Back in June, I read Ethan Marcotte’s book Responsive Web Design. I build websites for a living so it has been all I’ve thought about for months now.

I consider ads to be the major road block for doing responsive web design on any site that requires them to support itself. Most ad networks are happy to drop off a mess of code onto the pages of a site. Everything from iframes to objects and embeds that include javascript, flash and images. It’s unbelievable in some cases how much they inject into a page. Tracking pixels, timers and other scripts that just make you shake your head and wonder how it got this bad.

The only light I see right now is doing server side checks for mobile and possibly tablet devices and serving different ad codes that can have more control placed on them and what they serve up. Some ad networks can recognize devices on their own and make sure they don’t serve up Flash ads etc. It is an unfortunate dance that sites with ads will have to do if they plan on doing a responsive web design.