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 cant 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, lets 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 / 3 rd Party Adserver End User Advertiser Agency Network – publisher aggregation Ratings/SurveysVerification 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. ADVERTISEMENT Targeting/ re=-targeting Publisher counting User feed back Who viewed the ad? Interactivity 3 rd Party counting Frequency capping Where was ad displayed? Conversion tracking

Ad vendor (3 rd Party) 1 st host, 1 st conn Ad network setup (4 th Party) 2 nd host, 2 nd conn Ad network tag 2 nd host, 3 rd conn Ad network tracking pixel1 2 nd host, 4 th conn Ad network iframe 2 nd host, 5 th conn Ad network more tracking pixel2 2 nd host, 6 th conn 3 rd Party counting 3 rd host, 7 th conn Ad network targeting 4 th host, 8 th conn Ad vendor (5 th Party) 5 th host, 9 th conn Ad vendor (6 th Party) 6 th host, 10 th conn 5 th Party instrumentation 7 th host, 11 th conn Metrics Co. 1 8 th host, 12 th conn Metrics Co. 2 9 th host, 13 th conn 6 th party ad image 11 th host 15 th conn …more from Metrics Co th host 14 th 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

Thanks For questions or collaboration: