Are advertising iframes deprecated?

[serenoo]

I earn by affiliation banners. In my field such banners change very often, because the provider change bonus, offers, new products,...
So I cannot waste my time replacing always the banners, and I decided to get their javascript (that prints the banners), so the change is automated by their side.
The problem is that sometimes the javascript is slow to load and my pages became slow too, and we know that it is not good for Google and for the user too that is waiting to read the page.
I decided to put and iframe with <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"/> that lists all the external banners. But now I scare that could be considerated by google like a black hat: because it hides the banners.
Can someone tell me if I am doing something wrong or what is the best way to display external banners?

[Pjman]

I wouldn't say it's a huge red flag, but I would let Gbot read the Javascript. The speed, is the only thing that might hurt you.

Matt Cutts had a video question on this a few years back and that was his advice.

[menntarra 34]

I really do interested in this topic, as i have iframe ads on my page for the same reason: to make my site load faster. And also sometimes the AD server is down which would make my site not load, if i used javascript. Please more people join the conversation, and express their opinions as i think it is an important topic...

[Andy Langton]

Iframes are a slightly sticky subject. One the one hand, your use is perfectly legitimate. On the other, it's quite natural for search engines to be a little suspicious of iframes, since they can easily be used to hide content - indeed, hackers frequently use them for "injecting" content into a page that browsers will follow. You would naturally want to avoid such perceptions, even if the risks are relatively small.

Personally, I would look into a "lazy load" solution that allowed you to use your advertiser's javascript, but not to do so until your actual page content had loaded.

[Zivush]

"lazy load" solution

That's the best solution.

[Convergence]

Have been using iFrames to serve banners from our ad server for a decade. Can't say we've suffered for it...

[serenoo]

Convergence: did you hide iFrames with tag <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"/>?

[Convergence]

did you hide iFrames with tag <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"/>?

Nope. We do, however, block all bot access to our ad server...

[serenoo]

Unfortunatly I am in another situation because I do not have an external server. But it seems that everybody agree to show the iFrame to Google, so it is calm. :-)