Ad server script in iframe -- will it negatively impact Adsense?

DMX script in iframe

[CentennialEmpire]

A potential solution to server issues we're having with Direct Media Exchange (DMX) ads displaying too slow (and slowing down the rest of our site) is to place the DMX code into an iframe. For those who may not be familiar with DMX, it's just an ad server solution that allows you to tweak which network ads appear when, geo-target them, etc.

Problem is, we still use Adsense as a default for several other ad networks running through DMX and as a result we're concerned that placing the code from DMX into an iframe will create relevancy issues.

Any truth to those concerns, and if so, how can we achieve the same thing without resorting to iframes or perhaps tweaking the iframes?

Thanks

[jomaxx]

Maybe you can use CSS instead of a table layout to speed up performance. Putting AdSense in an iframe is not allowed.

...Actually "not allowed" might be putting it too strongly, but AdSense requires the content to be on the same page, and putting hidden content into the iframe for targeting purposes will undoubtedly be frowned upon, so it amounts to the same thing.

[bumpski]

Some past IFrame commentary.

[webmasterworld.com...]

In 2005 IFrames worked well with only the Adsense code in the framed page. When Google added section targeting, relevance became poor in IFramed adsense code. Relevance seemed to degrade to the general site topic, not specific to the page. What was really neat with the code in an IFrame was, at the time, you actually got targeted ads from your pages in the Google cache!

Putting the code in an IFrame has always been allowed but not recommended, as Jomaxx clarified.

One thing that I believe has helped is using a higher Z-Index for things I'd like to see rendered last. So for me, on some of my sites, the Google code is in a DIV with a higher Z-Index. Unfortunately fetching the Adsense javascript itself can slow a site significantly. I gave up on Analytics due to the same problems of performance degradation.

Google's commentary
[google.com...]
[google.com...]

I believe there is one tricky way to still successfully show adsense ads in an IFrame. (Note: some are rendering ads server side, which means no adsense code on page and Adsense ads are indexed. Some are using document.write(). I don't know if these meet TOS.)

The trick; you can render your page twice! The first time render everything but the Adsense code. Then render your page again, in an IFrame, only rendering the Adsense code. This can be done with some tricky javascript without altering the Adsense code. (I haven't tried this.) Clearly Google uses aspects of the "DOM" which pretty much require the Adsense code to execute in the intended page.

[vincevincevince]

I'm thinking that you need to get DMX to run faster... failing that home-spin a solution of your own

[CentennialEmpire]

Thanks for the responses.

DMX believes it's not coming from their end, but if we remove the DMX code there are no holdups whatsoever.

It's too bad about the iframe issues and Adsense as that would have been the perfect solution to our problem.

[vincevincevince]

Enter the DMX IP address and host name into your /etc/hosts file; where they find that their responses are fast but you are finding them slow, odds are that there's a DNS lookup happening which is delaying things.

Format is:

111.111.111.111 thedomainname.foo

(111etc. being their actual IP address, which you can find using nslookup thedomainname.foo; and thedomainname.foo being the host (including subdomain) which is accessed from your server)

Failing that; benchmark their server from your server. The 'ab' command will help with that. If they are really slow responding then that will show you conclusive figures which can be used to show them that they are the problem.