Do you remember this quote by Bob Feller, “Every day is a new opportunity”? Well, I think Google takes it seriously. Every morning the human race wakes up, and boom, Google drops something advanced, upbeat and new for the publishers! Now, what on earth are AMP, AMP Ad, Core Web Vitals, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)? Do not fret because I am here with the Google AMP anecdotes to clear your discombobulated thoughts regarding AMP Implementation and AMP Monetization. 

Here is a snippet of the topics covered in this article:

• What does Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) mean?
• Why is the nexus between AMP and Core Web Vitals (CWV) a great idea?
• What are the challenges a publisher is facing while monetizing AMP pages, and how can they be solved? 

Firstly, let’s understand what Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) mean?

AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open-source HTML framework developed by AMP Open Source Project designed to speed up the load time for mobile internet users. With AMP, you can create simple mobile websites that load almost instantly. Google initially started it as a competitor to Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. From the late 1990s, Google attuned its search engine service to serve the web audience better and gradually prioritized user experience. But, as technology has developed significantly in the past two decades, Google also went through a transmutation. 

Why is AMP a good idea?

In the last ten years, smartphones have overthrown the desktop or PC phase in our lives. For example, we use our smartphones to look for a nearby bistro, café; pay our bills, book an event for entertainment and log on to some certification course. As a publisher, if you want to draw your potential buyer’s attention, you need to have a mobile-friendly website that loads quickly. Recent Google research shows that 53% of people will leave a site that fails to load in three seconds or less. Therefore, AMP is a good idea as it is specifically designed to create websites that load as quickly as possible on mobile devices. According to a recent case study, a popular Australian website serving several million impressions per month for a mature and wealthy audience has increased its revenue by 69% in Q2 with AMP Monetization. 

Key benefits of an AMP page in a nutshell: 

• Loading time significantly reduced
• Due to the increase in speed, there is a steep decline in the bounce rate
• Amplified visibility on carrousels in SERPs
• Enhanced rankings in mobile

Core Web Vitals, a.k.a. CWV is a compendium that has already been an unofficial fragment of Google’s policy for a while. However, Google is taking it a step further, and these aspects will become official ranking signals of 2021. Core Web Vitals is the innovative initiative, baptized under the “Page Experience Update”, an umbrella of signals which comprises other metrics like mobile-friendly, SSL certification, and intrusive interstitials. 

Secondly, why is the nexus between AMP and Core Web Vitals (CWV) a great idea?

A quick trivia moment. CWV is all about “How fast does the page elements load?”, “How stable is the page?” and “How quickly the page becomes interactive?”. The CWV is here to stay and will continue to evolve as more items are added. If you want to dig down deeper, CWV has three metrics that include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). 

Let’s see how AMP has the built-in solutions to address each CWV metric:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): It measures the loading performance of a page and how quickly it is displayed. AMP pages have less JavaScript and CSS; hence, it helps the content to load faster. Remember, only AMP pages are preloaded and pre rendered by Google Cache so that pages can load instantly. 

First Input Delay (FID): It measures page interactivity and how fast a website responds to user actions. We know, less JavaScript means little time amongst elements being interactive. The JavaScript is loaded asynchronously, and if the details below the fold are lazy-loaded, then the things users cannot see on the page won’t postpone what they want to see or search. 

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): It tracks the visual stability of the content offered to the user. AMP uses a layout system that predefines and upholds the size of elements in advance, ensuring there are no snag experiences.

Even Milliseconds matters: There are no longer reservations for publishers, but the CWV and AMP are for the web at large. Always remember, AMP is an established and mature framework to build immersive, interactive, fast experience loading pages across devices. That’s the very reason why brands like Myntra, eBay, Pinterest, WordPress, Reddit, NewEgg, and Snapdeal have all adopted AMP. Well, e-commerce leaders and brand builders know that speed makes all the difference. According to the Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study (commissioned by Google), AMP leads to a 10% increase in website traffic with a 2x increase in page time. For e-commerce websites using AMP, the study also found a 20% increase in sales conversions compared to non-AMP pages. Today, every customer is bombarded with unnecessary information or white noise. When a customer is decisive about buying a product online, a frictionless experience is a key difference between abandonment and checkout. 

