On August 21, Google’s Amp (Accelerated Mobile Pages) group announced some enhancements to ads served in AMP. The project has entered the second phase of the intended 3 phase plan for supporting comprehensive advertising functionality in AMP.
Phase one focused on basic support for ads within AMP. Phase two will focus on speeding up AMP ad rendering, utilizing what is called “Fast Fetching” versus the original method, “Delayed Fetch.” Fast Fetch separates the ad request from the ad rendering, while Delayed Fetch allows the ad request to happen while the page content is being rendered, and only renders the ad before the ad slot is in view for the user.
From their announcement:
With Fast Fetch, ads are requested much earlier in the lifecycle of the page, allowing page rendering and creative selection in the ad server to happen in parallel. Fast Fetch is 850ms faster at the 50th percentile and 2.7s faster at the 90th percentile as compared to Delayed Fetch.
When created using the AMP ad spec, ads get an extra performance boost with this new method. Those using Double Click and AdSense are already going to see this benefit, as those platforms automatically convert eligible ads to the AMP Ads format. Its encouraged by they AMP spec group to switch to developing AMP Ads, as well as the ad tech platforms/networks to begin using Fast Fetch for their ad tags.
The new method improves overall content and ad rendering time, as well as assisting in raising the viewability metric for ads, an area of significant concern for advertisers (and a problem for publishers).
Features being planned as part of the Fast Fetch rollout include:
- competitive exclusions and roadblocks for AMP pages.
- ability to refresh ads at a configurable frequency.
- support for enhancing ad requests with targeting information to the ad server in real time.
Currently, no dates have been specified.