Google to speed-up web browsing on mobile devices
Technical issues have slowed the ability of pages to load quickly on mobile devices
Web browsing on mobile devices will be greatly accelerated as early as 2016 when Google activates its “Accelerated Mobile Pages Project” or AMP.
Several publishers like CBS Interactive, International Business Times/Newsweek, AOL and Al Jazeera America seem to be interested in having their mobile pages load far faster. Outbrain, AdSense and OpenX are among those that say they’ll use AMP.
Google described AMP as a technical specification for faster pages, especially those on mobile devices. It started the AMP Project in October and considered the project a competitor to Facebook’s own Instant Articles – a program that hosts publishers’ content in the News Feed.
The aim of Google’s AMP Project is to work with publishers instead of against them. Google seems to understand publishers want to be included in rich media and need to implement ads to keep their content free. AMP isn’t just blocking this content, but intends to optimise its performance.
Technical issues such as too many online ads and extraneous code have slowed down the ability of pages to load quickly on mobile devices, however. The consequent irritation can cause a mobile user to abandon the site, which is bad for publishers that will lose revenue from ad clicks as well as reader loyalty.
Apple’s solution to slow loading pages was to have iOS 9 block ads, tracking scripts and other speed killers. Publishers have instead opted to redirect users to subscription sign-up pages when ads are blocked to counter this iOS 9 action. Some have sued ad blockers to shut them down.
Facebook dealt with the same problem by hosting publishers’ content directly in the News Feed. Doing this speeded up load times while making the Instant Articles feel like publishers’ websites.
The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Guardian, NBC News, BuzzFeed, BBC, National Geographic, The Washington Post, among others are trying out this format.
When Facebook sells ads, publishers keep 30 percent of their ad revenue but when they sell their own ads they keep 100 percent of the revenue.
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