
Google is bringing new ad types to AMP - confiscate
http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/07/google-is-bringing-new-ad-types-to-amp-including-those-annoying-flying-carpet-ads/
======
advisedwang
If anyone else had trouble finding an example of the flying carpet ads, see
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3126](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3126)

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wodenokoto
What's the benefit of flying carpet over just having the ad in the content?

Judging from the gif in the article it is basically just and image added in-
line of the article, except it has a bit if parallex scrolling effects.

Seems less annoying than a sticky ad.

~~~
shostack
\- Greater visibility (since you can take up most of the screen)

\- Likely a much higher chance of accidental clicks (not a good thing for
advertisers, but that won't stop people from claiming this format has a higher
CTR)

\- Focuses your attention way more on the ad. Instead of something that just
scrolls by super quickly with the flick of a thumb, until you get to the next
block of content, the image itself is static, so your brain can parse it even
in the couple of seconds it is on the screen because it is not actually
moving.

~~~
cramforce
We spent a lot of time making accidental clicks unlikely (and making sure that
scrolling on the ad scrolls the page)

One other benefit is that because the ad is on a parallax pane, it can resize
itself without disrupting the page flow (which AMP does not allow).

~~~
shostack
Are you on the team that made these new formats?

I'd love to know what sorts of things you do to avoid accidental clicks. I
assume click location relative to the frame of the unit is part of it, and
possible pausing to wait for swipe activity to confirm a click, but would
really be interested in knowing more (I'm a buy-side ad guy).

Unfortunately, Google isn't the only one with this format, and on many pages
I've had false clicks when scrolling through this format. To most users, they
will have no clue whether this is a Google ad or not, and I'd be shocked if
they didn't equate bad experiences with every network, regardless of whose ad
was actually misbehaving.

~~~
cramforce
I'm the tech lead of the AMP project.

Our work was mostly related to ensuring that __native __scrolling of the main
page works as expected when the finger touches the ad iframe. This is non-
trivial and most implementations do it by forwarding touch events from the ad
up to the page, which then feels laggy and leads to touches that are
interpreted as clicks.

~~~
shostack
Interesting--thanks for the insights.

Overall, I'm curious to see what happens with this. I have my own thoughts on
the business side of AMP as it relates to advertisers, publishers, exchanges,
DMPs, etc., but from a technical standpoint it is pretty cool what you guys
are doing.

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Navarr
By the screenshot it looks like AMP might do Flying Carpet Ads in a way I
won't hate.

ASSUMING the necessity of advertising and high profile ads - the type of
flying carpet ad in the screenshot, where it looks like it's just a
position:fixed; background for a large div that can be clicked - I will be
more than happy to scroll past.

Right now, what I really hate are the flying carpet ads where you're swiping
up and the ad comes up OVER the content and gets in the way, slowing down the
site, etc. Those are terrible.

As long as the page is not adjusting itself on load and the ad doesn't get in
the way, I don't see this being a bad thing at all - and I think the AMP team
is probably on that same wavelength.

~~~
cramforce
That is exactly what we are doing. We spent roughly 4 weeks of pure research
to get the scroll UX to 100% perfect (Turns out making a fixed positioned
background element scroll the main scroller and be clickable is hard. Which is
also why many implementations of flying carpet suck).

The goal is absolutely to make this not annoying at all.

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dhimes
_[M]ore than 90 percent [of publishers] say they are getting higher click-
through rates and most also see better earnings._

On mobile, this is alarming as I suspect it is due to more accidental clicks.
A good ad platform will actually see the click-throughs go _down_ as the
platform renormalizes to clicks that reflect authentic interest.

EDIT: s/do/go/

~~~
cramforce
The primary (but not only) reason is increase in so called viewability of ads
(AMP renders fewer ads that nobody ever sees). Because click-through-rate is
calculated as percentage of "renders", rather than "views", the CTR goes up
when you have less "renders" that don't turn into a "view", because nobody can
click on an ad that they have never seen.

~~~
dhimes
This sounds like an excellent step in the right direction. I guess that's why
the article implied that not all of the pages that saw greater CTR increased
revenue.

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angrydev
Half the AMP articles I try to read don't let me scroll on iOS 8 Safari. I
like using Google News but AMP has seriously hurt my experience. I would much
rather just use Safari's built in Reader View, but of course this removes the
ads they want me to see.

~~~
cramforce
Would you mind filing an issue with an example article:
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/new](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/new)

This is definitely not a known issue.

Edit: We can repro and filed
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3481](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/3481)
It might be a bug in Google News (Because Google Search is fine), but we'll
track it in AMP.

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Animats
Which ad blockers can block all of these?

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NEDM64
That is the point

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sintaxi
Yuk.

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dzlobin
The title cut out "to AMP", which is fairly relevant here.

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dang
We've restored that and taken out the baity bit.

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RonnieFife
What are ads again? I went ad blind in 1996 and popup blockers just cemented
it. I don't go to Cinemas as I don't like paying for ads. I also would never
watch any program interrupted with ads. I also would not pay for any cable or
satellite service that also contains ads. As a result of all the above, I
don't watch any film or television and my life is fine.

~~~
bllguo
That's rather impressive but I don't see the point re: this article

