Performance measurement

When we introduce a UI unit of product recommendation in your website or application, it derives a typical conversion funnel:

API Request

API Response

Impression

Viewable

Click

• API
  • Request: an HTTP request is sent to Miso service asking for recommendation.
  • Response: the response received.
• Impression: content representing recommendation results is rendered on the page or downloaded to user device.
• Viewable impression: the user actually sees the content.
• Click: the user clicks through the product link.

We can derive a few metrics from these events:

• CTR (Clickthrough Rate) = Click / Impression
• VCTR (Viewable Clickthrough Rate) = Click / Viewable Impression
• View Rate = Viewable Impression / Impression

These metrics give us a picture of how well a recommendation unit perform. We hence encourage you to track the three key interaction events: impression, viewable_impression, and click, when you integrate Miso recommendation APIs.

Impression

An impression event is conventionally defined by:

• In a web page, the content is inserted into the DOM tree (even if it's not in the viewport right away), or
• On a mobile device, the content is downloaded to the device.

Note that you don't need to strictly follow the standard definition, and you can make up your own definition depending on your needs.

To send an impression event with SDK:

client.api.interactions.upload({
  type: 'impression',
  product_ids: [...],
  context: {
    custom_context: {
      api_group: '...',
      api_name: '...',
      property: '...'
    }
  }
});

Viewable Impression

A viewable_impression event is conventionally defined by:

• 50% of the content area lies in viewport for a continuous 1 second.

There are variations to both parameters in the industry. Again, you don't need to follow the standard and can have your own design to represent the viewable concept.

Miso SDK offers a helper function to meature viewable impression:

// promise is resolved when element reaches viewable condition
await MisoClient.helpers.viewable(element, options);

The options parameter is an optional object with the following properties:

Name	Type	Description
area	number	The threshold of the portion of content area in viewport to trigger viewable condition. Must be a number between 0 (exclusive) and 1 (inclusive). Default: 0.5 (50%).
duration	number	The time (in millisecond) required to trigger viewable condition. Can be 0 or positive. Default: 1000 (1 second).

To send an viewable_impression event with SDK:

client.api.interactions.upload({
  type: 'viewable_impression',
  product_ids: [...],
  context: {
    custom_context: {
      api_group: '...',
      api_name: '...',
      property: '...'
    }
  }
});

Click

To send an click event with SDK:

client.api.interactions.upload({
  type: 'click',
  product_ids: [...],
  context: {
    custom_context: {
      api_group: '...',
      api_name: '...',
      property: '...'
    }
  }
});