Tag Archives: technology

August 31, 2015 · 11:15 am

Gone In A Flash

If you are using Google Chrome as your browser, and over half of you are, your experience as you use the internet is about to change. Google has decided that as of tomorrow, September 1, they will begin pausing many Flash ads by default to improve performance for users. What that means is that if you are desperate to see an ad you will need to click on it to manually enable it. Otherwise, ads will remain plain images by default. Firefox is also doing this  and Amazon also said that it would no longer allow Flash-based ads to serve on its network or across its Amazon Advertising Platform.  In short, the bulk of web browsers is now Flash-unfriendly. This prompts several business thoughts.

First, yay Google and others!  Flash creates all kinds of issues, the biggest of which are that it drains batteries quickly, it doesn’t really perform that well on mobile devices (in a world that’s now mostly mobile) and, most importantly in my mind, it has abysmal security.  Just look at the recent malware attack launched via MSN‘s ad network as an example. This is a good thing for consumers and maybe makes our digital world a little safer.

Second, this is going to have a major effect of the digital ad world.  The supply of ad space is actually going to drop since much of what is out there is Flash-based.  That should kick prices up.  The question in my mind is will the price rise get publishers rethinking their ad load strategy?  I don’t know about you, but in my mind surfing much of the web has become a stroll through the proverbial Arabian bazaar – one hawker after another in an extremely cluttered environment.  Maybe this is how the tidal wave of ad blocking is pushed back?

Third, what will this do to the numerous ad-serving companies?  Who has technology that is so tied to Flash that their business model is disrupted and where are the opportunities in companies that aren’t Flash-based?

Finally, this points out how interdependent every digital business is.  The browser companies make a change and ad companies and publishers are affected.  A hardware company decides to change a business model, as Apple did with iTunes years ago, and nearly every subsequent business deal is held up to that standard.  Never a dull day in digital – how about in your business?

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August 26, 2015 · 10:01 am

Idiotic Injecting

No one that I know enjoys going to the doctor and getting an injection. Whether it’s as simple as a flu shot or something more complex such as a regimen of allergy shots, it’s not a particularly enjoyable experience. 

Today’s topic is an injection of another sort, but the experience isn’t enjoyable either. It turns out that AT&T has jumped on the “no free lunch” bandwagon with respect to offering wireless hotspots to its customers. A Stanford computer scientist and lawyer was travelling and discovered that the AT&T hotspot to which he had connected was serving ads over web pages he was accessing. When he went to Stanford’s home page, for instance (a page that has zero ads on it), he saw a pop-up ad for jewelry and AT&T itself, and the ads persisted for several seconds until he could close them.

He discovered that the ISP was tampering with HTTP traffic – that’s what serves web pages. It is using a service from a third party to inject the ads and to monetize the traffic. AT&T is far from the first “free” service to do this – Comcast and Marriott are just two others. But as the professor wrote:

AT&T has an (understandable) incentive to seek consumer-side income from its free wifi service, but this model of advertising injection is particularly unsavory. Among other drawbacks: It exposes much of the user’s browsing activity to an undisclosed and untrusted business. It clutters the user’s web browsing experience. It tarnishes carefully crafted online brands and content, especially because the ads are not clearly marked as part of the hotspot service. And it introduces security and breakage risks, since website developers generally don’t plan for extra scripts and layout elements.

In other words, while you might have accepted that as your ISP the folks at AT&T will see and record everything that you’re doing, you might be concerned about an outside company doing so.  Moreover, as a publisher, your beautiful content environment is now sullied by ads from which you derive zero revenue.

If you’re on an AT&T hotspot, you’re already an AT&T customer.  I don’t believe you can log on if you’re not and you’re probably paying them handsomely each month (I know I am).  This sort of nickel and diming might help revenues (I wonder how much in the scheme of things) but it doesn’t help with customer satisfaction. That’s a point from which any business can learn.  Idiotic injection from my perspective.  Yours?

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August 18, 2015 · 9:30 am

Lightening The Load

If there is one thing that seems to have happened over the last 15 years, it’s the growth of ADD.  That’s right – it seems as if most of us have some sort of Attention Deficit Disorder which manifests itself via an inability to stay focused and patient as we use our devices.  After all, what’s more frustrating than clicking on a link and waiting and waiting and waiting for the page to load?  Sometimes it’s due to a lousy connection to the internet.  Most of the time, however, it’s probably due to how the publisher has built the page.  I can hear you muttering that “he’s gone all wonky today” but stay with me.  There is a broader business lesson here.

Web pages are a series of elements.  The page code processes them and does everything from display pictures to send analytics data to a server  to format text to pull ads out of a marketplace.  Each of these things takes a little time and the more of them there are, the longer it takes the page to load.  Graphics intensive content – slide shows, autoplay videos, etc. – take a VERY long time to get ready.  I think part of why people use ad blockers is because they very often cut load times substantially.

GQ, according to an article I read in Digiday, focused on decreasing page load times.   Maybe that was less convenient for their writers or editors, but they decluttered their article pages, moved to a unified content management system, and did some other things that resulted in an 80% decrease in page load times.  That focus on their reader has paid off:

For GQ, having a faster site, along with features like new article pages and article recommendation widgets, has paid off in helping audience growth. Traffic jumped to 11 million uniques in July, the first full month of the relaunch, from 6 million in June, per the site. (Those are the site’s internal Omniture figures; comScore’s July numbers weren’t available at press time). Median time spent on the site rose to 7.8 minutes in July, from 5.9 in June. The benefits have extended to advertisers. With people spending more time on the site, along with bigger and repositioned ad units, the interaction rate on ads rose 108 percent.

The lesson for any of us is that staying focused on the customer experience pays off, sometimes in ways we don’t anticipate (who would have thought ad interaction would rise!).  Maybe lightening the load made their wallets heavier. Not a bad tradeoff, right?

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