4 ms·

But why do they need that? What purpose does an ad with javascript serve?

mschuster91 5y ago
Animations, tracking and fraud detection are the big areas. Ads were historically one of the strongest drivers of Flash, given how easy it made for creatives to implement animations without needing a frontend developer - ad buyers these days would instantly protest against any attempt to remove either of the three use cases. And given that we are talking about sometimes eight figures worth of ad buying... no network will want to risk offending such clients.
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  I still don't understand it. I was under the impression that animations are also able to be served through HTML5? Both CSS and HTML should be sufficient. ~We're in the age where we're able to serve an entire sqlite database over a static website, yet an animation does require javascript?~ EDIT: I am wrong to think that serving and interacting with a sqlite database goes without javascript.
  - jefftk 5y ago
    Animations can be CSS, yes. That's what you do in https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/a4a_spec/ https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/a4a... (declarative ad format, no advertiser-written JS)
    - hetspookjee 5y ago
      Then I don't understand the necessity for javascript in ads?
      - jefftk 5y ago
        In this particular case, advertisers were not interested in moving to a declarative format, and publishers were not interested in requiring declarative ads. So it didn't end up going anywhere as a general purpose ad format.
  - danachow 5y ago
    > We're in the age where we're able to serve an entire sqlite database over a static website Making use of the SQLite database is entirely client side and requires JavaScript or WASM (the distinction is unimportant) - it requires running code on the frontend. This is not a great way to state your case.
    - hetspookjee 5y ago
      You're right and I misinterpreted the sqlite implementation. I will edit my comment to reflect my error.

Animations, tracking and fraud detection are the big areas. Ads were historically one of the strongest drivers of Flash, given how easy it made for creatives to implement animations without needing a frontend developer - ad buyers these days would instantly protest against any attempt to remove either of the three use cases. And given that we are talking about sometimes eight figures worth of ad buying... no network will want to risk offending such clients.

hetspookjee 5y ago
I still don't understand it. I was under the impression that animations are also able to be served through HTML5? Both CSS and HTML should be sufficient. ~We're in the age where we're able to serve an entire sqlite database over a static website, yet an animation does require javascript?~ EDIT: I am wrong to think that serving and interacting with a sqlite database goes without javascript.
- jefftk 5y ago
  Animations can be CSS, yes. That's what you do in https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/a4a_spec/ https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/a4a... (declarative ad format, no advertiser-written JS)
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    Then I don't understand the necessity for javascript in ads?
    - jefftk 5y ago
      In this particular case, advertisers were not interested in moving to a declarative format, and publishers were not interested in requiring declarative ads. So it didn't end up going anywhere as a general purpose ad format.
- danachow 5y ago
  > We're in the age where we're able to serve an entire sqlite database over a static website Making use of the SQLite database is entirely client side and requires JavaScript or WASM (the distinction is unimportant) - it requires running code on the frontend. This is not a great way to state your case.
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    You're right and I misinterpreted the sqlite implementation. I will edit my comment to reflect my error.