Are Ad Servers Bogging Down the Web?

blackbearnh writes "The work of making high-volume web sites perform well is an ongoing challenge, and one that continues to evolve as the nature of web content changes. According to Google Performance Guru Steve Souders, fat JavaScript libraries and rich content are creating new problems for web site tuning, but one of the biggest problems lies outside the control of web site administrators — ad servers. In an interview previewing the upcoming Velocity Online conference run by O'Reilly, Souders talks at length about the real causes of poor web performance today, and in particular, the effect that poorly performing ad servers are creating. 'We adopted a framework of inserting ads, of creating ads, that's pretty simple. And because it's pretty simple, it's not highly tuned. That's one reason why we shouldn't be too surprised that we see performance issues in third party ads. The other reason is that ad services are not focused on technology. Certainly companies like Yahoo and Google and Microsoft, we're technology companies. We focus on technology. So it's not surprising that our web developers are on the leading edge of adopting these performance best practices. And it's also not surprising that ad services might lag two, three or four years behind where these web technology companies are.'"

Comments

Kind of Fitting

[eldavojohn]

That I should read about this story with an AT&T advertisement next to it done up in Adobe Flash 10 when the exact same thing can be achieved in a few lines of HTML. Seriously, it's an all black background with four lines of white text at h2 and h3 ... then an AT&T logo in the bottom and maybe an icon for the button to "learn more." And the article is wondering if advertisers are slowing down the web?

Give the UI back to the user and leave the flashing marquee tags in Las Vegas. The only reason you would use a swf is to achieve some display interaction/functionality not suitable for HTML+CSS+Javascript. This is common sense yet you willing host ads that urinate on common sense. If you want me to read an article on your site, you don't want moving flashing things annoying my eyes while I try to read text so why serve up only a technology (as all ads on Slashdot seem to be) that is designed just for that? Ah, of course, it's your biggest revenue stream. Well then, I guess I'll just dig in and prepare for the cycle to perpetuate ad infinitum. And these two guys can chat all they want about it but there's no solution; it's never going to end because it's Just the Way Things Are.

Re:Kind of Fitting

[countertrolling]

You got it backwards. The purpose of the article is to get you to see the ad. Nobody cares if the article gets read or not.

Slow ads...

[Bert64]

Quite often you will be loading a website, and be staring at a blank screen with "making connection to ads.blablabla" at the bottom.... The page itself has loaded, but won't display until the browser has managed to retrieve the ads.

Also you will see ad servers in completely different locations to the site you're viewing, and therefore much slower.

Also, some ads are especially large, especially animated flash ones, and can add a noticeable delay to a page load even if the ad server isn't slow or lagged.

My pet hate btw, are ads which have sound... I find that EXTREMELY annoying and quickly block access to any ad provider which serves such things.

Re:Slow ads...

[MaWeiTao]

Yes. Another example of the free market working its wonders.

What the hell does this have to do with the free market? Have you ever visited websites in China? Chinese sites are even more cluttered with intrusive advertising.

Whether you like it or not, hosting a site and providing content costs money. So there are two practical options. One, you charge for a subscription. Unfortunately, that almost never works because people seem to believe that access to content should be free. And if you're not providing unique content then you're going to have a hard time charging for what someone else is providing for free. So you're left with the second option, run advertising.

Now, I hate advertising for many reasons, among them are poor design quality, invasiveness and the deceptive nature of so many. Browser performance is another important issue, especially on my Mac where there has always been a tendency for browsers to completely lock up until the page loads. That's why I run ad blockers.

As usual, the power is in the hands of the people. If the vast majority of people cared enough to completely ignore ads, even if they don't outright block them we wouldn't be having this problem. All people would have to do is render advertising completely ineffective. But most people just don't care, even if the issue is raised with them. And who's to say that the alternative business models would be more appealing anyway.

At least this way we have a way of blocking ads. I suspect if the government got involved it wouldn't be to make ads less invasive, but rather ensure that we would have no way to block them. The free market requires that the average person be involved not rely on someone else to fix their problems for them.

I don't even need to read the summary.

[Monkeedude1212]

Technology: Are Ad Servers Bogging Down the Web?

Yes. Period.

Re:I don't even need to read the summary.

[eln]

Well, then you missed the part where a guy from Google is making the claim, and saying that it's primarily because ad companies don't have the expertise in-house to keep up with the latest web performance tricks. Of course, technology companies like Google do, so presumably their ad servers don't bog things down like those other companies' servers do. Oh, did we mention Google also just happens to have an ad serving platform that you could use instead of the ones run by these Luddite ad companies that can barely keep a web server running? Let me point you to our AdSense sales team for more information.

The fact that ad servers tend to screw things up is nothing new. This guy's primary purpose is not so much to point that out, but rather to claim that Google's ad servers don't have that problem, so maybe web admins should use them instead.

no-script

[rgviza]

no-script for the win, yet again.

Flash Ads

[handy_vandal]

Nothing bogs down a site like Flash.

Case in point: Boing Boing.

Several months ago, Boing Boing got a new layout. The old layout worked fine, was easy to read, easy to scroll. The new Boing Boing stutters when scrolled ... it's annoyingly easy to lose your place and scroll way down or way up by mistake. Grrr ....