Target offers vanish on a normal reload through Web SDK

A Shopify page sends a Web SDK decisioning.propositionFetch event on every reload, yet Target offers appear only after a hard reload or when DevTools is open. A practitioner compared the payloads and found the decisive difference: the failing request omitted query.personalization, including scopes and surfaces. The event being present is therefore weaker evidence than the request containing a personalization query.

Capture two requests side by side

Save the normal-reload and hard-reload requests from the same page, activity, visitor, and QA link. Compare event type, query.personalization, consent state, datastream, property token override, and response. Adobe's Send Event documentation describes explicit scopes and default personalization; its renderDecisions guidance distinguishes asking for decisions from rendering them. Check both. Keep cache and browser timing conditions in the record so a later test can reproduce them.

Isolate initialization and rule timing

The reported setup fires a proposition fetch at Library Loaded and a display event at Page Bottom. Verify that SDK configuration is complete before the fetch rule runs, and that another page-load rule is not consuming or changing the first personalization request. Test a minimal page with one fetch event, then restore the normal rules one at a time. Compare the built library, not only the rule editor. Moving a rule later worsened the community case, so treating DOM Ready as a universal remedy would be unsupported.

Define the release gate

Run repeated normal reloads with DevTools closed, then hard reloads, in a clean test profile. Count requests with a personalization query, responses with a proposition, and rendered offers. Require all three for the intended activity. If the query still disappears under a minimal configuration, send Adobe Support the paired payloads, timestamps, versions, and rule order.

Adovo’s view

A personalization call is useful only if it asks the decisioning question. Measure that question at the network boundary, then follow the answer to the page. A visible offer after one hard reload is a demonstration; repeatable normal loads are the contract.