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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.'"
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.
My work here is dung.
Having worked for an ad-serving company, I'm pretty confident that the reason they don't care is that they're not measured on the speed at which they serve up ads.
If high-value websites started rejecting ad networks that served ads in less then x milliseconds after the rest of the page was downloaded, you'd see ad servers speed up, quick.
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.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
This is the main reason I use Adblock Plus. If the advertisements weren't so annoying then I wouldn't mind them, there are a few text ads I don't block because they aren't intrusive at all. But when I see flash based ads that yes could have been done with HTML or JavaScript then I block those immediately.
Technology: Are Ad Servers Bogging Down the Web?
Yes. Period.
no-script for the win, yet again.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
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 ....
-kgj
I realize that most websites run some version or another of "adverts", but generally speaking, most of those sites are marginal value to start. The sites I frequent usually use text ads, and not the flash (pun intended) graphical ads on some of the more questionable sites.
That actually reminded me of a short study I did in my English class a number of years ago. I wanted to know if you could get a quick feeling for the quality of a magazine based only on the number of advertisements/glossiness of the publication. Given the limited time and amount of money I was willing to spend I chose "Popular Science" and "Scientific American." PopSci had many more adverts than SciAm and, IMO, this means that SciAm is the better magazine. Yeah, it was a little subjective, but it was only a 5 page paper for an English class.
It's nice to see that the same thinking still applies to websites.
Nonsense! I for one have chosen to keep my websites ad-free, hence no ad servers and no slowdown. The same goes for untold thousands of other webmasters.
If you've chosen differently then ... well, I suppose it's your website and your decision — but please don't come whining to us about the consequences.
In 1995, columnist and Ethernet-inventor Bob Metcalfe was again going on about a topic that eventually had him literally eating his words (he had to chop up a column in a blender with water and chug it) - that the Internet was going to collapse from all the heavy bandwidth demands of its exponentially-expanding clientele.
So I did a "View Source" on the Infoworld page with his column on it. I've lost the E-mail now, but the stats were something like his column being 2000 bytes and the sum of all the advertising around it, mostly GIF images at the time, was over 20,000 bytes. The Ad/Content ratio even then was over 10:1.
Metcalfe, who'd been railing against irresponsible bandwidth consumption in the column, could only plead that he had no control over the magazine's decisions on what went around it.
The web has always been the reverse of TV, where the ad/content bandwidth is about 1:4 or even 1:5. It's not far different from some magazines, though, where I swear there are 3 pages of ads for every page of content. And if you digitized the magazine, the ads would mostly be images, the content mostly text, and the ratio would be at least 10:1.
This is all prologue to new web content where you are slowed down not so much by download times as the start-up times for various Flash and JavaScript programs that make the ads so much more intrusive, zipping back and forth over the text you're trying to read, or just dancing in the corner of the page.
This is all necessary: they do what they MUST to get response from the ads. If the stats don't show a response, they stop buying them and the business model fails.
Everybody says "Nobody will pay for content on the Internet". Yes, they will. The put up with all that crap rather than pull out a credit card. They just pay with their time and attention instead of actual cash.
Rod Serling, one of the great TV writers of all time, once commented that it is hard to tell a story when you must work it around being interrupted every ten minutes by dancing rolls of toilet paper. I wonder what he'd think of writing for a medium where the toilet paper literally dances all over your words until you click on it to make it go back to the lower right frame.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dude - you just gave me eye cancer.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
"Top 3 addins for privacy: Better Privacy, AdBlock Plus, and NoScript, hands down imo." - by MollyB (162595) on Monday November 30, @01:37PM (#30272526)
Per my subject line above? How about a GLOBAL solution, instead, & one that extends to ALL of your "webbound apps", instead, AND acts as "layered security" in combination with the FF/Mozilla only methods you use (which slow your browser down, use CPU cycles & more... where this solution does not & covers ALL webbound apps, globally)??
Ok, well then - Here we go, & on that note, specifically:
Here is a GOOD SOLID & GLOBAL WORK-AROUND, CALLED A HOSTS FILE!
(It works for more speed online, AND SECURITY ESPECIALLY... Also, it works for your money, because you pay for your linetime out of pocket most likely as I do, you can get back your speed, AND, gain security easily, & from a single easily edited file & a file eats no CPU cycles like a local DNS server can (& are not as security vulnerable either if you protect write access to a HOSTS file also)... Anyhow/anyways - Here goes:
SO - "that all said & aside"? Well, per your reply??
Hey - NO PROBLEM, 110% agreement here on that account... & more (like more speed online AND more security, via a SINGLE EASILY EDITED + POPULATED FILE, called a HOSTS file that extends to EVERY WEBBOUND APP YOU HAVE):
I use a custom HOSTS file, in addition to the tools others here in this thread have noted (which MANY like FF addons only really function for FireFox/Mozilla products, but don't extend globally to all other webbound applications, & that is part of what HOSTS files give you above the methods you extoll + utilize: "GLOBAL COVERAGE", & of ALL webbound apps, not just FireFox/Mozilla ones via the addons you noted + use yourself...).
HOSTS files can be used to blockout KNOWN "bad" adserves, maliciously coded sites or adbanners, and "botnet C&C servers" too!
You can obtain reliable HOSTS files from reputable lists for more security online, but also for speed!
(More on that later & WHY/HOW (I use reliable lists for that, such as these HOSTS @ Wikipedia.com -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file or those from mvps.org (a good one this one))
I also further populate & keep current my custom HOSTS file with up to date information in regards to all of those threats, via:
----
A.) Spybot "Search & Destroy" updates (populates HOSTS and browser block lists)
B.) Sites like ZDNet's Mr. Dancho Danchev's blog -> http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/
C.) Sites like FireEye -> http://blog.fireeye.com/
D.) SRI -> http://mtc.sri.com/
----
My HOSTS file incorporates ALL of the entries from the HOSTS files shown @ wikipedia as well... gaining me speed online (by blocking adbanners, which have been compromised many times the past few years now by malscripted exploits (examples below)).
(I combined ALL reputable HOSTS files with one of my own (30,000 entries), & I removed duplicates removed via a Borland Delphi app I wrote to do so called "APK HOSTS File Grinder 4.0++". That program also functions to change the default larger & SLOWER 127.0.0.1 blocking 'loopback adapter' IP address to either 0.0.0.0 (for VISTA/Windows Server 2008/Windows 7, smaller & thus faster than 127.0.0.1 default) or the smallest & fastest 0 "blocking 'IP ADDRESS'" (for Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 which can STILL use it (& it was added in a service pack on Windows 2000, only on 12/09/2008 MS patch tuesday was it removed for VISTA onwards (& now all these "phunny little bugs" are showing up as FLAWS in this new NDIS6 approach via WFP as well in the firewall, which ROOTKIT.COM has stated (with code too no less on how it is done) ->