Cox Radio is doing their own thing. They used to use StreamAudio, now they are using StreamTheWorld for the actual stream – but not using the lean mean STW player, but instead the TargetSpot streaming ad insertion with extra junk thrown in for good measure thing.
http://streamingradioguide.com/adm/player-type.php?playerid=48&action=listall
for a nice list.
After a few preliminary things, the player loads a 550kB flash player object (!)
contacts Google Analytics
contacts TargetSpot
contacts Doubleclick (for the static banner ad)
updates a 2mdn flash cookie
lets Quantcast play with the Flash cookies
Loads a 3.5 MB flash advertisement
begins downloading a series of ad descriptors from Targetspot to play later
starts downloading ~1 MB of graphics and AUDIO for those future intersticial ads (the stream hasn’t started yet)
reaches out to adfusion to say “Hi!”
The biggest flaw to this player is there is no reason to be downloading a dozen Targetspot ads into memory before the video preroll ad has downloaded, and before the stream is loaded and going. Get the stream going, and then load up the crap in the background as bandwidth permits…..