ONLINE-ADS>> Caching, IE and Guaranteed Impressions

Andy Bourland (andy_at_andover.net)
Thu, 03 Apr 1997 20:59:40 -0400

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Hi gang,

I'm hoping someone out there may have some experience with this...

We have been tweaking our ad reporting system to ensure our clients
"guaranteed ad impressions", which in our definition means that the only
time you count an ad impression is when it physically shows up on the
user's screen. If someone is cruising through with their images off, or
they abort an ad from showing up -- it doesn't count. Fairly simple.

When we began implementing this, we found a huge dropoff in our ad
count. Roughly 25% off our normal numbers. We had a hard time believing
that there were THAT many people who were cruising our sites with the
images off. Checking with various media planners, they confirmed that
the number of surfers cruising the net that way was negligible. So
whence the 25%?

We dug through the logs and found that when our visitors using Internet
Explorer came by (hmmmm... roughly 25% of our visitors!), the banners
were cached the first time and were never called up again. Our visitors
using Netscape Navigator however, were counted every time, even though
Navigator also uses caching.

We tested this ourselves, cruising through our sites, first with IE,
then with Navigator. Sure enough, IE only registered on our logs the
first time it saw an ad, while Navigator showed up EVERY time,
regardless of whether it had already encountered it.

The bottom line effect of all this is that if there is a good number of
IE users cruising your site, a significant percent of your ad banner
impressions are going unrecorded.

We came up with a fix for this, but first I want to check and see if
there are others who may have encountered this. Is this consistent with
what you found? How did you work around it so that all ad impressions
are counted?

Thanks!

Andrew Bourland http://www.davecentral.com
VP Online Business Development http://www.softseek.com
Andover.net http://www.cooltool.com
508.635.5300 (v) http://www.slaughterhouse.com
508.635.5326 (f) http://www.andover.net

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