This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Header Bidding slows page loads by half a second

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by user1929

more options

Has anyone figured out how to make Firefox find this code & disable it before it engages? Those with high latency, DSL connections probably suffer much much longer delays.

https://adprofs.co/beginners-guide-to-header-bidding/ SNIP Header bidding is an additional auction that takes place outside of the ad server, in the header of a web page, which loads before anything else on the page. The header typically contains metadata about the page and calls scripts used for formatting the style of the page, tracking, and so on. Because of this, it’s an ideal area to conduct a new auction.

Even though this new auction happens in the visitor’s browser, the publisher essentially controls this auction. SNIP

Managing Header Latency One challenge of header bidding is the latency added to page loading. The header auction process takes longer than a typical RTB auction on a single exchange, which generally times out at 100 milliseconds. However, since many publishers use multiple exchange partners in a traditional waterfall setup, such latency has always been there. It just hasn’t been in the header.

Header bidding asks for multiple demand sources to put forth their best price, so several RTB auctions happen simultaneously. As a result, publishers need to manage their timeouts so that no one partner will hold up the header auction and jeopardize page loading. Ideally, the overall timeout should be kept below 500 milliseconds, or half a second.

Has anyone figured out how to make Firefox find this code & disable it before it engages? Those with high latency, DSL connections probably suffer much much longer delays. https://adprofs.co/beginners-guide-to-header-bidding/ SNIP Header bidding is an additional auction that takes place outside of the ad server, in the header of a web page, which loads before anything else on the page. The header typically contains metadata about the page and calls scripts used for formatting the style of the page, tracking, and so on. Because of this, it’s an ideal area to conduct a new auction. Even though this new auction happens in the visitor’s browser, the publisher essentially controls this auction. SNIP Managing Header Latency One challenge of header bidding is the latency added to page loading. The header auction process takes longer than a typical RTB auction on a single exchange, which generally times out at 100 milliseconds. However, since many publishers use multiple exchange partners in a traditional waterfall setup, such latency has always been there. It just hasn’t been in the header. Header bidding asks for multiple demand sources to put forth their best price, so several RTB auctions happen simultaneously. As a result, publishers need to manage their timeouts so that no one partner will hold up the header auction and jeopardize page loading. Ideally, the overall timeout should be kept below 500 milliseconds, or half a second.

All Replies (3)

more options

There are several different ad-blocking addons that you can install in Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-for-firefox/

Installing one of these should stop most of the scripts that you are referring to.

more options

I don't think so. They block the script between the ad server & computer. The process I'm referring to takes half a second to figure out WHICH ad server will deliver an impression.

more options

The article says that "this new auction happens in the visitor’s browser", so I think it should be blocked by those same extensions. From reading the article, it sounds like they're just loading every ad network's script simutaneously, and then choosing to just display the ad from the one with the highest price, so if you block all of those scripts it should stop the process from happening.