Dear AdMonsters,
Let me start by saying that I am doing a session on this topic in Memphis next week. If you are going and will be joining the session, please send feedback before Monday and I can incorporated it into the presentation.
Since Google announced that page load time is an important factor in their ranking algorithm, there has been a lot of pressure from SEO teams and business managers in general to pull down all the 3rd party pixels/snippets. The issue is, groups like AdOps, Editorial, Marketing, Research and BizDev need to run this stuff in order to accommodate things like audience/behavioral targeting, social media products, analytical products etc. For the past year and a half, I feel like every 3 months I have to do a “Sophie’s Choice” (I apologize for over-dramatization) analysis on what can stay on the pages and what has to come down.
In addition, there has always been a need for AdOps, at least in my company, to manage these snippets more effectively and efficiently. Working with tech groups, developers and project managers, and trying to prioritize things in their queues usually means it will take weeks, if not months for pixels to go up and go down. What if you just want to test something out? What if you just want to run it for few weeks? By the time you get all the approvals and get scheduled in the queue, it might be too late and not worth it any more. We all know online advertising is a perishable business, if we do not monetize or measure something now, tomorrow it will be a lost opportunity.
Of course, whenever a new market need appears, companies pop up trying to address it. This case is no exception, as there are few companies out there now trying to provide a container tag service. After meeting a few of them, it’s my opinion they are over-complicating things because they are trying to make a business model out of it. I can’t blame them for that.
I feel that site speed question will be answered and resolved very soon. Usually sites go through redesigns every one to two years. HTML 5 and asynchronous JavaScript snippets should fix some loading issues. Most 3rd party vendors will be rebuilding their codes to be asynchronous; few already do it, actually. It’s just a matter of time. When the changes start to happen, SEO teams and business managers will not care as much about AdOps’ daily struggles to put up and take down 3rd party code which, I think, are not going anywhere and still needs to be addressed.
With that in mind let me shamelessly plug (with AdMonsters blessing) a container tag tool I built with few friends in the industry, who are in BizDev and web development fields. I wanted to build a simple and easy to use tool for any AdOps person that addresses the immediate basic needs without complications of dealing with vendors and going through contracts. I see it as just another tool in the AdOps arsenal. It should just be there and it should just work.
Our container tag has been running on some Hachette Filipacchi Media (my employer) properties for a couple of months now without issues. The tool is using the Amazon cloud, so the uptime and SLAs are not an issue either. The tool is free but hosting all this traffic of course will cost something. Amazon is not a charitable organization when it comes to hosting services. While its still a beta test and not costing me a ton of money each month, I will cover all the Amazon fees. Later on we may add some type of a donation link just so we can cover the maintenance (or may be we will sell t-shirts with the SnipHub logo. I think it looks pretty cool… jk!). We are also trying to work out a way where any big publisher can have a link into the Amazon cloud service so the payments can be made directly. This way I don’t need to be the middle man for any financial transactions. Let me repeat, the tool itself is free for any AdOps professional. No strings attached and no fine print.
I would love to test drive this on a much wider scale. Currently, any AdMonster who wants an account can create one and play with the system at http://www.sniphub.com. At first I will be manually approving new account requests just so I can keep track of things. We have more ideas in mind that we will add to the tool very soon. Please poke holes in the tool and the idea in general and let me know if there is anything you would like to see that will make your (work) life easier.
Thank you,
Oleg Korenfeld
[email protected]
Let me start by saying that I am doing a session on this topic in Memphis next week. If you are going and will be joining the session, please send feedback before Monday and I can incorporated it into the presentation. Since Google announced that page load time is an important factor in their ranking algorithm, there has been a lot of pressure from SEO teams and business managers in general to pull down all the 3rd party pixels/snippets.