Flicker Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot any flicker issues that may be visible on your site, you should first download and install the Monetate Inspector browser plug-in.

Experiences must be live for at least 30 minutes before content masking fires. Click Content Masks on the Components tab of Monetate Inspector to see if a content mask has come down.

The 'Content Masks' view of the Components tab of Monetate Inspector

Synchronous Tag

Ensure that your site is using the synchronous version of the Monetate tag.

Only the synchronous tag supports content masking. During page load, masks are served in entry.js, which is not called by the asynchronous tag.

Callout of the 'entry.js' JavaScript entry in the Developer Tools frame of a browser

The synchronous tag provides for the optimal Monetate experience by executing content masking as soon as the tag fires.

Tag Placement

Ensure that you paste the Monetate tag as high in the page header as possible to give it the highest priority during load time.

The Tag Health tab of Monetate Inspector, with 'Tag Location' reported as 'Optimal: #1 of 48 JavaScript and stylesheet requests on the page'

While Monetate can function when you implement it through a tag management system (TMS), doing so introduces potential timing issues that can prevent Monetate from optimal firing.

Avoiding 'Unknown' Track Issues

Verify that you have implemented the Monetate JavaScript API properly. Specifically, ensure there are no rogue "unknown" track issues because entry masks are removed on the first track of the page.

Refer to Troubleshooting an 'Unknown' Track for more information.

Experience-Specific Checklist

Use the checklist below to troubleshoot an experience if you're experiencing flicker on the page on which it's running.

  1. Is the experience active?
    • If yes, proceed to step 2.
    • If no, activate the experience, wait 30 minutes, and then check the experience again
  2. Are you using content masking appropriately?
    • If yes, proceed to step 3.
    • If no, apply content masking to the action and then start over. See Content Masking for more information.
  3. Is the content mask being evaluated?
    • If yes, proceed to step 4.
    • If no, ensure the content mask is running on the correct page(s) and that the regular expressions are correct. Refer to Regular Expressions in Personalization for more information.

      If you're replacing only your site's homepage hero image, then you should consider having the content mask that runs when the regular expression equals https?\/\/.www\.domain\.com\/($|?.*) to ensure that the mask fires on the homepage with or without query string parameters, such as Google Analytics UTM codes.

  4. Are you masking the right element selector on the page?
    • Element selectors determine what native site content is masked as an experience fires.
    • While you may want to mask the same selector as the action's relative element selector, consider masking a larger area to further reduce the impact of larger layout changes.
    • The selector you want to mask should be available in the source code of the page. It should not be dynamically rendered or generated.

    See Element Selectors for more information.

Submit a support ticket using the Monetate Technical Support portal (support.monetate.com) if you continue to have trouble with flicker or have questions about troubleshooting it.

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