Effect of AMP on AdSense?

I'm considering switching my full website to AMP. Will it cost me?

[james007]

Looking at the state of AMP currently, and the roadmap for the future, it appears to be morphing away from a "cut down pages on mobile" system to a full web framework, emphasising speed. I'm particularly interested in some of the standards appearing in carousels, live-lists, and more. The fact there's an ad working-group for AMP makes me particularly comfortable with the format.

Accordingly, I'm considering making my entire web-site AMP compatible if that's entirely possible: certainly moving over the majority of pages to being AMP.

I was wondering whether anyone else had done this, and had some understanding of what it means to AdSense revenues? I can't imagine that there'd be any improvement; but if there is some decrease in revenue earning, I wondered whether anyone could share their experiences.

[anefarious1]

I am also considering switching to AMP. I agree that the affect on ad revenue is a big question mark. There are several different ways to achieve AMP and each one offers different degrees of control over ad units.

Putting that aside, if your mobile website is already fairly fast then AMP probably won't be much of a factor. My main problem with AMP is the loss of functionally of certain WP plugins. There is no SQL database possible with AMP as I understand it.

[james007]

There's definitely SQL possible with AMP! I can't link to the website to show you, but I'm producing AMP versions already of many pages (with lots of MySQL under the hood). What I'm now thinking of doing is to switch from having separate AMP versions to having the entire website being AMP compatible.

Because I'm not a Google News publisher (I've tried, heaven knows I've tried), I can't get into the news carousel; so currently the amount of traffic is so low it's impossible to see what the effect is on AdSense revenues.

My personal website - do a search for James Cridland - is native AMP; but it has no AdSense.

[netmeg]

We've almost got the dev done on switching my event sites to AMP. We're probably going to launch without ads first, to see how it goes, and then we'll add in the AdSense later. Hope more networks (looking at you, Facebook Audience Network and Media.net) jump on board eventually too.

[Broadway]

I've been Googling this topic this morning.

I have an informational site that I'm about ready to take to https but am wondering why I'm considering doing so. In prepartation for serving AMP pages could be one reason.

I found a blurb on the Bruce Clay blog coverage of SMX East 2016 where Duane Forrester specifically states that AMP is a fix for load times "But if you rely on ads to produce revenue, AMP is not a good route for you."

I found other articles that explain that while your website's page is cached on Google's servers the ads are not. They are called and their load time can be quite noticeable (due to a 'heavy creative with too much tracking', from a April 2016 article discussing this issue). To the point where many visitors will have scrolled before the ads get served. (There are AMP standards for advertisers when creating ads but evidently those rules are not universally or commonly implemented yet, or at least as of April last.)

(I guess the difference is on slower loading pages the visitor is waiting for the whole experience to finally load, and by the time it does the ads are often in place too.)

I went to Google News and clicked a bunch of AMP news stories to see what the AMP/ads experience was. It was my impression that I really did end up scrolling past a lot of white space set aside for ads that hadn't yet appeared.

That leaves me in a quandry about why, or if I can afford, to procede with implementing AMP.

[james007]

while your website's page is cached on Google's servers the ads are not

Well, this is exactly how any webpage works: and if you're focusing on performant websites, this is an issue you'll have anyway. Ads always display for me well after the rest of the site has loaded.

When using any site speed checker, all the issues with my site are with the poorly-cached, poorly coded ads that AdSense serve up (these are normally third-party ad networks).

Anyway, I've switched a few categories of pages over to AMP. While you can't see any difference when you browse the website, some are now in fully-conformant AMP, while others remain in full HTML5. Crucially, there's no change to the ad sizes or layout between the previous version and the AMP version.

It's very, very early days yet: but one of the sections that I've switched showed a collapse in revenues for the first few days, but has more than recovered - reporting earnings and RPM significantly higher than the previous code.

[trebuchet]

Nothing to add to the interesting comments above, but I am certainly watching with interest and considering it too.

[matbennett]

The impact on AMP is harder to measure than it might seem. Earnings per page view are potentiall reduced, but the evidence suggests that the number of monetised (and measurable) page views should increase due to:
- Less abandonment
- More mobile traffic from search - AMP carousel etc
- More return visits
- Higher engagement

I know that some news providers have split test this with AMP and m.web versions of the same page in results, (which is probably the most logical way to measure overall impact). I've not seen significant results from that though.

[james007]

Mat - thank you. As ever from OKO, a sensible viewpoint.

Since I've switched a section of my site over, I should see the raw effect it has on revenue, rather than any additional effects like retention, repeat visits, etc. I won't also appear in the AMP carousel for now, since the material isn't a news story. Still currently looking pretty good, which surprises me.

[matbennett]

You're welcome! I might do something on the blog looking at AMP in more details shortly. We've been doing some experiments around speed that are interesting.

[james007]

A few weeks later, let me report back... AMP AdSense appears comparable to "classic" AdSense. Comparable sizes have almost identical click-through figures, and earn almost identical revenue.

AMP AdSense ads do exhibit higher active-view rates (probably because the rest of the page loads so quickly). For ad-slots toward the bottom of the page, the active-view rates are significantly higher - almost 50% better in some cases.

So, if you're wondering about the effects of AMP AdSense, my experience is that you won't lose out, and in some cases it might be worth your while.

(Importantly - I'm comparing AMP ads on *all* page sizes and on *all* devices; I don't split based on device).

Here's a strange thing - my Search Analytics screen in the Search Console shows two clicks for AMP content in the past 20 days. I don't appear in Google AMP news carousels, though I do appear with 'amp' correctly displayed in news stories - so perhaps the AMP content report only lists carousel appearances.

As a demonstration, a Google search for "New radio station aims to help babies sleep" should return my media website (with AMP logo) in the first website position (it does in Canada). (Hope this is an acceptable demonstration to the mods here).