However, every new facet of technological advancement comes with a set of downsides, just like “two sides of the same coin”. At this point, you must be thinking about the grandeur of the Google AMP entourage, but it also has a flipside. 

Let’s find out the challenges a publisher faces while monetizing AMP pages and how they can be solved? 

• Maximum of 5 parallel callouts allowed per slot: To keep the page light, AMP RTC allows sending callouts to a maximum of 5 different endpoints to add ad servers, analytics, and advertising partners (ad exchanges & ad networks). This brings the challenge of increasing competition for the ad inventory.
• Client-side Header Bidding Not Supported: Normal Header Bidding Wrapper technology is incompatible with AMP tech. Ad tech partners can only be added individually in 5 RTC slots provided.
• Challenging to pass consent or user sync: The basic necessity of the AMP framework to keep the page light restricts website owners from adding user sync technology that impacts CPMs. 
• Traffic and engagement Issue: Nowadays, publishers are moving quickly to improve mobile experiences as mobile internet usage grows. Many publishers have enabled AMP on most of their site pages, hoping to ease the pain of mobile latency and better traffic & user engagement. However, publishers have indicated that it’s challenging to measure AMP page performance. 
• Ad Revenue Dispute: Most publishers haven’t noticed that monetizing on the mobile web hasn’t been a manageable undertaking, and AMP also has shortcomings. It has been observed that AMP ad formats publishers have enabled display ads, and only a few have implemented AMP ads, AMP banner ads, AMP sticky ads or video formats. Hence, AMP performance was reported to decline than standard mobile ads for half of the publishers. The primary reason behind it is that most publishers integrate with only 2-3 demand sources. With inadequate demand sources and restricted ad formats, many publishers are experiencing lower CTRs and fill rates on AMP. 
• Lack of technical knowledge about AMPHTML ads: Google launched AMP in 2015, more than 31 million websites embraced AMP to deliver faster and better mobile web experiences. However, due to a lack of resources or technical knowledge of the framework, multiple publishers are still not diving into AMPs for their ads (amp ad), resulting in a loss of opportunities to speed up the ads and surging yield. Educating and upgrading yourself in the ever-evolving programmatic world is inevitable, and it is the first step towards achieving a solution. Currently, if you want to amp up your revenue, then AMPHTML ads or amp ad should be your best friend. You must be thinking, “Why?” Google’s AMPHTML technology smartly combined HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to construct faster, lighter, and secure ad creatives for contemporary publishers. AMPHTML ads are displayed in multiple formats and amp ad multi size is also available. Here are the three formats which are used frequently: 
• Carousel AMPHTML ads:  An ad format consists of more than one image in a carousel 
• Video Parallax AMPHTML ads: A video ad is displayed on top of a banner image with a parallax effect 
• Lightbox AMPHTML ads:  Expandable and responsive display ads enable the publishers to broadcast advertisers’ brand experience 

Here are some benefits of AMPHTML ads: 

• Speedier ad rendering: Experience the lazy loading techniques. With the amp ad multi-size feature, AMPHTML solves latency issues for you 
• Supports multitudinous webpages: AMPHTML ads are devised to work on both AMP and non-AMP web pages across multiple devices
• Safeguarding from Ad fraud: The AMP system verifies each ad before it is out on the user’s browser. It is resulting in a safe user experience and positive brand perception for the advertisers. In return, better engagement rates and more profits for the publishers
• Fewer resources required: With the handy ad functionality of AMPHTML ads, the ad file size reduces; this in return minimizes the use of resources. 
• Improved user engagement: AMP ads coordinate with user behavior to improve engagement overall. It leads to better viewability, click-through rate, and general ad performance 

So, when should you use AMPHTML ads? When your goal is to provide faster and safer ad experiences to the user! AMPHTML ads enable publishers to deliver faster and secure ad experiences across all platforms pertaining to the principles of AMP in building and serving ads. AdSparc’s AMP Ads are designed to boost up publisher revenue and improve user experience. 

