Technology
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Ad Serving - Cache Busters
Online advertising has been plagued from the start by the technology behind ad serving systems and trying to explain the rationale for advertising costs. With varying definitions over "impressions", proxy server and caching issues, and so on.
The technical folks who work on the ad serving systems have a difficult time trying to fix the problem without causing a multitude of other problems. So, what do you need to know and ask when placing online media buys at your favorite, high-traffic sites?
Ask the ad server or media placement company about caching. The big deal here is that many large ISP (Internet Service Providers) often cache frequently accessed content on their own proxy servers. When your advertising banner or image is called from a cache, either a browser or proxy cache, then the ad serving software doesn't record the request as an impression, even though by most definitions, it should be.
Let's explain the scenario in detail. You, the viewer, calls up a major web portal, your browser requests the HTML code and images from the portal's servers. Some of the image calls will be redirected out to third-party servers to retrieve ad images. At this point, the portal's ad-serving software will record an "impression" as it makes the requests from the third-party server. It may only take a second for the ad to be delivered and many thing can happen in that second. You might decide to STOP the load, move to another page or click an additional link, hence stopping the download of the full ad. In either case, the portal's server counts an impression, while most third-party servers will not.
Now pretend that you allowed the download of the ad and both the portal's server and the third-party records an impression. Your clicking through the web site and come to a page where this same ad image is needed. Well, the portal site will then remember this same image and simply serve it up from cache, quickly, while recording another impression. However, since the third-party server was not requested for the image, it doesn't record the image.
You see the problem. The difference between impressions from the third-parties and the ad servers can be dramatic. Most ad serving system analysts have created patches to dynamically number the individual requests, hence fooling the system to go out and request the ad image every time. Some patches work better than others, so check with your media buyer and ask them the tough questions regarding their server and its caching issues.
Don't let this inhibit you from advertising online. This is where your audience is moving toward and even thought the measuring metrics may not be air-tight, but the benefits are surely measurable. Online advertising is here to stay, so make sure your company stays with the traffic.
Contact Empire for more information on where and who you can advertise with and how to get started. |
