4 ms·

- Greater visibility (since you can take up most of the screen) - Likely a much higher chance of accidental clicks (not a good thing for advertisers, but that

- Greater visibility (since you can take up most of the screen) - Likely a much higher chance of accidental clicks (not a good thing for advertisers, but that won't stop people from claiming this format has a higher CTR) - Focuses your attention way more on the ad. Instead of something that just scrolls by super quickly with the flick of a thumb, until you get to the next block of content, the image itself is static, so your brain can parse it even in the couple of seconds it is on the screen because it is not actually moving.

cramforce 10y ago
We spent a lot of time making accidental clicks unlikely (and making sure that scrolling on the ad scrolls the page) One other benefit is that because the ad is on a parallax pane, it can resize itself without disrupting the page flow (which AMP does not allow).
- shostack 10y ago
  Are you on the team that made these new formats? I'd love to know what sorts of things you do to avoid accidental clicks. I assume click location relative to the frame of the unit is part of it, and possible pausing to wait for swipe activity to confirm a click, but would really be interested in knowing more (I'm a buy-side ad guy). Unfortunately, Google isn't the only one with this format, and on many pages I've had false clicks when scrolling through this format. To most users, they will have no clue whether this is a Google ad or not, and I'd be shocked if they didn't equate bad experiences with every network, regardless of whose ad was actually misbehaving.
  - cramforce 10y ago
    I'm the tech lead of the AMP project. Our work was mostly related to ensuring that native scrolling of the main page works as expected when the finger touches the ad iframe. This is non-trivial and most implementations do it by forwarding touch events from the ad up to the page, which then feels laggy and leads to touches that are interpreted as clicks.
    - shostack 10y ago
      Interesting--thanks for the insights. Overall, I'm curious to see what happens with this. I have my own thoughts on the business side of AMP as it relates to advertisers, publishers, exchanges, DMPs, etc., but from a technical standpoint it is pretty cool what you guys are doing.
- derefr 10y ago
  What's the reason for having the ad be an iframe at all? If this is intended to be a low-bandwidth experience, and the ads aren't going to animate or contain Javascript, then why not just mandate that the ad format be a plain image in PNG/SVG (or in AMP HTML, but with the proviso that it will be baked from an offscreen DOM fragment into a static image blob before being displayed) and then just display it as the background-image of a really long div, with fixed attachment and no repeat?
wodenokoto 10y ago
- It doesn't have greater visibility than an inline picture. They have the same size. - I'm not seeing how this is easier to accidentally click than a large, inline picture. - the static part is a really good point.
- shostack 10y ago
  Depending on the size of the inline picture (not just with Google) it could be larger. I've definitely seen some shorter native formats in the wild. The accidental click comes in since you can't just scroll past this with one swipe. I haven't tested this particular one, but every single other flying carpet I've seen restricts flicking motions to get past it in one fell swoop. They require multiple clicks to inch it up the screen, and that requirement alone increases the risk for accidental clicks by the mere fact that it requires more touches on the ad to get past it (despite said touches being paired with a swipe motion). I really hope this new format is aggressive against accidental clicks, but on older devices where those actions might take longer to process (ie. my beautiful old Nexus 4), or where people are clumsy, or don't have strong screen contact (gloves), I could see it registering as accidental clicks. Per my other response in this thread, I would hope there is logic around things like waiting to see if a swipe motion immediately follows the touch, looking at how close the touch is to the perimeter of the unit, etc. But I just don't know at this point so I'm going to err on the side of more accidental clicks based on past experiences with this format on other networks/publishers.
  - wodenokoto 10y ago
    So the implementation breaks the inertia scrolling we all come to expect from our touch devices. That wasn't clear from the gif (I have actually never seen these in the wild). I hope that is just a result of bad implementation rather than being a design feature. Thank you for deeper insight.
    - shostack 10y ago
      This format is not exclusive to Google, so it could be that individual publishers/networks have different behavior (which is in itself an issue as it confuses users on their expectations). But yes, just got one this morning (presumedly not Google) where it took me about five flicking motions from bottom to top of screen to clear the ad. Super annoying as the brain expects one behavior and then to see the sluggish movement.

cramforce 10y ago

We spent a lot of time making accidental clicks unlikely (and making sure that scrolling on the ad scrolls the page) One other benefit is that because the ad is on a parallax pane, it can resize itself without disrupting the page flow (which AMP does not allow).

shostack 10y ago
Are you on the team that made these new formats? I'd love to know what sorts of things you do to avoid accidental clicks. I assume click location relative to the frame of the unit is part of it, and possible pausing to wait for swipe activity to confirm a click, but would really be interested in knowing more (I'm a buy-side ad guy). Unfortunately, Google isn't the only one with this format, and on many pages I've had false clicks when scrolling through this format. To most users, they will have no clue whether this is a Google ad or not, and I'd be shocked if they didn't equate bad experiences with every network, regardless of whose ad was actually misbehaving.
- cramforce 10y ago
  I'm the tech lead of the AMP project. Our work was mostly related to ensuring that native scrolling of the main page works as expected when the finger touches the ad iframe. This is non-trivial and most implementations do it by forwarding touch events from the ad up to the page, which then feels laggy and leads to touches that are interpreted as clicks.
  - shostack 10y ago
    Interesting--thanks for the insights. Overall, I'm curious to see what happens with this. I have my own thoughts on the business side of AMP as it relates to advertisers, publishers, exchanges, DMPs, etc., but from a technical standpoint it is pretty cool what you guys are doing.
derefr 10y ago
What's the reason for having the ad be an iframe at all? If this is intended to be a low-bandwidth experience, and the ads aren't going to animate or contain Javascript, then why not just mandate that the ad format be a plain image in PNG/SVG (or in AMP HTML, but with the proviso that it will be baked from an offscreen DOM fragment into a static image blob before being displayed) and then just display it as the background-image of a really long div, with fixed attachment and no repeat?

wodenokoto 10y ago

- It doesn't have greater visibility than an inline picture. They have the same size. - I'm not seeing how this is easier to accidentally click than a large, inline picture. - the static part is a really good point.

shostack 10y ago
Depending on the size of the inline picture (not just with Google) it could be larger. I've definitely seen some shorter native formats in the wild. The accidental click comes in since you can't just scroll past this with one swipe. I haven't tested this particular one, but every single other flying carpet I've seen restricts flicking motions to get past it in one fell swoop. They require multiple clicks to inch it up the screen, and that requirement alone increases the risk for accidental clicks by the mere fact that it requires more touches on the ad to get past it (despite said touches being paired with a swipe motion). I really hope this new format is aggressive against accidental clicks, but on older devices where those actions might take longer to process (ie. my beautiful old Nexus 4), or where people are clumsy, or don't have strong screen contact (gloves), I could see it registering as accidental clicks. Per my other response in this thread, I would hope there is logic around things like waiting to see if a swipe motion immediately follows the touch, looking at how close the touch is to the perimeter of the unit, etc. But I just don't know at this point so I'm going to err on the side of more accidental clicks based on past experiences with this format on other networks/publishers.
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  So the implementation breaks the inertia scrolling we all come to expect from our touch devices. That wasn't clear from the gif (I have actually never seen these in the wild). I hope that is just a result of bad implementation rather than being a design feature. Thank you for deeper insight.
  - shostack 10y ago
    This format is not exclusive to Google, so it could be that individual publishers/networks have different behavior (which is in itself an issue as it confuses users on their expectations). But yes, just got one this morning (presumedly not Google) where it took me about five flicking motions from bottom to top of screen to clear the ad. Super annoying as the brain expects one behavior and then to see the sluggish movement.