3rd Party Monitoring Process

Every web site out there relies on so much content delivered by 3rd parties, from the obvious adserving companies, cdn, widgets… I do not see that trend going down.

A long time ago when DoubleClick was also an Ad Network we had a very strict process for allowing other adserving companies to deliver. One of those processes focused on Web performance.

So here is the process:

Purpose:

To ensure that 3rd party ad serving networks delivering content to XYZ properties do not adversely affect our revenue realization or user experience. To ensure that there are no significant reporting discrepancies between 3rd party ad serving systems and our Internal Ad System.

Process:

Before allowing 3rd party ad servers, research vendors, or CDNs to deliver content to XyZ sites, XYZ will monitor the prospective 3rd party’s performance and availability to ensure XYZ standards are met. After determining that performance is within XYZ specifications,XYX will continue to monitor the vendor’s performance on an ongoing basis to become proactively aware of any performance/availability issues.

New Vendors

Upon receiving a request to deliver content to XYZ properties from a new, or uncertified, vendor, XYZ will contact the vendor to request an Ad Tag that will deliver an image of exactly X Kb (pick one 20?) that can be pulled via http request from the internet. The image must be served via the exact same methodology as the content will be served to XYZ properties (i.e. from the ad servers). XYZ will also request a contact name, phone number and email address for the vendor.

When content is provided, XYZ will set up monitoring of the URL via 3rd party performance monitoring service company. Monitoring will be configured as followed:

• Locations:
• If vendor is for US only content, X US nodes.
• If Int’l only, X Int’l nodes.
• If both US and Int’l, X US nodes, X Int’l nodes
• Frequency:
• 15 minutes

XYZ will allow the monitoring to run for 7 days.

Certification Criteria

• Performance:
• An average of no more than .X seconds from the selected nodes, combined.
• Availability:
• An average of no more than 99.9% errors from the selected nodes, combined (XX% uptime).
• Reliability:
• Keep an eye on consistency. You want to make sure there is no variation during critical business hours. See previous post about reliability.

DoubleClick Adserving – Consistent

Vendors unable to meet these performance specifications will not be permitted to deliver content to XYZ properties.