1930165 - [Experiment] Spoc position #2 does not display a sponsored placement

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Ciprian Muresan [:cmuresan], Ecosystem QA, OOO until the 16th of Dec needinfo @mcoman or @poiegas]

[Affected versions]:

• Firefox Release 132.0.1 - Build ID: 20241103194048

[Affected Platforms]:

• Windows 10
• macOS 14

[Prerequisites]:

• Have a new Firefox Profile where you have not seen the new tab page yet.
• Unenroll from all current experiments.
• Have the following preferences set in about:config:
  • browser.search.region set to US
  • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.discoverystream.contextualContent.region-content-config set to US
  • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.discoverystream.spocs-endpoint set to https://spocs.getpocket.com/spocs?country=US&region=CA
  • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.discoverystream.spoc-positions set to 1,2,5,9,18,20

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Open the browser from prerequisites.
2. Open a New Tab and observe the 2nd and 3rd cards.

[Expected result]:

• Both cards are sponsored.

[Actual result]:

• Only the card in the 2nd position is sponsored.

[Notes]:

• The issue is not reproducible on Ubuntu 24.04 on Firefox Beta 132.0b6.
• It seems that as long as the contextual column is displayed, the 3rd card (position 2) is not displayed.
• There are only 20 cards on the page instead of the usual 21.
• Looking over the spoc positions from this document and based on my testing, we could use the following value to configure the current card placements with the spoc positions from the document -- 1,3,7,9,18,20, however this will make the positions on Linux look diferent.
• Attached a screen recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[Scott [:thecount] Downe]

I think if we go with positions "1,3,6,9,18,20", we still have 1 spoc in each row.

Comment 2

[Ciprian Muresan [:cmuresan], Ecosystem QA, OOO until the 16th of Dec needinfo @mcoman or @poiegas]

Marking the issue as Fixed by the new positions. Verified on Firefox Release 132.0.1 (BuildID 20241103194048) and Firefox Beta 133.0b7 (BuildID 20241109150636), en-US, US region, Windows 10.

Updating the flags and description with the correct info.

Comment 3

[Ciprian Muresan [:cmuresan], Ecosystem QA, OOO until the 16th of Dec needinfo @mcoman or @poiegas]

Marking the issue as Verified based on Comment 2.