Ads will always slow down the loading of a site, but there are many other things that can do the same thing. How do you tell what slowdowns are worth it for revenue, and which ones can be improved?
The #1 thing to remember is that running an Advertising-Supported business comes with some slowdown in page load. This slowdown is an almost direct trade-off between advertising earnings and speed. The more ads you put on a page, the more delay it introduces and the more money you make.
Here at Advally though, we aren't trying to pressure you into more ads - we want you to decide yourself as a publisher what balance you want to have between User Experience and Revenue. We highly promote User Experience, because the bottom line is that if you have more users, and those users turn more pages - you have a more successful business in the end.
The #2 thing to remember is that there are many factors that come to play with Page Speed outside of Advertising, and the technology that you run your site on can do a lot to slow down page loads. Older, slower CMS platforms may have inherent issues, especially when introduced to larger amounts of traffic or if it has been a long time since you updated your software. Small issues, new plugins, Images that aren't being scaled for mobile - all can cause large issues with load times.
In the case of your site, Advally can help advise you on what is causing slower page loads, but you will need to speak with your Developers about fixing many of these issues.
How do I tell which it is?
The very first thing to do is establish a baseline measurement. Ideally you can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix or WebPageTest to get some actual measurements, but as the site owner you can also use the less accurate "Feel" metric. As someone who has visited your site a million times over, you will have an instinct towards whether or not this is working.
You want to A/B test the site with and without ads, so you can isolate which experience is too slow. An extremely simple way to do it is to use AdBlock. We know that this blocks all of the Advally scripts, and it should block most other Ad Companies scripts entirely - so if you turn AdBlock on you will get an idea of how your site loads without ads.
If you are going to be reporting this slowdown to either your Ad Mangement company or your Developers, you will want to capture the experiment to show them what you are doing. This will mean visiting the site, clicking around to a few pages and demonstrating exactly where you are seeing the slowdown. You will want to do it once with AdBlock off, and once with AdBlock on.
Grab a free screen recorder like Loom in order to record both sessions. Make sure to visit the exact same pages in the same order in both sessions, because this will help your Development or Advertising team solve the problem much faster.
Once you have finished recording both sessions, send the videos of your session to the appropriate team and include as verbose of a description of what you saw as you can. Loom allows you to record your voice while browsing the site, so you can even describe what you are seeing. Do not rely on "they'll understand what I mean" because there are thousands of factors that can cause page slowdowns. Everything from your Computer being out of storage, to the internet connection, to specific advertising campaigns to the specific ad experience only you are getting can be the root cause. Doing things this way will really help your service providers solve the problem faster, which is good for everyone involved.
If you're more the DIY type, you can take more advanced steps to tell whether the delay in your website's loading time is due to your website's code or the ads:
Baseline Measurement: First, establish a baseline measurement of your website's loading time without any ads. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or WebPageTest to analyze your website's performance metrics.
Code Optimization: If your baseline measurement indicates that your website's loading time is acceptable without ads, focus on optimizing your website's code. This may involve reducing file sizes, optimizing images, minimizing HTTP requests, and implementing caching strategies.
Incremental Ad Integration: Integrate ads into your website incrementally, one ad unit at a time, and measure the impact on loading time after each integration. This will help you identify if a specific ad unit or network is causing the slowdown.
Isolate Ad Loading: Temporarily disable ad loading on your website and measure the loading time again. If the loading time improves significantly without ads, it suggests that ads are indeed contributing to the delay.
Ad Network Performance: Monitor the performance of different ad networks or providers. Some ad networks may deliver ads more efficiently than others, so switching to a different provider could improve loading times.
A/B Testing: Conduct A/B testing by serving different versions of your website to users, with and without ads. Compare the loading times and user experience metrics to determine the impact of ads on your website's performance.
Network Monitoring: Use browser developer tools or network monitoring tools to inspect the loading behavior of ad-related resources. Look for any excessive loading times or bottlenecks caused by ad-related requests.
Collaborate with Ad Networks: Reach out to your ad network or provider for assistance. They may offer insights or optimizations to improve the performance of ad delivery on your website.
By systematically testing and analyzing the impact of ads on your website's loading time, you can identify and address any issues to ensure optimal performance for your users.