When a page loads, the AB Tasty Tag verifies the targeting conditions that you configured inside this targeting step. The 'When' section adds new timing conditions on top of what you previously configured (URL of the page, specific page elements, triggers, and segments). The Frequency condition is set on the unique visitor level (cookie). They will be affected to the campaign only if they meet ALL the targeting conditions.
Configuration
By default, the visitor will be affected "anytime" if they meet the other conditions (segments/pages/triggers aka who/where/how).
To determine at which Frequency the visitor will be targeted, follow the steps below:
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Open the When will the campaign be displayed section and select one of the following Frequency options:
- Anytime (default option): for the visitor to be targeted each time they land on the page and respect other targeting conditions.
- Once: for the visitor to be targeted only once if they land on the page and respect the other targeting conditions.
- Once per session: for the visitor to be targeted only once per session if they land on the page and respect the other targeting conditions.
- At regular intervals: for the visitor to be targeted at specific regular interval. Intervals should then be configured (see below) - Click Save step.
Be careful! The Targeting Frequency option is a targeting condition allowing you to add a temporal condition of targeting upon unique visitors. The frequency is based on the ABTasty cookie value. Learn more about it in our developer documentation.
In this sense :
- It differs from the widgets recurrence setup as it is not a display condition but a targeting acceptance condition affecting individually unique visitors.
- It also differs from the Scheduler as the Frequency options are only a targeting condition not affecting the campaign status (live/pause), the latter impacting all visitors without discrimination.
Focus on the Regular Intervals configuration:
This option allows you to target your visitors on a specified timeframe. It's really useful to be able to promptly send specific messages to your visitors, and have confidence around the visibility of this message.
To configure the regular intervals of the campaign's targeting, follow the steps below:
- Open the When will the campaign be displayed block and select the At regular intervals option in the "The targeted segment will see the test" list.
- Determine the regular intervals of the campaign's targeting using the Day, Week, or Session option, combined with the numerical selector.
- Click Save step.
Please note that the At regular intervals option is to affect your visitors to the campaign not once but during the entire day or week or session!
Other example, if you want to display a message targeting all your URLs (or a wide ‘contains’) and having as frequency option ‘every 2 sessions’, the message will not only appear once on one page during the ongoing session as you may expect. Instead, the user will be affected on every targeted page ('Where' section) during the ongoing session.
The same goes for 'every x days' and 'every x weeks' conditions. If you want to display the modifications made only one time per session, please use the frequency options 'Once per session'. Meaning that if I choose each 3 days, I will see the campaign on the day 1 whatever the session or the number of time I see the campaign during the day, same on the day 4, then on the day 7 etc…
QA the session and time intervals
- First day starts at 0.00am the given day depending on the recurrence set up by the customer
- Last day ends at 23.59pm the given day depending on the recurrence set up by the customer
We use the ABTasty cookie (campaign’s timestamp of the last time the visitor has seen the campaign and session count) to manage the interval with the tag and our API ( See documentation) :
1 - QA day and week intervals:
You can edit the cookie to QA the frequency by replacing the timestamp of the last time the visitor saw the campaign (using this website or another), saving the cookie, refresh the page and QA again.
The tag will compare the timestamp of the last time the visitor has seen the campaign and the current time locally on your browser, thus you cannot QA the future so you need to QA it backward from your local time to test past timestamps according to your frequency scenario.
2 - QA session interval:
For every x session frequency, you can play with the first part of the cookie and the ns attribute : the tag and API do a count there.
Example :
- If I am at my 1st session as a unique visitor with this uid, ns=1
- During this session I see the campaign which has a recurrence of every 3 sessions.
- If I want to QA the frequency at the second session after seeing the campaign the first time to be sure I am not affected to it, I will change the ns count by ns=1+1 session) so ns=2
- If I want to QA the frequency at the 4th session after seeing the campaign the first time to be sure I am affected to it 3 days after, I will change the ns count by ns=1+3 sessions) so ns=4