AMP

Ads and AMP: Year in Review and Looking Ahead

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In the world of online advertising, the saying “time equals money” seems more pertinent than ever. Consumer attention is a scarce commodity, meaning ads need to be not only relevant and engaging, but also fast.

Since the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project launched in October 2015, over 31M domains have embraced AMP to grow their business with faster and better mobile web experiences. In the past year alone, we’ve seen publishers on AMP reach several milestones: they’re generating up to $6 million per week from ads using Google AdSense and Doubleclick Ad Exchange, earning 3X more revenue per day, and leveraging over 100 ad tech platforms supporting the open source AMP Project.1

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Publishers like MailOnline Advertising are implementing optimized strategies to maximize revenue on their AMP pages. After adjusting their AMP monetization strategy to include a server-side unified auction using Prebid, they saw a 6X increase in AMP revenue on their site Metro.

Another AMP partner, India Today, is seeing 23% more revenue on their AMP pages compared to non-AMP pages, despite having fewer ads on their AMP pages. Like MailOnline and India Today, all publishers should approach monetizing their AMP pages with the same optimizations as their non-AMP pages to ensure they are capitalizing on this growing revenue opportunity.

But we know there is still progress to be made. Today at AMP Conf, we announced several new partnerships and technologies to help the entire ecosystem continue growing their businesses with AMP in more flexible and open ways.

Greater flexibility and performance with regular ads on AMP

When the AMP Project was launched, a top priority was ensuring ads did not get in the way of the AMP experience. Since then, the AMP Project has worked hard to bring better performance and capabilities to ads on AMP.

A key step along the way was the release of Fast Fetch, a faster mechanism for loading ads on AMP pages. Fast Fetch renders ads up to 2.7 seconds faster compared to the legacy mechanism. A lot can get done in 2.7 seconds. In fact, in 2.7 seconds, there are over 130,000 Google searches made, 140,000 YouTube videos viewed, and 5,000,000 emails sent.2 Since announcing Fast Fetch in August 2017, we’ve shifted our focus to making sure all AMP partners can apply the speed and performance of Fast Fetch to their own businesses.

Today we announced Real-Time Config, a new component enabling publishers to implement third-party technology partners while also leveraging the speed and performance of Fast Fetch. Real-Time Config allows publishers to leverage the benefits of Fast Fetch without compromising their monetization strategy. For example, publishers can now leverage their data management platforms or server-side demand aggregators such as Prebid Server on their AMP pages.

Expanding AMPHTML ads with new tools and partnerships

While ad serving is one component that impacts AMP monetization—the ad creatives themselves are another. We recently rebranded AMP Ads as “AMPHTML ads” with the goal of accelerating awareness and support for these faster and more secure ads.

AMPHTML ads load up to five seconds faster than traditional ads and prevent the spread of malware, ensuring a brand’s experience is both viewable and secure. AMPHTML ads also work across both AMP and non-AMP pages, so creative developers can build once and serve their ads anywhere.

A number of technology partners already support AMPHTML ads, including Triplelift, Celtra, and DoubleClick. Today at AMP Conf, we moved closer to the goal of making all ad experiences on the web faster and more secure, with AdZerk, Logicad, and Google Web Designer  announcing support for AMPHTML ads. After building support for AMPHTML ads, Japanese marketing technology platform So-net Media Networks (Logicad) saw a 33% decrease in ad load time and 30% increase in CTR.

To start delivering faster, more secure, and better performing ad creatives with AMPHTML ads, leverage one of the open-source AMPHTML ad templates on AMPbyExample or reach out to a supporting platform to help you get started.

The AMP Project was launched with the goal of making the open web better and faster for all. We look forward to continuing our work with the entire ecosystem to help our partners build growing and sustainable businesses with AMP.

Posted by Gabe Bender, Product Marketing Manager, AMP Project, Google

1 Internal Data, Google, February 2018
2 Internet Live Stats, February 2018