Google AMP: Publishing Friend or Foe?
Publishing friend or foe? That is the question.
In February 2016, Google officially launched AMP, an open sourced initiative intended to improve mobile web by empowering publishers to make web pages that are optimized to load instantly on users’ mobile devices. The user benefit? A better experience: load speeds four times faster, coupled with 10 times less data consumption.
But is AMP yet another digital disruptor or foe such as ad blockers and what many are labeling Facebook Instant Articles? Or a ‘friend’, equally providing value to publishers and users alike?
So far, AMP appears to be falling into the ‘friend’ camp.
As a benefit of creating AMP pages, publishers receive higher rankings and can have their content placed within a carousel of 14 articles at the very top of the search results page. Articles that do not rank within the carousel still get a special “lightning-bolt” symbol in the search results to let users know it loads faster. Though early, the results look promising; The Washington Post increased click-through rates by 50%.1
Google AMP also created publisher friendly features that allow publishers’ business models and monetization to remain unchanged. For example, when AMP first launched, it didn’t account for paywall structures like those used by The New York Times. However, Google updated its servers’ capabilities to limit readership of the publications’ AMP articles to 10 a month before offering readers a link to subscribe – mirroring the limit, subscription process, and monetization on the publisher’s Web site.2
Tom Standage, the deputy editor at The Economist, which uses a hybrid advertising/subscription monetization model, said, “It doesn’t require us to change our approach – unlike Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles. They don’t support paywalls, so we have to decide what subset of our content to make free on those platforms. With AMP, we should get fast-loading mobile pages without having to change our business model.”3
Likewise, Google is publisher friendly with its advertising options. AMP allows publishers to code simplified and AMP-ified versions of advertising tags. These tags are created within Google in partnership with ad networks to make sure they are optimized for speed and are not intrusive. Since its introduction, these ads are available in countless formats, including high value vertical video ads.
If there is one complaint publishers are having, it’s about ad viewability caused by ads loading long after the page itself. But, it’s something Google has said they are looking into.
As expressed in an e-mail statement to Digiday, Google said, “[Slow ads] can be caused by a number of factors ranging from the response time of the ad server, supply-side platform or third-party call out, to how heavy a creative is, to how AMP will prioritize the order in which content loads on the page to optimize user experience. We are working on a number of ways to improve speed of advertising, but this is also depending on the third-party ecosystem partners who serve ads on behalf of publishers.”4
With this change, coupled with publisher centric features and a road-map containing over 100 known updates and features, AMP appears to be a publishing friend, indeed.
1. Sloane, Garett. “Publishers Find Google’s AMP Speeds up Pages, but Ads Are Still Slow.” Digiday. N.p., 20 Apr. 2016. Web. 30 May 2016.
2. IBID.
3. Davies, Jessica. “How Publishers Are Using Google AMP across Europe.” Digiday. N.p., 24 Feb. 2016. Web. 30 May 2016.
4. Sloane, Garett. “Publishers Find Google’s AMP Speeds up Pages, but Ads Are Still Slow.” Digiday. N.p., 20 Apr. 2016. Web. 30 May 2016.