Rich Technology

Overview

This section discusses the technologies that power Rich. These are used by our customers and are part of the ad ecosystem, and can at times leave tracks in web server logs, in ad server systems or other places in the vast wilderness that is the Internet.

At a quick glance, there are three main parts:

1. The Rich Log server – the server which we use to collect ad impression data.
2. The Rich Agents – Comes in two flavors, Flash or JavaScript. The Flash component is bundled as a part of an ad when the ad is created. The JavaScript agent is either wrapped around the ad, or is part of the publisher’s web page.
3. The Rich Bot – a bot for collecting post-impression data.

The Rich Log Server

The log server collects ad impression data and is essentially the entry point for any data that passes through the rest of Rich. The log server is found at:

log.richmetrics.com 

If you stumble upon that adress in your web browser logs it’s most likely because you’ve seen an ad that is tracked by Rich.

The Rich Agent

The agent is either a Flash component bundled as a part of an ad, or a JavaScript that is wrapping an ad on a web page. In both cases it works more or less the same way, with a few differences: The Flash version is not part of the daisy chain of redirects used for embedding the ad on a web page, nor for the chain that tracks clicks. Instead it works independently, and in parallell to other tracking systems. Neither version affect any part of the ad. The Rich Agent does not change or impact the exposure or click thru chain.

Ads that contain, or are wrapped by, the Rich Agent send tracking data at exposure time, when important events occur, and periodically to determine session length. For information about data and integrity, please read our Privacy policy. In short, Rich does not store user identifiable data over time.

The Rich Bot

The Rich Bot downloads ads that include our tracking code, to determine metadata about the ads and other post-impression data.

Chances are you’ve discovered the Bot in your web server logs, either by hosting ads from one of Burt’s customers, or are involved in the eco system where our customers publish their ads. When the Bot collects information it will take measures only to do this once per hosted ad. It adheres to the IAB Global Measurement Guidelines and is listed in the IAB International Spiders & Bots List. As such, events triggered by the Rich Bot should be exempt from measurements and tagged as non-human behaviour.

How the Rich Bot accesses your site

The full User Agent of the Rich Bot is:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; +http://www.richmetrics.com/bot.html)

The IP addresses used by the Rich Bot changes from time to time. The best way to identify accesses by the Rich Bot is to use the user-agent. You can verify that a bot accessing your server really is the Rich Bot by using a reverse DNS lookup.

If you see this user agent in your logs, you should regard it as non-human behvior, and treat that data accordingly.