I had an issue today where a site was being overloaded to the tune of millions of extra pageviews by an ad that was improperly configured by an advertising network. Specifically, the network was requesting a file that didn’t exist:
/doubleclick/DARTIframe.html
Because this particular site had an incorrect setup with the way its 404 works, redirecting to the homepage (never recommended), the result was a huge amount of pageloads that weren’t necessary. Even worse, the ad created some sort of loop making the problem compounded.
The scariest thing about this is that this was most likely caused by some junior person at some agency improperly typing a URL or similar. Clearly someone without knowledge of what they were doing. Which brings about the question – is it safe to give ad networks the ability to publish whatever they want on your site, whenever?
The answer probably is yes, but even so, webmasters should constantly be watching whats happening with their ad tags. These tags have the ability to do a lot of damage, and when you install them, you are allowing another company and whoever their contractors or clients are to publish directly to your webpages. I wonder how most sites handle this in their terms of service? Past offenses I have seen included the installation of spyware on client machines, the spread of viruses (such as Gumblar), and the insertion of ads that were previously declined – which mysteriously always seemed to happen during the weekends!
This actually isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen but was definitely the worst. It left 24/7 sysop guys running around not aware of what was happening – after all it simply looked like a traffic surge.
Memo to ad networks: We are on to you….
