To some extent I’ve struggled to explain, even to other publishers, why it’s imperative for me to master Accelerated Mobile Pages and AMP ads.
The short answer is that I have no choice unless I want to slow down my page load speed and trigger a drop in traffic back to the modest levels I had prior to my sharp increase after April.
As far as I’m concerned, AMP is a big part of the Cobb County Courier‘s future, whether I want it to be or not.
So let me walk you through an exchange with a typical advertiser of the moment, a candidate for political office.
It’s a good example, because candidates do not tend to know much about how ad placement works, the difference between a rotating ad and an exclusive ad, and the difference between viewing the page on a desktop computer (the typical way a candidate tries to look at their ad) and a mobile device (the way 75 percent of readers come to our site).
A candidate for office (whom I’ll call “Candidate 1”) grabbed my prime spot (leaderboard) early with an exclusive buy. The leaderboard, and its larger sibling the billboard, is seen everywhere, on different devices and on every page (home page, category page, utility pages, etc.) Every place that is, except AMP pages, which have their own separate environment.
Since that spot was not available, the very next best slot is the top position on “inside story” ads. The reason it’s the next best is that it’s seen on both mobile devices and desk top computers, whereas a sidebar ad gets shoved so far down the page that the reader never really scrolls to it on mobile devices.
So Candidate 2 bought the top inside story position.
After that, Candidate 3 comes along and can’t get either the leaderboard or the top inside story slot, so she buys the second inside story zone, plus the top sidebar ad.
Candidate 2 visits one of my pages from a desk top computer, and notices that the sidebar for Candidate 3, who is her opponent in the election, is further up the page.
She phones me and says “I thought you told me the ad I bought was the next best position. I went to a page and saw (Candidate 3)’s ad first.”
I tried to explain that while Candidate 3’s ad is further up the page on a desktop computer, the ad doesn’t even show up at all during a session for most users, who show up via mobile device.
We worked out a deal whereby Candidate 2 bought the second sidebar slot, and she could see both ads on her desktop computer.
But let’s make it even more complicated by introducing AMP into the picture.
Whether the advertiser is a candidate or the owner or officer in a business, they want to be able to see their ad.
Most advertisers attempt to see their ad using a desktop or laptop computer. This makes it easy during a sales call, but as I explained above, if they visit the site on their mobile device, I’m likely to get a call or email stating “MY AD ISN’T RUNNING!”
AMP ads create one more layer of possible failure to see the ad, because nearly all my AMP traffic arrives via organic search (usually Google, but also Bing, Yahoo and Duck a Go Go).
So to see the ad, the advertiser has to arrive at the site the way most users do now, which is via the results list of a search.
At the moment my solution has been to send the prospective advertiser a direct link to one of my AMP pages and tell them to open it with their mobile phone, along with an explanation of why that’s the way to see the ad.
But I still anticipate complaints that the ad isn’t running when they spot check the non-AMP version of the page.
The big picture here is still that AMP pages dominate my traffic, so the advertiser gets the maximum number of eyeballs on their ad if they buy one.
But as I stated at the top, this is even hard to explain to other publishers, much less advertisers, who have a wide range of both knowledge of how ad placement works, and general technological knowledge.
Publishers Notebook 