Ismail Elshareef, now of Razorgator, explains his process of optimizing ad load performance at Edmonds.com, by creating an ad loader that handles ads in IFRAME and JavaScript, the two formats used by third-party ad vendors. Looking carefully at how each format handles aspects of the ad, the Edmonds team found the best ways to control ad loading.

Elshareef covers some of the trials and failures on the way to creating a successful ad-loader that reduced page-load time to a target of 1.5 seconds while maintaining the same number of ad impressions per ad event. While IFRAME is a relatively contained, but limited format, JavaScript is much looser, both more powerful and harder to control. So JavaScript ads needed to be reprioritized by the ad loader, with duplicate libraries weeded out, and code debugged, especially in cases where the ad code interfered with overall page performance.

Elshareef found that getting executives to understand the technical performance issues is critical to bringing about the necessary improvements, as load performance backs up against ad revenue at each moment. There are plans to release an open-source ad loader based on this work.