Optimizing Ad Tech with Freestar’s Modular Header Bidder Wrapper

In the world of digital advertising, balancing revenue optimization and performance is a delicate task. Page load speed, efficient use of resources, and seamless user experiences are as crucial as maximizing ad revenue. Freestar has emerged as a leader with its innovative header bidder wrapper technology, built upon and extending the open-source Prebid.js framework. A key focus of Freestar’s technology is not just maximizing auction efficiency but also modularizing the code to optimize delivery and minimize memory leakage across browsers.

Dive deeper into Freestar’s approach in improving performance in dynamic ad environments which is centered around modularizing its proprietary wrapper and optimizing browser memory management.

Understanding Header Bidder Wrapper Technology

Freestar’s header bidder wrapper technology serves as an advanced intermediary between a publisher’s website and various demand sources, facilitating efficient asynchronous auctions. By selecting the highest bidder from multiple sources, Freestar ensures publishers receive optimal revenue for their ad inventory.

However, Freestar’s focus goes beyond revenue generation. It aims to equip publishers with a modularized, performance-optimized orchestration layer that minimizes the impact on page load speed and mitigates memory leaks. Freestar’s wrapper is engineered to deliver only the essential code specific to each publisher’s needs, making it lightweight and efficient.

What is Memory Management in Browsers?

Understanding memory management is key to appreciating Freestar’s optimization efforts. Modern web browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox use heap memory to store data such as DOM (Document Object Model) elements, scripts, and styles. They rely on garbage collection (GC) to free up memory that is no longer needed by removing objects that are no longer referenced in the code. However, certain elements—particularly those that change frequently, such as ads—can cause memory leaks if they are not properly managed. Memory leaks occur when old objects, such as removed DOM elements, remain in memory even though they are no longer visible or used on the page. Other common causes of memory leaks include closures, event listeners, timers and intervals, and dynamic content.

This becomes particularly important in ad environments where ad units frequently refresh. If these refreshes aren’t handled correctly, the old ad creatives and their associated DOM elements may remain in memory, causing orphaned DOM objects. Over time, this leads to increased memory consumption, leading to greater page load times and a negative user experience.

The Impact of Ad Refresh Cycles on Memory Usage

A key component of modern ad strategies is the use of ad refresh cycles, which replace an ad creative with a new one after a set interval. While this boosts ad impressions and revenue potential, it also increases the risk of memory leakage.

Freestar’s technology takes this into account, offering an intelligent refresh system that ensures proper cleanup of DOM elements and event listeners tied to old ad creatives. This process reduces memory bloat and minimizes the risk of memory leaks during repeated ad refreshes.

Freestar’s Proprietary Header Bidder Wrapper Technology: Extending Prebid with Modularization

Freestar’s header bidder wrapper is built on top of the widely adopted Prebid.js framework, but it goes beyond Prebid’s capabilities to offer a proprietary, modularized solution tailored to each publisher, and to each experience. This approach ensures that the code delivered is highly optimized for each publisher’s specific use case and requirements.

1. Modularizing the Freestar Header Bidder Wrapper

Freestar’s proprietary technology is designed with modularization at its core. This means that, like Prebid, Freestar’s wrapper is broken down into individual components—each responsible for a specific function such as handling bids, managing analytics, or facilitating ad refreshes. However, Freestar goes a step further by allowing publishers to only load the modules they actually need. This results in a highly efficient, optimized payload that reduces the overall file size and execution time, improving performance significantly.

For instance, if a publisher is using only certain demand sources or ad formats, Freestar’s modularized wrapper ensures that the code for unrelated features—such as video ad units or demand partners that are unused is excluded from the build.

So, what does this achieve?

This precision targeting ensures that only the necessary code is delivered to the browser, resulting in faster load times, better performance, and reduced memory usage.

