A warning has been sent out to advertisers by Facebook – cut down the load times of your web pages, or we’ll cut the reach of your ads.
The company have begun plans to consider how long it’ll take a link brands include in their ads to load when they decide whether to show that ad to users. This news was made in an announced on Wednesday.
This move is Facebook’s way to make their site less frustrating for people to peruse while on a smartphone. Some of the other plans that have come to fruition by Facebook to increase load times includes the Instant Articles and Canvas formats.
Facebook’s attempt to increase the speeds of mobile page-load is commendable. Because of the growing popularity of ad blockers shows, it’s no surprise that folks are sick of waiting long times for web pages to load. If too many people get sick of this, this could turn into bad business for Facebook, as people will stop clicking links.
This is why the company announced on Wednesday that they would begin pre-loading pages that mobile ad links to when it predicts people are going to click on the ad, which they’re already doing for links in organic posts. This way, when a person clicks the link, the page will appear much faster than before. This will make users much happier, and Facebook more money. But, what has to be kept in mind, the images and interactive elements won’t begin to load until after the page appears. I can’t imagine this would be a bad thing for users. According to Facebook, this process can make the average mobile site load 29% faster.