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Comment by kbar13 | Hacker News Reader

can someone explain why ad networks seem to be lagging behind modern web best practices? For example, terrible flash ads, ads that break the site they're displayed on, lack of HTTPS, malware, etc? And also why a company with a better engineering team hasn't been able to successfully take advantage of these weaknesses and corner the market?

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Having worked at a large and (within the industry) well known ad agency I think you're vastly overestimating the amount of knowledge the people making those decisions at ad agencies have regarding things like web best practices and security. For larger household name brands the ones doing the purchasing of ad space online are almost exclusively ad agencies. Even if the agency doesn't make the ad unit and the accompanying creative, they're still likely the ones negotiating the price and making sure everything gets trafficked on time. The level of client involvement varies, but it usually hovers between "none" and "too small to measure".

Frankly, the people in the agency world making the kinds of decisions about which ad network to use are not the most tech savvy people. They're typically two or three layers removed from anyone who actually understands the difference between HTTP and HTTPS. Until that changes (hint: not for another 20-30 years when the current crop of middle aged account executives is retired or dead) then ad networks won't receive any major pushback from the people who are their largest most reliable customers.

Even if every person in the agency world understood the harm of poorly made ad units tomorrow it would still take ages for any changes to occur because of existing relationships and contracts.

I agree and disagree to some extent. I think there is one piece though that could speed up the process. If Google, and other ad networks, put their foot down and said either ads are served via both HTTP and HTTPS (or just via HTTPS) or we will discontinue serving them, this would put pressure on the agencies to speed up change. In the current state though, like you said there is no incentive to change.

The venn diagram of people caring about web best practices and people running adblockers is a circle, so there's no reason for ad networks to change anything.

To be fair, this ignores the thousands of software engineers in ad tech.

Whose bread is buttered by dark patterns.

Most of those engineers don't care much for privacy so I don't think they are to concerned with https.

Having worked in ad tech, I didn't know anybody who wasn't running an adblocker in their primary browser.

I heard that Google had to rename some CSS names on their ad management portal (that understandably had names that began with "ad") to unbreak it when Google customers using adblockers were trying to manage their own ad accounts.

I would not be surprised if sites running https have lower conversion rates per click.

Why? I can't see any way the protocol used to deliver the content would determine the amount of end users who click a link.

HTTPS requires 2 extra round trips, if your servers aren't close to the users, or the users are on a high latency connection anyway, https adds a real delay. HTTP/2 multiplexing and push /may/ help get some of that back, but I don't know if there's anything that does HTTP/2 push well in a non-custom server way yet?

If you configure your server to use TLS resumption and False Start there should only be one extra roundtrip, which can make a significant difference.

https://istlsfastyet.com

Sites targeting tech-savvy users are more likely to use HTTPS because they know their users will notice it, tech-savvy users are more likely to use ad blockers. More of a correlation than a causation. At least, I assume that's the theory. Seems like the effect would be small at this point though.

Apart for the other reasons provided by others, there is also the issue that sites using https are more likely to have savvier users and so may be less likely to purchase after clicking on a link. An advertiser is charged per click, but their return is the conversion rate on those clicks to sales.

> The venn diagram of people caring about web best practices and people running adblockers is a circle, so there's no reason for ad networks to change anything.

More likely concentric circles.

That's ridiculous, I'm sure there is overlap, but not that much. I am sitting near many people that care about web best practices but have never run an adblocker. And I know many people that run adblockers and don't give 2 cents about web best practices. Besides it would be very easy to get the ad networks to change, it's call money.

It mostly comes down to poor engineering talent, different priorities and leadership that isn't interested in UX. Until recently, adblock, privacy, security and many of the performance trends were just not a big deal. Why fix what's broken when they can double the ads on the page instead?

* I've worked in adtech for years and now currently run my own company where we do this right.

> can someone explain why ad networks seem to be lagging behind modern web best practices?

Sites that use the ad networks to manage their advertising inventory are probably not going to go with a network that provides a better end-user experience, if it means the network doesn't have enough ads to fill the inventory or they're lower CPM -- if they have a significant interest in quality end-user experience, they're likely going to manage their inventory themselves.

> For example, terrible flash ads, ads that break the site they're displayed on, lack of HTTPS, malware

Advertisers love flash ads, love ads that takeover the whole damn site, don't care about HTTPS, and would like to have every page view counted with about 70 different beacon services -- that's going to be way slower if you have to negotiate a different tls session for each. Advertisers serving malware would like to serve it, clearly. An ad network needs advertisers, so there you go.

Also, an ad network needs to make sure they can show an ad everytime one is requested, so they'll backfill with other ad networks if they have to -- hard to maintain quality in that case. (Although personally, when I was involved in a website making money with ads, I was a lot happier with not showing an ad (and just moving the rest of the content up) when there was no quality ad available -- unseemly ads make my page feel unseemly; not all sites have the luxury to make that decision though)

Re: beacons, why hasn't someone created a service that beacons to all the beacons on a single call to the server?

There are no big incentives. Their large customers largely don't care or understand these issues. The few tech sites bugging them about https support aren't a critical mass.

>can someone explain why ad networks seem to be lagging behind modern web best practices? For example, terrible flash ads, ads that break the site they're displayed on, lack of HTTPS, malware, etc?

All of these seem like things that while bad, will make them more money. Not like things they don't have the know-how to move over from...

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