Might be obvious, but this is why you should use some asynchronous code to load your ads.

If someone knows how to do with with OpenX, let me know. I've read using iFrames is a solution, but don't know the disadvantages to this.

Could you please give us some links or info on loading the ads asynchronously?

Is it compatible with Adsense policy?

Here are some links. I don't have a rock solid answer regarding Google's TOS for this, my apologies.

Async Adsense: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/2506/is-it-pos...

Async Analytics: http://www.ditii.com/2009/12/01/google-analytics-asynchronou...

From the first link: "this practice might not be welcome by Google".

I don't know what's the second link for, as analytics are asynchronous per se?

EDIT: By the date on the second url, very probably is a hack for an older version of Analytics.

EDIT 2: First link is an unaccepted answer on an stackoverflow-like site on the topic for using an against the rules of Google hack. And Google doesn't need much help for closing your account and your money.

Re: Analytics; I'm not sure if the default code google gives you for analytics is async _now_ but based on this http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncTra... it certainly seems like it, at least at one point, it was not. Again, that may have changed.

Here is another link for async adsense with code included. The author has also posted his e-mail conversation with a rep. from the Google Adsense team. There is nothing fancy going on here, just iframes, really.

http://geoland.org/2007/01/adsense-in-iframe/

You could just reach out to adsense yourself and report back what you find regarding violation of the Google Adsense TOS.

Google Ad Manager -really- does not like you doing anything asynchronously, unfortunately.

Yeah, its because many of the ad networks that you may load into it simply cannot work asynchronously (document.write). So they have to enforce synchronous loading on the ad manger code.

Not always possible with all banner networks I am afraid!

Those banner networks deserve to lose customers to the banner networks that do support asynchronous loading. Does anybody have a list of which banner networks allow it and which don't?

It is if you stick their ads in an iframe, ala Grooveshark.

Not if they are contextual and demand the host script to be in the top level document. (and this is against the terms of use of many advertising services)

you lose ad revenue if you do that. the longer it takes the ad to show up on the page, the less likely people are to click on it.

The longer it takes me to load your page, the less likely I will ever see it (because I back out to my previous page) or will ever come back to it (because of the bad experience).