What are Google’s Core Web Vitals? In May 2021, Google announced that they are going to roll out the official ranking factor change – Core Web Vitals. Typically, when Google publishes an update that affects search rankings, it’s all about content. In this case, the update is about a better user experience on your site in terms of speed of loading, reliability, and responsiveness. Today, we’re going to interpret the specifics of Core Web Vitals and help you understand how your search rankings will be affected. The Metrics Explained Core Web Vitals are a set of particular factors that Google deems important in a webpage’s user experience and the metrics will progress over time. So far, Google has defined three main criteria, which publishers and developers need to focus on to improve page experience rankings: largest contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This represents the time it takes to load the main content of a website in seconds. Focus on making your LCP score of 2.5 seconds or faster. First Input Delay (FID): The emphasis here is on assessing the time it takes for a web page to become interactive. Focus on bringing the FID score down to less than 100 ms. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This explains the impact of unexpected layout changes for visual page content. Focus on bringing the CLS score down to less than 0.1. In summary, Core Web Vitals are a group of variables that will be an…
Ad Tech
Since the very first ad was placed on a website in 1994, the advertising industry has used a specific Ad Technology to enable the monetisation of websites – the Ad Server. According to Datanyze, Google Ad Manager is the dominant ad server used by websites with a global market share of 33%. In 2018, Google merged DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and Google Ad Exchange to create Google Ad Manager. Which brings us nicely onto Google Publisher Tags. This article will explain not only what GPT are but also how they work, how to generate them and the benefits they bring. What are Google Publisher Tags Google Publisher Tag (GPT) is an ad tagging library used for Google Ad Manager (GAM). Google Publisher Tags enable publishers to dynamically build the ad request and display the ad on web pages. With GPT, you can define inventory, initiate and bundle ad requests, and then render the matching demand. How do Google Publisher Tags Work? GPT is used to define your available ad slots. Placing GPT on a page creates a link between the ad server and a user’s browser. When a user visits a page containing GPT, the following happens: A request is made from the user’s browser to the ad server for gpt.js, the tag code built in JavaScript. The JavaScript builds and sends one or more requests to the ad server for ads tagged on the page. The ad server matches the ad units and any key-values contained within the request….
It is vital for websites to understand how they want their users to interact with their content. User Experience (UX), is all about making the way users interact with you as easy and enjoyable as possible. Traditionally websites are presented as pages and each page belongs to a section or category, users click and read pages of content they are interested in, this is known as Pagination. In this instance, all content and ads load when the page is loaded. More recently opportunities to enable users to discover new or related content without leaving the page they are on have become especially prevalent with users consuming content that is image-heavy or viewed on mobile devices. Here we discuss the two main UX techniques websites can use to keep users on the site and enable the discovery of new content while not loading all content at the initial page visit; Infinite Scroll and Load More.
Google Chrome is the dominant web browser in the world with a 65% market share against the next best Apple Safari at 16%. Google‘s idea was to build a web browser that was fast and responsive with the best user experience possible. So it is with this in mind along with the Better Ads Standards, that Google has added a default setting live from late August to block ‘Heavy Ads’.
Walled Gardens are everywhere. Inspired analogically by the gardens of Ancient Persia, we wander around inside, safe in the knowledge, and steeped in the privilege of being allowed in. The internet was born from computer engineers and researchers’ dreams of being connected and freely sharing ideas, this has evolved into a land grab for user data, eyeballs, and clicks. The Open Web and Walled Gardens dilemma is something many online companies struggle with. Either because one may restrict and cause negative feelings while the other reduces the capability to drive revenue, both can offer scale in different ways.
“Ad quality is in my top three concerns as a publisher.” How many times do we hear this? Almost always? This has always been a topic of interest. But especially in the current situation, it has been accentuated since there is a gap between supply and demand for inventory. Advertiser buying and spending patterns have changed leading to publishers taking some drastic measures to earn a sustainable revenue. It’s a vicious cycle, dropping floor prices or increasing the available inventory opens the door to another larger problem – Bad ads/ Ad Quality. This should be a concern as it can have serious implications on the business model as a whole. So here is why maintaining top tier ad quality is always a good idea.
Ad Blocking is a big fear of the digital advertising industry and while anecdotally reserved for techies and gamers, more and more people are blocking ads, though far fewer than expected. For the second year in a row, eMarketer has downgraded its estimates of the adblocking population in France, Germany, the UK, and the US.
The Future of AMP – Further expansion in 2020 It’s business as usual with Google as we approach the end of the year, even though there have been a lot of recent changes that have caught everyone in the industry off guard. Looks like user experience is still a top priority for the company going forward, as shown by their latest updates overall. It’s clear that the tech giant is steady on the path to simplify a lot of the mechanics used by digital businesses, aiming to establish good practises and create user-first experiences across the board. In retrospect, perhaps the biggest move in that direction was the release of Accelerated Mobile Pages a few years back. So, with the same trend likely to continue into 2020 and beyond, we thought an updated guide on AMP was due.
Viewability is a key component of any successful monetization strategy in the context of real-time bidding. With all the industry developments in recent years, it’s importance has magnified even further, forcing publishers to put more emphasis on view frequency. This, however, brings a new challenge for webmasters who are utilizing a mix of different tactics to maximize their profits. Let’s explore one such example and take a deeper look at the relationship between viewability and ad refresh technologies.
RTB; The Evolution of Programmatic Advertising The advent of RTB (Real-Time Bidding) in the late 2000’s changed the way digital publishers monetized their ad space forever. Auctions were introduced, enabled by technology, to bid on an impression-by-impression basis. Thus, replacing sequential CPM paid directly for ad space or fixed fee, sponsorship-focused strategies replicating print advertising. These auctions rely on a bidding system but unlike real-life auctions, where the highest bid wins after a series of bids, here, all bids happen at the same time. Traditionally, with a real-time auction, the highest bidder would, of course, win, however, only paying what the second-highest bid was.