Google AMPs up AdWords and the GDN

Paid Media / August 16, 2017

Faster is better, at least where mobile page loading time is concerned. In May, Google extended its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format to AdWords landing page and ads on the GDN. We give you the lowdown.

According to a 2016 Doubleclick study, 53% of mobile users abandon a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Sadly, ad scripts are often the culprit for molasses slow load times. Users respond by installing ad blockers, which only harm sites that rely on ads to support their content.

But page load time isn’t only about making sure your visitors stay and engage. We all know that mobile and desktop page load speed is a Google ranking factor… If your page loads slowly, not only will you lose engagement, but it’s possible people won’t find you in the first place.

So what to do? Many publishers are turning to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project to streamline and accelerate page load time when a visitor clicks from a Google search result. Today, AMP pages load in well less than a second.

An AMP page is essentially a webpage that contains optimized code. It has three components:

AMP HTML: HTML extended with AMP capabilities

AMP JS: A JS library that implements AMP’s best performance practices

AMP Cache: Fetches AMP HTML pages, caches them and improves their performance

Same technology, different applications

In May, Google brought AMP to the Google Display Network (GDN) and Google AdWords. In each case AMP is applied differently, toward the same goal: giving users quicker access to content that monetizes traffic. Here’s how they’re different:

AMP + Google AdWords

With AdWords + AMP beta, advertisers will be able to accelerate the load time of AMP landing pages linked to their search campaigns. In other words, if you have AMP landing pages, these pages will load as quickly from AdWords as they do from Google’s organic search results. Sign up to AdWords + AMP beta to take advantage of AMP in your AdWords campaign.

AMP + Google Display Network

In 2016 Google launched the AMP Ads Initiative with the goal of applying the benefits of AMP landing pages to display ads. Recently Google automatically applied AMP technology to a significant number of display ads in the GDN. The end result, according to Google, is that ads load up to five seconds faster.

Getting started with AMP

There are three ways of applying AMP to accelerate your mobile pages and ads.

Organic: You coder can learn how to apply AMP by following Google’s tutorial.

AdWords: Similarly, follow Google’s tutorial to AMP your pages, then sign up for the AdWords + AMP beta.

Google Display Network: Google is automatically converting display ads on the GDN to the AMP format. You can read up on AMP for display ads here.