Industry Explores Potential User Fallout From New Version Of IE

A court ruling passed down in August has sparked little more than a blip on the online ad industry's radar screen. But some believe that this seemingly insignificant case has the potential to rattle Web advertisers, publishers, and service providers to the core. So, what is the Internet advertising community doing about it? Good question.

In October, as a result of a verdict against Microsoft in a patent infringement case filed by the University of California and Eolas Technologies, Microsoft announced changes to be made to its newest version of the Internet Explorer browser, due for release early this year. The alteration affects the display of active content, which requires Active X controls including Flash, Shockwave, Authorware players, Windows Media Player, Apple QuickTime, RealAudio, RealVideo, and Java applets.

Online advertisers and publishers rely on these technologies to grab attention and elicit interaction with brands and site content. However, the upcoming version of IE will interrupt users' experiences with these types of content, which could dilute ad effectiveness. Each and every time the new IE browser encounters active content, it will halt the loading of that content and prompt a pop-up message requiring the user's approval before loading continues. Depending on what's on a particular Web page, that pop-up alert could appear several times upon each page load.

Despite the potential for poor user experiences and code "workarounds" provided by Apple, RealNetworks, and Macromedia's Active Content Developer Center, the industry seems to be taking a "wait and see" approach. While the onus is primarily on publishers to implement changes, ad serving companies that partner directly with publishers and rely heavily on the effectiveness of online advertising have a vested interest in ensuring that appropriate fixes are made. Still, some ad serving firms interviewed for this article, including DoubleClick, 24/7 Real Media, and Atlas DMT, aren't actively alerting publishers to the situation. Although some are testing and implementing changes in their own systems, most think it's too early to take significant action, or are relying on the software community, publishers, and advertisers to take the lead. Some even see it as Microsoft's problem, not theirs.

"We're staying on top of the issue," insists Steve Stratz, director of PR at Atlas DMT, "but it remains to be seen how it's going to play out."

The industry was also hesitant to take action before (and after) IE6 launched. The version of Microsoft's browser blocks third party cookies if machine-readable privacy policies on third party servers are absent or don't meet standards. Although this can cause disruptions to reach and frequency caps among other things, many publishers neglected to make necessary fixes, meaning that those pop-up or rich media ads intended to be served just once to each user go from effective to obnoxious in no time. Microsoft put more effort into promoting that issue, "and it was woefully under-covered," opines Eric Picard, cofounder and director of product management at Bluestreak, a marketing technology firm that provides ad serving.

Ad serving firms should be making coding changes right now, says Ofer Zadikario, cofounder and VP of research and development at ad technology company, Eyeblaster. The magnitude of those changes is dependent upon the type of ad serving system. "User experiences could be changed completely," affirms Zadikario regarding the IE/Active X situation.

Eyeblaster was contacted months ago by Microsoft and Macromedia, and after extensive testing foresees no glitches in serving its rich media ad formats. So "we're not putting the fear of God into our clients," comments Corey Kronengold, Eyeblaster's manager of corporate communications. Other firms providing rich media ad formats may experience more interruptions depending on how Flash and audio/video content is loaded into ads.

Again, it's the publishers that house this content and run ads featuring affected technologies that should be most concerned. Because publishers must comb sites to determine where the fixes need to take place, "making changes will cost," adds Zadikario. When asked to comment for this story, the Online Publisher's Association was unable to do so before deadline.

"Most major publishers are addressing the situation," believes Picard, who is making a concerted effort to alert Bluestreak clients to potential problems. Although its import ultimately depends upon how many people download the new IE, Picard stresses, "This is probably the biggest change to not just online advertising, but to the browser that will have the biggest impact I can recall."

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