• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, March 15, 2017

The Google Chrome plug-in, built by OpenX Labs, aims to offer a more complete view of how the advertising on publishers’ pages affects Web page performance and the consumer experience. Ad Footprint is a free tool available to all publishers regardless of whether they’re clients or not.

OpenX said Ad Footprint provides a transparent view of what’s happening with advertising technology on each page. The insights from Ad Footprint are distilled into a page analysis that evaluates the page load process; ranks the performance of a page against hundreds of other Web sites; and offers customized recommendations for optimizing the consumer experience while also taking monetization into account.

The  company said a competitive product, Headerbid Expert from AppNexus, focuses only on the header bidding component of the page load, and doesn’t differentiate between bid requests originating from different ad slots.

OpenX said Ad Footprint shows a more detailed breakdown of the header bidding calls, and also places them in the context of the complete page load, which involves a publisher’s content as well as creative assets.

OpenX said the tool looks to offer publishers quicker page load times, which can boost consumer engagement. The thinking is, the faster a page loads and renders, the better a consumer’s experience will be—and perhaps they’ll spend more time on a page.

“We spoke with several publishers over the last 12 months, and a majority of conversations centered around how to fully understand what’s happening on their pages, make them faster, and improve user experience,” Caleb Sotelo, staff engineer and director of OpenX Labs, told Real-Time Daily via email:

“An increase in the number of ad-tech partners is certainly one factor that has slowed down Webs sites and negatively impacted user experience. But other elements, often overlooked by publishers, when it comes to impacting page load, include the technical design of a page, or large creative units.”