1440419 - Use probabilistic approach instead of counter for spoc frequency

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Christian Sadilek [:csadilek]]

Current behaviour:
We currently show a sponsored content card on the first new tab after startup and then on every Nth tab, where N is defined in the settings part of Pocket's feed response (spocsPerNewTab).

This is implemented using a simply tab counter, which we don't persist. That means users who restart more frequently will also see spocs more frequently.

New behaviour:
Pocket would like to switch to a probabilistic approach to implement this. So, instead of a counter we would decide based on Math.random() <= spocsPerNewTab / 100. For example, if spocsPerNewTab is configured as 10, this will yield 1 in 10 chance to see a spoc on a new tab, independent of restarts.

Comment 1

[Christian Sadilek [:csadilek]]

Update: To address the misleading field name, Pocket will change spocsPerNewTab to use values between 0 and 1. This will be rolled out in a new API version to avoid compatibility problems.

Comment 2

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/pull/3990

Comment 3

[[github robot]]

Commits pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream

https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/commit/7a5aa2794a969b6b2dff212376dcc7aaf0bb6b3f
Fix Bug 1440419 - Use probabilistic approach instead of counter for spoc frequency

https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/commit/26f52e4f513cc126228c7702233332d16b347f2d
Merge pull request #3990 from csadilek/1440419

 Fix Bug 1440419 - Use probabilistic approach instead of counter for spoc frequency

Comment 4

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/6b64cc96f1b8