Re: New ad server system

From: Michael Martinez <Michael_at_xenite.org>
Date: Fri 13 Oct 2000 13:29:51 -0500

ZAK POWER <zak_at_hackers-for-hire.com> WROTE:
> What then should the minimum acceptable serve speed be?
> I am thinking 3 seconds but that's fairly optimistic.
> Mabye - 3 seconds for an individual serve, 9 seconds
> total (so it can try up to 3 before falling back). And
> it can log the time-outs for the administrator - in the
> future if it's a huge issue we could put something in
> that will automatically de-select items which pass a
> threshold of time-outs...?

9 seconds is a lot of time to ask a user to sit there
and stare at an empty screen. Advertisers insist on
putting their ads at the top of the page (supposedly
the worst possible place to put banners) and that holds
up everything while browser tries to fetch the ads.

A 3-second timeout sounds reasonable, but it seems to
me the longer timeout should be flexible -- from 6 to
9 seconds, depending on server load. If the server is
getting beaten to death, 3 3-second timeouts are just
going to make matters worse for everyone.

So, basically, what I'm proposing is that you design
the software to allow 3 3-second timeouts when it's
least likely to need them, and to allow only 2
3-second timeouts when it's most likely to need them.

Yes, the destination pages will serve broken links.
But they will be visible to the surfers and the
surfers will be more likely to return to those pages
later on, depending on content.

 From a Webmaster's perspective, it's far better to
serve a broken link than it is to have the page hang
for a long time. You normally have 15-30 seconds to
convince the user to hang around. Taking the first 6-9
seconds of that window just to serve banner ads is
very, very risky if they don't come up quickly.

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Received on Fri Oct 13 2000 - 13:29:51 CDT