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Facebook to punish slow advertisers in bid to boost mobile experience

Facebook has warned advertisers they will be punished for slow-loading web pages in a major step to improve the experience for its mobile users.

FACEBOOK_articlesinnewsfeedAdvertisers are being ordered to speed up their sites which Facebook says is driving people to abandon pages in only three seconds if they load too slowly.

Facebook has warned advertisers who do not speed up their page load times that their ads will be pushed back in the queue.

In a blog posted on its official page overnight, Facebook said more than 40% of people left a site just seconds after a click, frustrated by slow loading times.

Facebook has also raised concerns that the swift dumping of sites means that measurement is being compromised as third party systems don’t have time to count the page visit.

“Additionally, 37% of people using the Facebook mobile app navigate away between the time a website starts and finishes loading,” the blog said.

“Since mobile is a relatively new channel, many businesses haven’t optimised their website for mobile yet. This can lead to negative experiences for people, and problems for businesses such as site abandonment, missed business objectives and inaccurate measurement.”facebook tab on mobile

As part of the drive to get advertisers to create more mobile friendly sites that load faster, Facebook has announced a new ‘pre-fetching’ service which will pre-load mobile content in the Facebook in-app browser before a link is tapped.

“This shortens mobile site load time by as much as 30%, improving user experience and decreasing the risk of site abandonment,” Facebook said.

As part of the bid to improve the user experience and allow better third party measurement Facebook will start punishing companies which do not speed up the load times of their sites, warning that it will start considering factors such as website landing page speed when deciding what ad to show.

“Over the coming months, we’re going to improve ad experiences for people by taking website performance and a person’s network connection into account for our ad auction and delivery system, better matching ads to the moments where people can best engage with content,” the company said.

“We will offer insights that will help advertisers know if they are being impacted by this update. Ensuring the best ad experiences on mobile is key to providing value for both people and businesses on Facebook.”

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