Authors: Amit Gupta and Geoffrey Baehr
Web proxies use caching to improve client performance (reduced access latency) and network performance (reduced traffic); with caching, some of the client requests are served by a local cache, without any contact with the original content server. As online advertising is a major revenue source for many content providers, many content providers disable caching (cache-busting) because caching reduces their revenues. We have built a new scheme (LocalAd) where the proxies insert the advertisements in the web pages, in collaboration with the content-providers. With proxy-based ad insertion, the content-providers can now allow the proxies to serve multiple clients with different ads from the same cached data stream. In this manner, proxy-based ad insertion improves cache hit rates. We begin by describing the problems generated by the use of cache-busting techniques today. We will then describe the LocalAd scheme, as well as some of the lessons that we learn from building and using the LocalAd system.
Full Paper: postscript