Re:HTTPS Results in 7% Google AdX Revenue Drop
by toast0 on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @01:26AM
(#11804784)
> can someone explain why ad networks seem to be lagging behind modern web best practices?
Sites that use the ad networks to manage their advertising inventory are probably not going to go with a network that provides a better end-user experience, if it means the network doesn't have enough ads to fill the inventory or they're lower CPM -- if they have a significant interest in quality end-user experience, they're likely going to manage their inventory themselves.
> For example, terrible flash ads, ads that break the site they're displayed on, lack of HTTPS, malware
Advertisers love flash ads, love ads that takeover the whole damn site, don't care about HTTPS, and would like to have every page view counted with about 70 different beacon services -- that's going to be way slower if you have to negotiate a different tls session for each. Advertisers serving malware would like to serve it, clearly. An ad network needs advertisers, so there you go.
Also, an ad network needs to make sure they can show an ad everytime one is requested, so they'll backfill with other ad networks if they have to -- hard to maintain quality in that case. (Although personally, when I was involved in a website making money with ads, I was a lot happier with not showing an ad (and just moving the rest of the content up) when there was no quality ad available -- unseemly ads make my page feel unseemly; not all sites have the luxury to make that decision though)
Sites that use the ad networks to manage their advertising inventory are probably not going to go with a network that provides a better end-user experience, if it means the network doesn't have enough ads to fill the inventory or they're lower CPM -- if they have a significant interest in quality end-user experience, they're likely going to manage their inventory themselves.
> For example, terrible flash ads, ads that break the site they're displayed on, lack of HTTPS, malware
Advertisers love flash ads, love ads that takeover the whole damn site, don't care about HTTPS, and would like to have every page view counted with about 70 different beacon services -- that's going to be way slower if you have to negotiate a different tls session for each. Advertisers serving malware would like to serve it, clearly. An ad network needs advertisers, so there you go.
Also, an ad network needs to make sure they can show an ad everytime one is requested, so they'll backfill with other ad networks if they have to -- hard to maintain quality in that case. (Although personally, when I was involved in a website making money with ads, I was a lot happier with not showing an ad (and just moving the rest of the content up) when there was no quality ad available -- unseemly ads make my page feel unseemly; not all sites have the luxury to make that decision though)