3rd Party Ad Tags

William Chen

What is an ad tag?

A piece of HTML or Javascript code that is placed into the source code of a web page via an ad server. It is essentially a digital placeholder within which creatives will display.

HTML

Used to create static webpage content.

Javascript

Used to create dynamic content within the creative.

What is the purpose of ad tags?

  • Publishers place ad tags on a website in order to sell ad space
  • Advertiser use ad tags to direct the browser to a particular image or flash creative
  • Ad servers use ad tags to move ad calls along to the next step in the decisioning chain
  • Third-party data providers use ad tags to collect segment information about users

Sample Ad Tag

<script src="http://ib.adnxs.com/ttj?id=1234" type="text/javascript"></script>

This is what the different parts of the tag are doing:

  • The HTML   and type="text/javascript" tell the browser that JavaScript code will be executed here. The browser needs to be alerted to this so it can process the JavaScript correctly, rather than treating it as HTML.
  • The HTML src= tells the browser to retrieve content from the URL http://ib.adnxs.com/ttj?id=1234
  • The URL points to the AppNexus Impression Bus, which processes all requests to the AppNexus platform. /ttj is an AppNexus designation for a JavaScript call, and id=1234 is the ID that AppNexus has assigned to this ad tag. This allows information about the ad tag, such as ad size or reserve price for the ad, to be stored on the Impression Bus rather than on the page itself. This way the information can be changed at any time without requiring a new tag.

When the AppNexus Impression Bus receives the tag, it runs an auction. Something like the following raw JavaScript code is returned to the browser:

document.write('<iframe frameborder="0" width="160" height="600" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" target="_blank" scrolling="no"
src=">');

This is what the different elements of the JavaScript are doing:

  • iframe frameborder="0" width="160" height="600" tells the browser to open a 160×600 iframe.
  • src="http://ad.yieldmanager.com/st?ad_type=iframe&ad_size=160x600&section=560122&m6li=1302146" tells the browser to deposit specific content from the Yield Manager ad server into the iframe.
    The Yield Manager URL does not point to an actual creative image file, because the Yield Manager ad server makes a dynamic decision about which image to pass to the browser. This URL’s query string (everything after the “?”) gives Yield Manager information that will help it decide which creative to pass back.

Iframes (Inline Frame)

An IFrame (Inline Frame) is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website. The IFrame HTML element is often used to insert content from another source, such as an advertisement, into a Web page. Although an IFrame behaves like an inline image, it can be configured with its own scrollbar independent of the surrounding page’s scrollbar. This is hugely beneficial for publishers as it provides an extra layer of security where the creative can not affect the actual publisher content. The downside to Iframes is that javascript can’t reference anything outside of the Iframe section, so rich media and dynamic ads may not run properly.

MRAID (Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions)

Similar to Vast/VPAID formats, the MRAID tag offers creative developers a uniform way to develop ads. Without MRAID, creative developers would need to set up different iterations for each ad tag. MRAID allows media shops and creative agencies to effectively build creatives that are compatible with many different apps and publishers.

Common API – MRAID is a common command set that creative developers may use. All apps that support MRAID support the same common commands so any creative that uses an MRAID feature will run correctly in different apps and different devices using the same creative code.

MRAID provide the universal guidelines to developers of mobile rich media regarding the ad interactions and what those ads do (expand, resize, get access to device functionalities such as calendar events, etc) with the apps they are being served into.

NoScript Sections

Javascript tags will always include Script sections but what if a browser has javascript disabled? This is where NoScript comes in. Without Noscript, users with javascript disabled would see nothing at all. Impression tracking discrepancies can also come from this as impressions were delivered, but the impression tracker inside the javascript was never deployed.

INS Tags

You will see <ins at the beginning of the tag, and the tag will contain class='dcmads'.

This simple sample tag includes three attributes: one for the placement (data-dcm-placement), one for a custom key-value parameter (data-dcm-param-custom_key), and one for the rendering mode (data-dcm-rendering-mode).

Sample INS Tag

<ins class='dcmads'
style='display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px'
data-dcm-placement='N7480.1664088DOUBLECLICK.NETTEST/B8299600.114131924'
data-dcm-param-custom_key='custom_value'
data-dcm-rendering-mode='iframe'>
https://www.googletagservices.com/dcm/dcmads.js
</ins>

Benefit to Advertisers:

This tag provides richer domain information in Verification, giving you greater visibility into where your ads are serving, as well as better facilitating brand safety and spam protection.

Benefit to Publishers:

There’s no need to add cache busters (ord=) to this tag, allowing for easier tag implementation.

Floodlight Tags

The Floodlight tag is a general purpose tracking pixel. You generally embed these tags on parts of your website that contain information relevant to your marketing efforts. For example, you might place a floodlight tag on your Thank You page after a purchase to track how many times that conversion event occurs. What’s special about Floodlight is that you can store some of this valuable information about what a user has experienced in the same cookie that Google uses to decide what ads to show a user across the internet. So, instead of just tracking that someone converted on your website, you might pass the total cart value into the floodlight/google cookie (by executing the tag) and then use that data later for an ad campaign on Google’s ad network e.g. “Show ads to people that have bought at least $100 worth of merchandise as measured by the floodlight conversion tag I’m passing cart total into.”

Macros

Macros are used to insert dynamic data into your ad tag when the impression is delivered, and they’re essential for sending data from the DSP to your ad server. The most common macros are the Cachebuster and Click Macro.

Cachebuster

Prevents a browser from reusing a cached file, hence the name “cachebuster”. If the cachebuster was not implemented, the user would see the same cached page, including the ad every time they went back to that page!

Click Macro

Allows the DSP to track the clicks from the tag.

Sources

Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things. But to use and apply that language, we must be able fully to appreciate, to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious.
— Ada Lovelace

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Published by William Chen