We launched the AMP Ads Initiative last year with the ambitious goal of fixing ad experiences on the web by bringing the speed and performance of AMP to advertising. AMP Ads are faster, lighter and more secure — loading up to 5 seconds faster than regular ads on AMP pages — making them more viewable and delivering better user experiences.
With a growing network of technology platforms, publishers and advertisers supporting AMP Ads, the Initiative is taking root and beginning to drive positive results for the industry. For example, native ad tech platform Triplelift helped boost Time Inc’s revenue and viewability with native AMP Ads that are 6x faster and 3x lighter than traditional native ads.
Today at Google I/O, the AMP Project shared its vision for how AMP Ads are positioned to change the way we build, serve and measure ads. Here’s how we’re making progress towards that goal.
Making it easier to build AMP Ads
Fixing advertising on the web starts with fixing the way ads are built. Just like AMP pages, AMP Ads are built in AMP-HTML, providing a streamlined framework for building creatives and avoiding the redundant scripts that slow down ads. To make it easier for advertisers and publishers to build these creatives, creative management platform Celtra now supports building AMP Ads.
Celtra’s AdCreator platform is already used by thousands of brands and publishers globally to build immersive, rich media ads. By integrating support for AMP Ads in this easy-to-use drag-and-drop software for creating ads, all of their customers can now easily create beautiful and fast AMP Ads.
“Mobile advertising campaigns today are often hampered by broken, non-viewable ads with a poor UX experience,” says Aleksander Kmetec, VP of Engineering at Celtra. “The need for better UX and fast-loading ads are not only the future of digital advertising, but a necessity for developing markets that are more sensitive to data. We are proud to join the AMP Project and believe that AMP helps pave the way for better creative, a significantly improved customer experience and higher mobile ad engagement rates.”
We hope that with Celtra’s AdCreator platform, creative developers will explore building new and interactive creatives with AMP Ads. But in case they need more inspiration, we shared six new rich formats on AMP by Example, a showcase of live examples and code using AMP in interesting ways. The new creative formats include carousels, video parallax and ‘LightBox’, which use a number of AMP components, allowing developers to build beautiful creatives while ensuring that the technical performance of the ad remains great.
Expanding support with more ways to serve AMP Ads
Okay, now you have great looking AMP Ads, but how do you get them to deliver to a web page? Last year, DoubleClick announced support for AMP Ads by allowing publishers to traffic AMP Ads as native ads in DoubleClick for Publishers. Since then, platforms like TripleLift, AdZerk and Dianomi have also built support for serving AMP Ads. Later this summer, DoubleClick is giving publishers even more flexibility to serve AMP Ads, enabling them to serve these ads as custom creatives.
Quantifying success with more tools to measure AMP Ads
We also understand the importance of measurement. After all, what good is creating and serving an AMP Ad if an advertiser can’t measure the results? In the coming months, real-time, multi-platform measurement and analytics platform Moat will support AMP Ads.
With Moat measurement, marketers and publishers will be able to quantify how much more engaging ads are when they’re faster, lighter and more secure. The integration provides Moat’s full suite of viewability and attention analytics powered by their proprietary and Moat-hosted JavaScript tag, empowering publishers to design better experiences and provide brands with greater insight into how audiences pay attention to their campaigns.
“Attention is the key to branding, and seamless ads and content that load quickly provide a better experience to capture that attention,” said Jonah Goodhart, CEO and Co-Founder of Moat. “We’ve seen consumers respond negatively when faced with slow load times or a poor user experience. The AMP Ads initiative represents a huge step forward for the industry and consumers, and we’re proud to contribute independent measurement to the AMP Project’s ambitious plans to improve web experiences.”
As the industry recognizes the need for better and faster advertising experiences, we’re looking forward to expanding the open source AMP Ads Initiative to all.
Whether you’re an advertiser, ad tech platform or publisher, deliver better ads by joining the AMP Ads Initiative today.
Posted by Vamsee Jasti, Product Manager, AMP Project