Publishers Give Google AMP Mixed Reviews

Ad Revenue Not What Expected

[engine]

According to a report in the WSJ, some publishers are unhappy with the performance of their ad revenues with Google AMP. It's a new-ish platform, and i'm sure there's going to be teething troubles, but cutting down the options of ads for a publisher seems likely to have an impact.

Multiple publishers said an AMP pageview currently generates around half as much revenue as a pageview on their full mobile websites.

That’s largely because of limitations related to the types of ad units AMP pages will allow and the ad technology providers that are currently integrated with the platform, those publishers say. Publishers Give Google AMP Mixed Reviews [wsj.com]

[tangor]

The concept of AMP is okay. The limitations of AMP (because of that concept) will create new standards of performance. A stripped down website will usually perform less than the original. If the ad inventory is still testing the waters, or simply under performing, there's no doubt there will be a drop in revenue.

I'm waiting for AMP's third anniversary before I think about going there. At present it is too new to have any metrics upon which to make business decisions.

[shri]

We tried to AMP enable one of our second tier sites to watch the performance - no ads, just search / visitor performance.

Just the experience of converting it was a pain in the rear. Google really needs to make things simpler for small publishers when it rolls out this new stuff - wordpress coverage of AMP is weak at best, even with paid plugins. Couple that with a spec and reference platform that changes quickly, it is not something I am keen on spending more time on.

Google seriously needs to consider small publishers and their need to maintain a balance between revenue and implementing "gee-whiz" technologies.

I understand they want AMP to build a walled garden and prevent publishers from header bidding.... but don't mix that with your search platforms and "break html as we know it".

(The pages do load amazingly fast when cached in google's cdn! They seem to be switching to from http/2 to QUIC protocol for fast(er) delivery.)

[engine]

Google seriously needs to consider small publishers and their need to maintain a balance between revenue and implementing "gee-whiz" technologies.

I'm not sure Google spend much time thinking about the smaller publisher.

[EditorialGuy]

Nobody's forcing publishers, large or small, to use AMP.

The problem isn't AMP, it's publishers who regard their editorial content as filler to be doled out in spurts amid a flood of intrusive ads.

[nikant25]

I look forward to the full framework of AMP with the implementation of offline mode via manifest.