After reading the above challenges, one thought is definitely looming across your mind, i.e., how can AdSparc solve all these challenges mentioned above in one go?  

Anecdotes on AdSparc’s innovative AMP Monetization Solution

• AMP Optimized Prebid Server: Server-to-server Prebid implementation via RTC-Config to increase competition by connecting to 10+ premium SSPs for AMP inventory 
• High Performing Exclusive Ad-Formats: AMP-compatible Innovative ad-units such as Sticky Footer and the Flying Carpet ensure higher viewability and CTRs with their unique feature that only allows ad-loading when ‘in view.’ 
• Auto Ad-refresh: Increase ad impression by 20% with auto ad refresh feature for AMP inventory 
• Automatic Floor Price Optimization: Increase revenue by automatically optimizing  each ad request with our Floors product natively embedded in the S2S wrapper
• User Syncing with Bidders through Serve2Server: Generate higher CPMs through optimized user syncing between the AdSparc Prebid server and SSPs 
• Content Management Platform (CMP) Compatible Tech: Ensure legal compliance and maximize  bids through AMP-compatible CMP integrations 

Not only this, but with AdSparc, you will experience the best AMP-optimized Video Player. Now enjoy an exclusive, lightweight, high-speed player at your fingertip. Top five reasons why you should pick AdSparc’s AMP-optimized Video Player: 

1. CMS: File Hosting and Video Asset Management: You can upload your video assets as a publisher. Organize content into playlists and feeds, export to any CMS, YouTube or Facebook channel 
2. Light and Fast: minimize page load time: As you know, load times are critical for publishers, and during development, we ensure that the player is light and minimize the page load time
3. AMP-compatible: Easy integration with AMP pages: A lightweight and high-speed player to leverage video ads available for AMP pages and boost revenue without additional cost
4. Analytics &  Insights: Real-time KPI & analytics provide valuable insights for content strategy and campaign optimization: cross-platform and objective.
5. Prebid Monetization: Prebid, in general, facilitates a parallel bidding auction on every impression, leading to increased competition for bids with higher revenue and better yield as a result. The actual auction takes place on the server-side, which means it doesn’t cause delays on your pages. In addition to Prebid integrations, the AdSparc AMP-optimized Video player also supports VAST tags integrations. That’s not it. You get to experience the most effective Prebid server-side ad monetization platform for AMP. We are the only S2S platform supporting Real-Time Reporting for the publishers.  

Resulting in:

• Increased bid competition
• Increased request eCPM
• Increased impressions
• Increased fill rate

Easy 3 step AMP Implementation with AdSparc:

• Map your existing and new ad units: The document will be provided by us. The information will help us generate the required codes for AMP implementation

• Integrate our simple 2-lines code through RTC configuration: One-time process of adding updated AMP codes (with S2S header bidding info) on the website. Our technical team will generate and test the codes before sharing them with you.

• Enjoy your boost in AMP Revenue: An immediate surge in the AMP revenue

What’s Next?

The AMP framework is a well-defined trail to meet Google’s Page Experience signals and the fundamental Core Web Vitals metrics. Why? The key reason is that AMP authenticates and guarantees sub-second page loads; only AMP pages are prefetched in Google SERP results. So, join and leverage the end-to-end implementation of the AMP ads monetization solution for your website’s AMP pages with Adsparc. They have developed a comprehensive, transparent, and powerful reporting tool for AMP ads monetization that is simple and easy to understand. Their in-house team of AMP experts with extensive technical knowledge and industry experience are here to ensure a continuous increase in AMP revenue. So, sit back and enjoy higher revenue with AdSparc. Happy Monetizing to you! 

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Also Read: What are the new Innovative Ad Formats from Google?