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The whole site is a treasure, the apogee of marketers marketing to lesser marketers: "Today we’re excited to announce new DoubleClick precision marketing innova

The whole site is a treasure, the apogee of marketers marketing to lesser marketers: "Today we’re excited to announce new DoubleClick precision marketing innovations..." Including this: "a new JavaScript API in Google Chrome, called Intersection Observer, which provides viewability measurement for your mobile and desktop web placements without the need for Flash. Built directly into the Chrome Browser, Intersection Observer improves viewability coverage for all video and display formats across screens by solving technical challenges associated with mobile viewability measurement. It also provides faster browsing and less battery drain, improving the consumer experience." I don't use a web browser built by an ad company, but what does this mean in human language?

pmontra 10y ago
My guess: if one had to run it 100% JS it would drain viewers' batteries faster and slow down their browser more than if one uses that new native API. Not that I want to be somebody analyzed by that sw. I'm sticking with other browsers and keep blocking tracking js scripts.
ssharp 10y ago
View ability measures if an ad was actually viewable. An ad might load fine but the user doesn't scroll down the page far enough to see it. Accurate viewability would take that into consideration.
munchbunny 10y ago
"Viewability" is an ad industry metric of "did your ad actually appear on screen, or was it below the fold?" It's actually pretty hard to detect except through indirect means, one of which was to use a flash object to monitor for framerate changes. On-screen objects would render with a higher framerate. Google seems to have built out an API so that you can just explicitly check. For marketers, this is actually a big thing because it means a key success metric (did people actually see your ad?) can be measured more reliably. You can disdain advertising or marketing in general and you'd have a point, but what you quoted is actually describing a well thought out solution to a common industry problem.
shostack 10y ago
The negativity is really uncalled for. You could simply say "I don't understand, and haven't bothered to Google for 5 seconds what some of these confusing terms mean--can someone please clarify?" This stuff is all geared at advertisers who want better tools for designing ads and landing pages, and publishers who want to create ad supported sites more easily. So they are using industry jargon that people in the space (like myself) will be familiar with. Yes it is "marketing to marketers" (not sure about the lesser remark), but that doesn't make it any less specific. I'm not sure which specific page you are referencing, but this is all technical advertising jargon that means very specific things. "Viewability" is a technical term referencing whether an impression is viewed by a user. As advertisers increasingly demand more transparency around ad inventory quality from publishers, viewability is a newer metric that the industry looks at. Here's a good starting point from the IAB for how they classify it [1]. Determining whether an ad has been in view has some technical challenges which you might be familiar with if you know much about front-end stuff. At a quick glance of your quote, this references improving the way a pages viewability of ads is measured on mobile by removing the need for Flash for sites to signal "hey, this ad impression is viewable (and thus more valuable)!" Flash bad, this good. Here's some further reading[2] on the technical challenges from a company that handles inventory where these metrics are a factor. Look, we get it, you don't like marketing. And yeah, my industry can lay it on thick sometimes, but this is about as poor an example of that as it gets. [1] https://www.iab.com/guidelines/state-of-viewability-transaction-2015/ https://www.iab.com/guidelines/state-of-viewability-transact... [2] http://productblog.appnexus.com/evolution-of-viewability-measurement-brought-to-you-by-the-death-of-flash/ http://productblog.appnexus.com/evolution-of-viewability-mea...
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Given the current state of the web, are you sure a little negativity isn't called for?
  - shostack 10y ago
    I think the general trends we're seeing need to be course corrected, and that publishers by and large have dug their own graves. That said, this is largely about decrapifying the web (getting rid of Flash is a good thing right?) and the parent also crapped all over a profession and industry while proving to be rather uninformed about it. So no, a little negativity isn't called for.

pmontra 10y ago

My guess: if one had to run it 100% JS it would drain viewers' batteries faster and slow down their browser more than if one uses that new native API. Not that I want to be somebody analyzed by that sw. I'm sticking with other browsers and keep blocking tracking js scripts.

ssharp 10y ago

View ability measures if an ad was actually viewable. An ad might load fine but the user doesn't scroll down the page far enough to see it. Accurate viewability would take that into consideration.

munchbunny 10y ago

"Viewability" is an ad industry metric of "did your ad actually appear on screen, or was it below the fold?" It's actually pretty hard to detect except through indirect means, one of which was to use a flash object to monitor for framerate changes. On-screen objects would render with a higher framerate. Google seems to have built out an API so that you can just explicitly check. For marketers, this is actually a big thing because it means a key success metric (did people actually see your ad?) can be measured more reliably. You can disdain advertising or marketing in general and you'd have a point, but what you quoted is actually describing a well thought out solution to a common industry problem.

shostack 10y ago

The negativity is really uncalled for. You could simply say "I don't understand, and haven't bothered to Google for 5 seconds what some of these confusing terms mean--can someone please clarify?" This stuff is all geared at advertisers who want better tools for designing ads and landing pages, and publishers who want to create ad supported sites more easily. So they are using industry jargon that people in the space (like myself) will be familiar with. Yes it is "marketing to marketers" (not sure about the lesser remark), but that doesn't make it any less specific. I'm not sure which specific page you are referencing, but this is all technical advertising jargon that means very specific things. "Viewability" is a technical term referencing whether an impression is viewed by a user. As advertisers increasingly demand more transparency around ad inventory quality from publishers, viewability is a newer metric that the industry looks at. Here's a good starting point from the IAB for how they classify it [1]. Determining whether an ad has been in view has some technical challenges which you might be familiar with if you know much about front-end stuff. At a quick glance of your quote, this references improving the way a pages viewability of ads is measured on mobile by removing the need for Flash for sites to signal "hey, this ad impression is viewable (and thus more valuable)!" Flash bad, this good. Here's some further reading[2] on the technical challenges from a company that handles inventory where these metrics are a factor. Look, we get it, you don't like marketing. And yeah, my industry can lay it on thick sometimes, but this is about as poor an example of that as it gets. [1] https://www.iab.com/guidelines/state-of-viewability-transaction-2015/ https://www.iab.com/guidelines/state-of-viewability-transact... [2] http://productblog.appnexus.com/evolution-of-viewability-measurement-brought-to-you-by-the-death-of-flash/ http://productblog.appnexus.com/evolution-of-viewability-mea...

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Given the current state of the web, are you sure a little negativity isn't called for?
- shostack 10y ago
  I think the general trends we're seeing need to be course corrected, and that publishers by and large have dug their own graves. That said, this is largely about decrapifying the web (getting rid of Flash is a good thing right?) and the parent also crapped all over a profession and industry while proving to be rather uninformed about it. So no, a little negativity isn't called for.