2. Device-Specific and Geo-Specific Optimization

Freestar’s modular approach also enables device-specific optimization backed by data-driven insights into device performance and resource limitations. Different devices—whether desktop, mobile, or tablet—vary significantly in processing power, memory capacity, and network bandwidth. By delivering device-specific builds, Freestar can ensure that mobile users, who account for approximately 50-60% of global web traffic, receive a lighter version of the wrapper with fewer resource-intensive features.This reduces the number of resource-intensive features by up to 30% (as shown from our internal tests), improving page load times and minimizing the impact on device performance.

In addition, Freestar’s header bidding wrapper can be optimized for geographic regions. Depending on where a user is located, certain demand partners or ad formats might not be relevant. Freestar’s modular builds allow the wrapper to be customized by region, ensuring that users only load what’s necessary for their locale, reducing unnecessary overhead.

3. Prebid as the Core, Freestar for Customization

While Prebid.js serves as the foundation for Freestar’s technology, Freestar’s proprietary wrapper extends Prebid’s capabilities by providing more advanced customization and performance optimizations. Although Prebid is inherently modular by design, Freestar adds substantial value by incorporating proprietary features that fine-tune the framework to publishers’ specific needs. Freestar’s wrapper focuses on reducing the memory footprint, streamlining ad refresh processes, and improving the efficiency of demand-side integrations.

Benefits of a custom modular build,

Minimal Code Bloat: By including only the required modules, Freestar minimizes the amount of JavaScript delivered, speeding up page load times and reducing execution overhead.
Optimized for Device and Region: Publishers receive custom versions of the wrapper based on the user’s device (desktop vs. mobile) and geographic location, ensuring maximum efficiency for each visitor.
Lower Memory Usage: Fewer active modules mean fewer memory-intensive operations, helping to reduce the risk of memory leaks or unnecessary memory consumption.

Freestar ensures that Prebid’s core functionality is tightly integrated with our custom performance optimizations, allowing publishers to leverage Prebid’s open-source advantages while benefiting from Freestar’s enhanced features and control over the header bidding process. This combination leads to higher ad yield and a seamless, memory-efficient experience.

Freestar’s 4-step approach to Performance Optimizations for Memory Management

Freestar employs several key strategies to manage memory more effectively within its modularized header bidder wrapper:

Efficient DOM Element Removal: When an ad creative is replaced, Freestar ensures that old DOM elements are completely removed from both the DOM tree and memory. This prevents orphaned objects from lingering in memory, which would otherwise lead to gradual memory bloat.
Smart Garbage Collection Coordination: Freestar’s wrapper technology works in harmony with browsers’ garbage collectors, ensuring that outdated elements (such as old ad creatives and event listeners) are marked as unreachable and freed up as quickly as possible.
Optimized Ad Refresh Logic: Freestar’s wrapper includes intelligent refresh logic that handles ad replacement in a memory-efficient manner. It cleans up event listeners and de-references old ad units properly, allowing browsers to reclaim the memory without delays or leaks.
Cross-Browser Testing: Freestar regularly tests its wrapper across different browsers to ensure compatibility and identify any discrepancies in memory handling. This allows the team to optimize for different garbage collection cycles and prevent browser-specific memory leaks.

Achieving the ideal balance with Freestar

Freestar’s proprietary header bidder wrapper, built on and extending Prebid.js, represents a state-of-the-art solution that combines performance optimization, modularization, and memory management. By delivering a custom, lightweight build tailored to each publisher’s specific needs, Freestar ensures efficient resource usage, fast page loads, and reduced memory consumption.

Freestar’s focus on preventing memory leaks, avoiding orphaned DOM elements, and minimizing code overhead sets a new benchmark in the ad tech space. This allows publishers to maximize ad revenue without sacrificing performance. By modularizing its header bidder wrapper, Freestar ensures that only the necessary components are deployed, resulting in an efficient and adaptable solution across devices and regions.

For publishers, this translates into a seamless balance between ad monetization and user experience. Whether you’re optimizing for desktop or mobile, Freestar’s technology can help reduce latency, streamline ad delivery, and enhance overall site performance – ultimately leading to higher ad yield, improved user engagement, and a more competitive edge in the market.