On the CPM Advisors blog, Rob points out that IFRAME ad calls are worth less to the advertiser than JavaScript calls: there’s no referrer and therefore no insight into the location of the inventory, no ability to do contextual analysis on the page, and no ability to serve expandable or coordinated ad units. Rob suggests any publisher wrapping ads in an IFRAME is going to end up paying a ‘tax’ for this – the market isn’t appropriately discounting use of IFRAME tags yet, but it will.
This is all true, but I suspect any large, reputable publisher that reads this will shrug, because JavaScript tags are too much of a security risk. An ad injected directly into a publisher’s page is an ad that can attack a publisher’s audience, and the audience pays the bills.
For happy advertisers and secure publishers, ad exchanges need to implement trust mechanisms at the ad tag level, so that a publisher’s whitelisted advertisers are served directly via JavaScript, but less-trusted advertisers and ad networks have their code returned wrapped up in an IFRAME. Tag format doesn’t have to be an either-or decision.
(Disclaimer: I’m an advisor of CPM Advisors, and have a small number of options in the company.)
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