If Google's research is correct, more than half of all smartphone users give up trying to load mobile websites if it takes longer than three seconds. Because of that, Google is moving forward with several beta offerings to help publishers and advertisers make their mobile formats more efficient.
Today, the search and video giant introduced native video ads for publishers, an offering through its DoubleClick platform that the company says could speed up video on publishers' mobile websites while also driving more revenue.
"It is in everyone's interest to work together to deliver a faster mobile experience," Jonathan Bellack, Google's director of product management for publisher platforms, told Adweek. "We feel the data is very clear that mobile users expect speed and that they will not wait around if things are slow. And therefore, if the industry together cannot deliver speed, nobody will succeed."
Google says its video ads business is growing quickly, with monthly video ad impressions served across platforms doubling since January. When the company reported it's third-quarter earnings last month, Ruth Porat, chief financial officer for Google parent company Alphabet, said mobile search and video continue to power the company's advertising business.
Native ad impressions served through DoubleClick also have doubled overall since May for a group of publishers that includes The New York Times, Vogue, Slate and eBay. (For The New York Times, for example, native ads have had clickthrough rates six times higher than average and viewable impressions four times higher than standard display formats.)
Google isn't the only tech company working to speed up the mobile web. In September, Facebook started putting more pressure on brands to decrease load times by preloading ads even before a user click on them. The Google rival also said it planned to begin factoring load times into determining which users see which ads.
Along with launching native video ads, Google also announced today that it's bringing its Exchange Bidding offering out of alpha and into beta. The platform, which lets publishers put multiple exchanges in competition with each other, is also moving into mobile apps.
Exchange Bidding launched earlier this year and reportedly now has a waiting list of more than 100 publishers, Bellack said—the longest line since Google unveiled its First Look for DoubleClick.
Based on a November survey of DoubleClick data, Google says there are four times as many publishers using Exchange Bidding now as there were in April. The number of exchanges has also doubled, with new additions like Sovern and Gamut.
"There's an avalanche of data," Bellack said, "both by Google and others in the industry, that says speed is phenomenally important in the mobile realm."
