In most users’ experience, webpages appear on
browsers as integrated collages of text and images. As a
technical matter, this content is delivered and aggregated
from multiple independent servers. This includes advertising
content, which is typically drawn from “third-party” servers
owned by the advertisers themselves. The defendants in this
case are internet advertising companies, and this suit concerns
their practices in serving advertisements to the browsers of
webpage visitors.
The delivery of advertising content from third party
servers to webpage visitors’ browsers is a highly technical
process involving a series of communications between the
visitor’s browser, the server of the visited website, and the
server of the advertising company. In its specifics:
The host website leaves part of its webpage
blank where the third-party advertisements will
appear. Upon receiving a “GET” request from a
user seeking to display a particular webpage,
the server for that webpage will subsequently
respond to the browser, instructing the browser
to send a “GET” request to the third-party
company
charged
with
serving
the
advertisements for that particular webpage. . . .
The third-party server responds to the GET
request by sending the advertisement to the
user’s browser, which then displays it on the
user’s device. The entire process occurs within
milliseconds and the third-party content appears
to arrive simultaneously with the first-party
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