Some display advertising campaigns are very JavaScript heavy and it has a jarring effect on page load time because the ad is generally inline JavaScript – the useful parts of the page doesn’t render until the ad did its thing.
A solution seems to be to load the ad in an iframe in order to display useful content to a user while the ad loads in the background and “snaps into place” when it is ready.
I’ve been told a number of drawbacks of an iframe approach:
- You are limited in the types of campaigns you can host – for example, no expanding ads that roll over content.
- If you have multiple ad units on one page you can’t have combined campaigns.
- Advertisers avoid iframes because it is easier to game the system with false impressions
Are these real concerns? If so, are there any workarounds or should I keep display ads on page?
Those are valid concerns. I would also add that:
When search engines find the advertisement, they will add them to their database as separate web pages, i.e. the link in the search results will be to the ad page (iframe), not to the page that contains the iframe.
It is more difficult for users with limited accessibility to navigate to the ads and click on their links. For example, if the user has keyboard access only.