News sites collapsed from fetching ads in Jackson traffic surge

June 26, 2009 | Dean Takahashi | Comments | |

jackson-againThe tsunami of traffic related to Michael Jackson’s death brought down news web sites on Thursday because those sites had to wait for third-party content, such as images for ads, according to a new analysis.

Keynote Systems said in a report tonight that its analysis of the web’s performance on Thursday showed sites collapsed from the traffic because they were built the wrong way. Those web sites waited for every image to be downloaded from a third-party ad service before displaying the web page to the reader. That led to frustrating delays. Better web sites are built to load a page and then leave a blank spot where it’s waiting for a third-party image to load.

“Our measurement data shows that for sites reported as having performance slowdowns yesterday, internal content delivered quite fast, however content that came from other sources contributed most to the site slowdowns,” said Shawn White, director of external operations at Keynote Systems. “For example, ABC.com’s news content was consistently served in a matter of seconds whereas some of the third party content took much longer.”

White said that, to be prepared for unexpected news events, news sites should require third-party content companies, such as ad networks, to certify the capacity of their networks, perform regular load tests from around the globe, and have strong agreements to get additional server capacity on the fly.

Keynote’s Online News Index includes the following news sites: ABC, AOL, Bloomberg, CBS, CNBC, CNN, CNN Money, Fox Business, Google Finance, Google News, LA Times, MSN Money, MSNBC, MarketWatch, NBC, NPR, NY Times, SF Chronicle, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News. Keynote said that during the peak traffic time, news sites, on average, took nine seconds to load, compared to four seconds before the spike.

The analysis is enlightening. And it means news sites, advertisers, and their technology providers all have to work together to enable fast performance during huge events.

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About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Dean -- if you love the idea of Jacko's estate benefiting from the most amazing part of a video game (so your two fortes), maybe cover this (sure you saw it). Breathtaking for us over-40 types...

    http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/cinematic.php
  • yoyoyo2
    Good article, makes a good point about something that has annoyed me for a very long time. Every now or so, you'll come across an ad that doesn't want to load and as a result, the entire web page doesn't load. I shouldn't have to sit and stare at the task bar which says waiting for ad.someting.com, for 3min. just for an ad to load then finally the rest of the content loads. Here's to hoping businesses will start making a better layout to their sites.
  • Chas_M
    A ridiculous premise....that there is advertising money to be made during news events. News sites should drop all advertising during any traffic surge. They should only "Advertise" their own ability to provide coverage as a top priority. If ad agencies can keep up it'll only hurt the news source anyway.
  • I am much concern to you on this topic. You are right that better web sites are built to load a page and then leave a blank spot where it’s waiting for a third-party image to load.