Web Scrape Refresh Policy

The LiveScrape, LiveFeed and LiveSocial elements use Liveclicker's webscraping technology to generate content. In general, content is updated every 10 minutes. In some cases, content updates might be more frequent.

Regular on-going campaign delivery

Frequency of refresh: Every 10 minutes

After your campaign launches, content is refreshed every 10 minutes at the most. Content updates are taking place when content is requested from users. The content is stored on Liveclicker's cache and reused until fresh content is created.

 

Webscrape Refresh Process

After 10 minutes of generating a webscrape or feed for a campaign, updates will not happen unless a user opens an email that contains a reference to the webscrape or feed. This is what happens upon open:

  • The user open that triggers the content update will be shown the cached "stale" version of the content. Meanwhile, the content update process will start which can take up to 30 seconds.

  • Subsequent users will be shown the cached "stale" version of the content until the updated content is available. Once the cache is refreshed, all users will start receiving the cached "fresh" version of the content.

  • If Liveclicker's webscrape technology fails to update its content (because the origin site is down, slow, or has changed), then the fallback image associated with the campaign will be served (*see below).

  • If the user opens an email after a long lapse without impressions the update process will start in order to avoid showing too "stale" content.

 

Webscrape Update Failures

Failures generally happen due to difficulties pulling content from the origin site, and are handled as follows:

  • The user is served either a cached "stale" version of the content or the campaign's fallback image as described above.

  • Liveclicker will retry to refresh the content up to 16 times, from multiple platforms, at specific time intervals (immediately, after 2 minutes, after 4 minutes, after 8 minutes, after 16 minutes and after 32 minutes).

    • After 16 failed attempts, the webscrape or feed is set to "DEAD" status internally, and no update will take place until the webscrape or feed settings are changed within the user interface.

    • After 8 failed attempts, the specific webscrape or feed is set to "WARNING" status internally and Liveclicker 's customer support is notified.

 

Inside the Liveclicker user interface

Frequency of refresh: Immediately

When you are working on a campaign inside of the Liveclicker user interface, content is refreshed immediately upon any saved changes.

 

Special cases

Frequency of refresh: Varies

If the standard frequency updates do not fit your campaign scenario, and you need more frequent content updates, Liveclicker Customer Support can temporarily assign a custom refresh frequency to your campaign.