Mobile Ads Take Twice as Long to Load as Desktop
- Friday, July 1st, 2016
- Share this article:
Mobile ads take an average of five seconds to render, according to research by the Media Rating Council (MRC) – around twice as long as desktop ads.
The figure is taken from tens of millions of mobile ads, across both apps and mobile web.
MRC CEO George Ivie told the Wall Street Journal that, while mobiles limited bandwidth and network speeds are a factor, the main reason is simply “heavy ads”.
“Lighter ads and more efficient ads, with less back-end piggy backing and tagging, is the answer to this,” Ivie said.
The rendering times were measured as part of developing MRCs latest viewability guidelines, which require half of an ad to be in-view, and fully rendered, for at least one second on both desktop and mobile.
With users dipping in and out of content more quickly on mobile, reaching the six second mark – five to render, one in-view – could prove difficult, and Ivie says publishers and advertisers “might be counting wrong” on viewable impression numbers, by not taking rendering times into account.
Don’t forget to enter the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards. The Early Bird deadline for submissions is 22 July. More details here.