ranking. If this is an issue, please chat with Promoted's team. Promoted can walk you through alternatives and the additional information that is needed.
Likely top causes
Missing anonUserId
is mostly an issue on web. Mobile apps usually initialize anonUserId
very early on.
Common causes:
- Race condition in web app loading and
anonUserId
initialization.- Example: If the list of content is pre-loaded on the first HTTP request for the index.html and the anonUserId is not initialized until after the html is executed on the browser-side.
- Example: Extra async Javascript needs downloaded after page load to initialize the
anonUserId
.
- The code that creates the
anonUserId
is blocked. E.g. if Segment is used to create aanonUserId
, then privacy protectors that block Segment will causeanonUserId
to not be set. - General coding bugs.
How will this issue be detected?
Promoted tracks the rate of missing anonUserId
s. Promoted will report big changes to the "missing anonUserId
rate" to you.
You might notice this internally if the items do not appear re-ranked. If anonUserId
changes in between page calls, Promoted might duplicate content across pages.
Investigation steps
- Set up logging in your code to catch when anonUserIds are not specified.
- Audit the code flow from anonUserId to Promoted SDK calls.
- If there are interesting dimensions that might impact the problem (e.g. device, browser, authenticated
userId
), forward the values on Delivery calls and Impression records so Promoted can compare the missinganonUserId
rates along the dimensions. - See if this is an issue on the first page that a user visits vs subsequent pages.
Mitigations
- Fix race conditions and bugs in
anonUserId
initialization. - Sync with the Promoted team to learn about alternatives.
Updated about 1 year ago