Facebook Ads is getting a makeover, as the social media giant recently revealed two major changes coming to its paid advertising platform.
One of these changes is the introduction of a new feature called “pre-fetching,” which works by loading advertised webpages in users’ Facebook app before they click the ad. Why does Facebook want to load advertised webpages? The answer is simple: to reduce load times. By pre-loading webpages, it prevents the user from waiting to download the webpage when he or she clicks the ad.
The second change coming to Facebook Ads is an increased focus on advertised webpages and how those load times affect ad placement and costs. The social media network says that load times will influence ad placement and costs even more in the days to come. So, if your webpage suffers from long load times, there’s a good chance you’ll end up spending more on Facebook Ads while also reaching fewer users.
Facebook says that 40% of users back out of a webpage if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. If a website is slow to load, the user may click the back button in their browser or close their browser altogether. And when this occurs, the advertiser may still be charged for a click, but that click obviously isn’t going to yield a sale or conversion. Statistics such as this attest to the importance of maintaining a fast webpage.
As explained by Facebook’s Matt Idema, business owners often overlook the mobile experience when creating ads. Slow-loading websites on mobile devices leave a bad impression for the end-user. Facebook is hoping these new changes will encourage business owners and advertisers to speed up their websites, while also promoting a more positive experience for mobile device users.
“People use Facebook to connect with businesses, find content and research and purchase products. A lot of the time, those experiences depend on the mobile websites of our advertisers. What we’re seeing is businesses have yet to invest across the board in their mobile experiences as much as in their legacy desktop experiences. It’s really a problem we’re looking to work with the industry to help solve,” said Matt Idema, Facebook’s Vice President of monetization product marketing.
Here are some tips to speed up your webpage:
- Use a “lossless” image optimization tool like TinyPNG to shrink the file size of images on your webpage.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to reduce physical distances between your server and your webpage’s visitors.
- Enable GZIP compression.
- Enable browser caching.
- Optimize delivery of CSS.
- Choose a reputable web hosting service.
- Avoid, or limit, your use of JavaScript.
- Keep an eye on your load times using a tool like Pingdom.
