display ads and page performance: a brief tour of the ad ecosystem tony ralph
TRANSCRIPT
Display Ads and Page Performance:A Brief Tour of the Ad Ecosystem
Tony Ralph
The dilemma
engineering
Display ads are compromising our performance goals and impacting user satisfaction
Display ads are critical to our revenue model and we need every sale. We can’t raise the bar higher than other publishers with strict performance requirements.
business
Navigating the dilemma
Trends in display ad instrumentation Improvement
- what has worked: learnings- finding the balance- next steps
A brief (but timely) digression/shirts/Soccer/SLOVAKIA.swf/shirts/Soccer/ITALY.swf/shirts/Soccer/PARAGUAY.swf/shirts/Soccer/NEW_ZEALAND.swf
/shirts/Soccer/PORTUGAL.swf/shirts/Soccer/brazil.swf/shirts/Soccer/KOREA_DPR.swf/shirts/Soccer/COTE_D'IVOIRE.swf/shirts/Soccer/CHILE.swf/shirts/Soccer/SPAIN.swf/shirts/Soccer/SWITZERLAND.swf
/shirts/Soccer/HONDURAS.swf/shirts/Soccer/NIGERIA.swf/shirts/Soccer/KOREA.swf/shirts/Soccer/GREECE.swf/shirts/Soccer/argentina.swf/shirts/Soccer/SLOVENIA.swf/shirts/Soccer/ENGLAND.swf/shirts/Soccer/USA.swf/shirts/Soccer/ALGERIA.swf
Combine:
beyond individual ads, let’s take a look at the “ecosystem”
1 request vs. 20
cached request…Content:
~ 15 HTTP requests (200)
Display ads:~ 30 HTTP requests
(200)
what is the function of the display ad requests?
A case study
The entities and intermediaries
Circumstances have evolved since this initial effort… proliferation of user generated content (blogs, social, mobile) economic climate has changed evolution in optimization strategies (targeting, RTB, network
aggregation)
3 years ago we divided the display world into these entities to divide best practices re: ad load performance
Optimization has evolved. Advertisers have a wide array of offerings to help identify and refine audience segments across publishers.
Publisher
Vendor /3rd Party Adserver
End User
Advertiser
Agency
Network – publisher aggregation
Ratings/Surveys Verification
DSPs – exchange aggregation
Exchange – network & demand aggregation, RTB
There exists a wide array of entities and intermediaries in the display ad delivery
chain guiding the right ad to the right set of eyeballs at the right time.
Instrumentation is implemented via cookies/pixeling across multiple domains, 302s, nth party serving, JavaScript, and
associated data mining.
ADVERTISEM
ENT
Targeting/re=-targeting
Publishercounting
User feed back Who viewed the ad?
Interactivity
3rd Partycounting
Frequency capping
Where wasad displayed?
Conversiontracking
Ad vendor (3rd Party) 1st host, 1st conn
Ad network setup (4th Party) 2nd host, 2nd conn
Ad network tag 2nd host, 3rd conn
Ad network tracking pixel1 2nd host, 4th conn
Ad network iframe 2nd host, 5th conn
Ad network more tracking pixel2 2nd host, 6th conn
3rd Party counting 3rd host , 7th conn
Ad network targeting 4th host , 8th conn
Ad vendor (5th Party) 5th host, 9th conn
Ad vendor (6th Party) 6th host, 10th conn
5th Party instrumentation 7th host, 11th conn
Metrics Co. 1 8th host, 12th conn
Metrics Co. 2 9th host, 13th conn
6th party ad image 11th host 15th conn
…more from Metrics Co. 2 10th host 14th conn
1 ad: 11 hosts, 15 connections, 6 domains
This implementation may or may not have been the optimal balance for the publisher.
The value this performance community can add is ensuring a viable relationship
between revenue and advertising optimization and web page performance.
Improvement
1) Ads are not an afterthought – holistic performance model: content + ads, balance
– this works!
2) Give frontend experts the “rules”– ingenious, motivated
– marshal misguided efforts
3) Normalize metrics/guidelines to rate ad load performance– IAB Working Group
– YSlow; Google ‘Page Speed’ for ads and trackers
4) Publisher guardrails– aggregate client-side controls: “friendly iframe”, timing measurements & backfill,
security, discrepancy mitigation, verification, ad rotation in AJAX environment, graceful
– standards, guidelines, unification of best practices
