So go to http://auto.nl.msn.com/ and refresh a couple of times, you're bound to see the Ditzo auto insurance banner (or ad) at least once. This, in online marketing terms, is called an impression (ie you have been shown the ad). No big deal you might say, there are plenty of sites with banners, I see them all the time, so what?
Well the interesting stuff is what happens under the hood so to speak, cause there's alot going on, and all of it in the blink of an eye. In this blog entry I'll try to give you a peek at all of the stuff that's going on to show you the ad. Note: all of this stuff you can check for yourself just by poking around a bit in the html source of the web page, your browser, and with the help of some feeware tools.
First of all, the banner is shown in an iframe, or in other words, the banner is a "seperate" page loaded from a different server than msn.com but shown as part of the page you are viewing. The relevant html code (see the page source in your browser) is:
<iframe src="http://view.atdmt.com/NL1/iview/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;;wi.300;hi.250/01?click=" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" allowtransparency="true" width="300" height="250">
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
document.write('<a href="http://clk.atdmt.com/NL1/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;;wi.300;hi.250/01/" target="_blank"><img src="http://view.atdmt.com/NL1/view/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;;wi.300;hi.250/01/"/></a>');
</script></iframe>
Don't be confused, this is simply an iframe which loads it's content from the following source (see the "src" parameter in the code above):
http://view.atdmt.com/NL1/iview/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;;wi.300;hi.250/01?click=
Now the site msn.com belongs to Microsoft and uses Microsoft Advertising to show it's banners. Microsoft advertising use Atlas as it's server to load banners from (a so called ad server). Just typing in http://admt.com will take you the site of Atlas Solutions. So the iframe is simply loading it's content from the Microsoft ad server.
So far so good. Now you might think that the banner (which is flash incidentally, not a static image) would simply be loaded directly from the Microsoft ad server. However, this is not the case. In fact the content that is loaded into the iframe is the following javascript:
<iframe width="300" height="250" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" SRC="http://bluemango.solution.weborama.fr/fcgi-bin/adserv.fcgi?tag=47031&f=9&h=I&ef=1&clicktag=http://clk.atdmt.com/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;wi.300;hi.250;ai.36901670.186089969;ct.1/01/?href=&rnd=853776281"></iframe>
So a second iframe is loaded into the first iframe! And this time content of the second iframe is loaded from the source (again the src parameter):
http://bluemango.solution.weborama.fr/fcgi-bin/adserv.fcgi?tag=47031&f=9&h=I&ef=1&clicktag=http://clk.atdmt.com/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;wi.300;hi.250;ai.36901670.186089969;ct.1/01/?href=&rnd=853776281
Now Weborama is another ad server (a competitor of Atlas if you will). So why is there another ad server involved? Well the reasons are quite simple. Msn.com chooses to work with Atlas, but the company advertising (Ditzo car insurance in this case) chooses to work with a different ad server, Weborama. Why? Well one reason is that for msn.com it is easy to have to work with only one ad server instead of many, and the same holds for Ditzo. It is easier for Ditzo to upload and manage all of it's banners on one server as opposed to many. Of course this does require both ad severs to work together, and that is exactly what they do with this double iframe construction. But that's not the only reason, money is involved here. Ads are often shown on a cpm or cost per mille basis. This means that Ditzo pays money to show the ad one thousand times (whether the banner is clicked or not). This means that all ad servers involved need to be able to track and verify that the ad has indeed been shown. Having all the ad servers involved in showing the banner ensures they all know it was shown and can thus keep track of the cpm costs.
To continue with the second iframe (of Weborama): the content loaded into this iframe is a lot of javascript which I'm not going to bother you with but the upshot of the script once run is that the following flash banner is loaded into the second iframe:
<embed wmode="transparent" flashvars="id_part=3525&sitedom=bluemango.solution.weborama.fr&lien=47031&site=297163&id_unique=1297970156_1297970157873&target=_blank&crea=4332&clicktag=http%3A//clk.atdmt.com/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1/01/%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A//bluemango.solution.weborama.fr/fcgi-bin/performance.fcgi%3FID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&clicktag1=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag1%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&clicktag2=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag2%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&clicktag3=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag3%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&clicktag4=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag4%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&clicktag5=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag5%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif" src="http://elstatic.weborama.fr/adperf/297163/3132/201101/19151118_300-250resdi110118form9v101.swf" swliveconnect="TRUE" width="300" height="250" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" quality="high" allowscriptaccess="always">
Ok, this is alot of code, most of it standard html for embedding flash on a page, but the important part is:
http://elstatic.weborama.fr/adperf/297163/3132/201101/19151118_300-250resdi110118form9v101.swf
This, finally, is the Ditzo flash banner! Just copy and paste this into a new browser window directly and you will see the banner directly.
But, wait, there's more!
Now this is not the only thing going on. Not only do both ad serving parties work together to show you the banner, they are also keeping track that you have viewed it. This happens using cookies. You can check out the cookies using your browser settings or for example firefox (and the fircookie extension). This will show you that there are many, many cookies being stored while you watch the web page and the banner (38 cookies while I wast checking). Of these 3 cookies belonged to admt (Atlas) and 6 to weborama.
Why are these parties placing cookies on your pc? Well, if you browse to other sites that Atlas or Weborama serve ads to, then they will be able to recognize you as someone they showed a banner to on the http://auto.nl.msn.com/ site. This allows them for example retarget you and show you another car ad, even if the site you are on has nothing to do with cars. The reason? Well since you were on the http://auto.nl.msn.com/ site, you seem interested in cars, so showing you more car ads would seem more relevant (with a larger chance of you clicking on the banner and making a purchase and that is after all what ads are all about). Of course, there are more things they can do with the cookies, like avoid showing you the same ad again (or too often) when you return to a site, or building up a profile about you (ie you visited a car site, then went to airline site, so possibly you are in the market for a car rental, etc). But complete blogs can be filled with the world of cookies and this kind of profile building, so I won't go into any more detail here now.
So far this entry on impressions. In a later entry I'm going to try and give the details of what happens when you actually click on the banner!
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