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> I have nothing but contempt for the developers that are writing these JS I have nothing but contempt for the companies that accept advertising from untruste

> I have nothing but contempt for the developers that are writing these JS I have nothing but contempt for the companies that accept advertising from untrusted third parties who can offer no assurance as to the security or even the content of the code their platforms allow to run on client browsers. That doesn't even get into the tracking that the advertising platforms themselves have access to. Host your advertising yourself and I let it through with very little exception. If it comes from another server, it's blocked.

manigandham 11y ago
As someone who works on ad networks, I agree. While they put a lot of work into the backend stack, the frontend is usually written in the worst possible way. Tons of document.write, loading dozens of more tags, everyone has their own copy of jquery, etc. The industry just doesn't have any technical leadership in the governing bodies so there's no accountability or any expertise to check that the networks are built right.
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Ads are blamed for bloated pages, slow load times, JavaScript errors flooding console.log, and mixed content HTTP/HTTPS problems. I'm surprised that ad networks are not super optimized. For programmatic advertising, wouldn't serving ads faster allow for better/more/longer ad views?
  - manigandham 11y ago
    Yea our network has put a lot of work into what actually runs in the browser for this exact reason. However most networks go for the volume game so it just isn't that important to focus on JS performance. When you can spend time on jamming more expanding units and video into an ad that for the most part still works, that's better ROI than trying to optimize. Things are finally changing now with adblock and mobile usage but there are lots of long-tail shady networks who aren't legit with business practices in the first place (let alone dev) and the big companies just don't care because they're already big and engineering is a committee based process. Part of it is also the fact that there's no accountability in the industry, especially with tech. I've been pushing for a technical certification process for ad networks (along with data/privacy handling) but it's a long road and won't happen anytime soon.
madeofpalk 11y ago
I'm not a fan of it, nor all the variations of invasive ads that are sold[1]. I get the sentiment of what you're saying, but reality is a bit more nuanced than that, and there's a lot of legacy and business reasons why it happens. Using ad exchanges means that you always have ads available to make money from. When our ads team doesn't sell an ad directly, it'll go out to the ad exchange and get traded algorithmically. If you're going to use display ads, you have little choice but to use an ad exchange, and no ad exchange is set up to not have content run from a third party - they simple haven't or don't care about the disadvantages that you or I see from running third party content. That industry just isn't as 'progressive' or modern. Thankfully though, media and publishing companies (or at least the one I work at) are starting to become more away of the problems of relying on display advertising, and are starting to rely on them less and use other forms such as sponsorship deals or video ads[2] [1]: Like this obnoxious wallpaper ad http://i.imgur.com/IPVAVwx.jpg http://i.imgur.com/IPVAVwx.jpg although this is actually one of the better ones. [2]: A 'new' tech is 'server side ad insertion, where the video is inserted into the video stream on demand on the server. Pretty cool stuff https://www.brightcove.com/en/once https://www.brightcove.com/en/once

manigandham 11y ago

As someone who works on ad networks, I agree. While they put a lot of work into the backend stack, the frontend is usually written in the worst possible way. Tons of document.write, loading dozens of more tags, everyone has their own copy of jquery, etc. The industry just doesn't have any technical leadership in the governing bodies so there's no accountability or any expertise to check that the networks are built right.

cpeterso 11y ago
Ads are blamed for bloated pages, slow load times, JavaScript errors flooding console.log, and mixed content HTTP/HTTPS problems. I'm surprised that ad networks are not super optimized. For programmatic advertising, wouldn't serving ads faster allow for better/more/longer ad views?
- manigandham 11y ago
  Yea our network has put a lot of work into what actually runs in the browser for this exact reason. However most networks go for the volume game so it just isn't that important to focus on JS performance. When you can spend time on jamming more expanding units and video into an ad that for the most part still works, that's better ROI than trying to optimize. Things are finally changing now with adblock and mobile usage but there are lots of long-tail shady networks who aren't legit with business practices in the first place (let alone dev) and the big companies just don't care because they're already big and engineering is a committee based process. Part of it is also the fact that there's no accountability in the industry, especially with tech. I've been pushing for a technical certification process for ad networks (along with data/privacy handling) but it's a long road and won't happen anytime soon.

madeofpalk 11y ago

I'm not a fan of it, nor all the variations of invasive ads that are sold[1]. I get the sentiment of what you're saying, but reality is a bit more nuanced than that, and there's a lot of legacy and business reasons why it happens. Using ad exchanges means that you always have ads available to make money from. When our ads team doesn't sell an ad directly, it'll go out to the ad exchange and get traded algorithmically. If you're going to use display ads, you have little choice but to use an ad exchange, and no ad exchange is set up to not have content run from a third party - they simple haven't or don't care about the disadvantages that you or I see from running third party content. That industry just isn't as 'progressive' or modern. Thankfully though, media and publishing companies (or at least the one I work at) are starting to become more away of the problems of relying on display advertising, and are starting to rely on them less and use other forms such as sponsorship deals or video ads[2] [1]: Like this obnoxious wallpaper ad http://i.imgur.com/IPVAVwx.jpg http://i.imgur.com/IPVAVwx.jpg although this is actually one of the better ones. [2]: A 'new' tech is 'server side ad insertion, where the video is inserted into the video stream on demand on the server. Pretty cool stuff https://www.brightcove.com/en/once https://www.brightcove.com/en/once