The good news about Ajax technology in web pages is how it allows for the updating of content within the page without performing a full browser refresh; that’s the bad news too.
Eric Picard, a senior product planner in Microsoft’s MSN Monetization and Ad Planning group, also works with the Interactive Advertising Bureau on several of their initiatives. His recent article on ClickZ about Ajax and counting impressions illustrated how Ajax can be a much curse to a site’s advertisers.
The problem comes into play at the development stage. A site developer working with Ajax has control of what parts of a web page get refreshed, and when they do so. With only parts of the page updating via Ajax, an advertising block may or may not be refreshed each time.
Picard noted how this will be a problem when audit time comes around on the calendar:
This causes big problems with counting page views and impressions: if a page never reloads, it’s difficult to define what a page view is. And if the page is never reloaded, deciding when it’s appropriate to refresh or load new advertising is left to the developer’s discretion. Similar issues exist around software applications that include advertising.
The current IAB impression-counting guidelines don’t provide specific guidance on this topic. But they do offer general guidance on pages where advertising is automatically refreshed or reloaded. In the current audit process, every page that automatically refreshes will be treated as a unique case. The publisher must prove to the auditor that its business rules are justified.
He also cited instances where new sites with Ajax-powered goodness rolled onto the web and straight off the traffic measurements performed by firms like comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings.
To avoid trouble at audit time, Picard recommends avoiding time-based advertising refreshes if possible. If it isn’t possible, keep documentation of how the refresh rates have been set and communicate with clients of those rates and any changes that may take place with the refresh.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
