@SimonHearne
The State of Third-Party Tag Performance
Simon Hearne
Web Performance Consultant
We pitch ad blockers on speed
Experience a cleaner, faster web AdBlock Plus
Opera will speed you up on the web and make sure ads don’t distract you from what matters Opera
..control over ads and tracking technologies to speed up page loads Ghostery
Users want speed
Top Motivations for Using an Ad Blocker:
Too many ads (48%)
Irrelevant ads (47%)
Ads are intrusive (44%)
Viruses / bugs (38%)
Ads take up space (38%)
Improve page load speed (33%)
Avoid video ads (29%)
Privacy concerns (26%)
Preserve data budget (23%)
Preserve device battery (23%)
GlobalWebIndex Q3 2018
Coming Up:
The Importance of Speed
Getting Speed Data
Tags?
Tag Performance
The Impact of Ad Blockers
Speed Correlates with Engagement
0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000 9,000 10,000 First Page Speed (ms) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Session Length (pages) TTFB PLT TTI FCP TTVR DOM Ready FID Timer
~1Bn mPulse pageview beacons - early March 2019
Collecting Data 🔎
Ad Hoc 🛠
Developer Tools
PageSpeed Insights
WebPageTest
Synthetics 🤖
Rigor
Catchpoint
SpeedCurve
Gotchas 1/3
The Timing-Allow-Origin response header specifies origins that are allowed to see values [..] which would otherwise be reported as zero due to cross-origin restrictions.
Timing-Allow-Origin
Gotchas 3/3
Ad Block detection on one national publisher, with a narrow demographic.
Tags?
Tags!
1/4 of web pages have >90% third-party requests
HTTP Archive
Tags serve business goals 💵
💹 Measurement & Analytics
🧪 Personalization & Testing
💬 Comments & Live Chat
🏷 Tag Management
💸 Ads & Retargeting
"Who put Facebook on the site?!"
Tags can get out of control 😱
352 Requests
147 Domains
2,300kB (1,700kB tags)
RequestMap
Tag managers are enablers
Lucky they're always fast, right?
www.google-analytics.com www.facebook.com connect.facebook.net assets.adobedtm.com www.google.com googleads.g.doubleclick.net www.googletagmanager.com tags.tiqcdn.com pixall.esm1.net bat.bing.com s.btstatic.com securepubads.g.doubleclick.net www.googleadservices.com ct.pinterest.com stats.g.doubleclick.net fonts.gstatic.com translate.googleapis.com www.googletagservices.com tpc.googlesyndication.com nexus.ensighten.com s7d5.scene7.com pubads.g.doubleclick.net fonts.googleapis.com network.bazaarvoice.com image.s5a.com cdn.ampproject.org maps.googleapis.com dpm.demdex.net async-px.dynamicyield.com sb.scorecardresearch.com c.amazon-adsystem.com s.pinimg.com cdn.krxd.net logx.optimizely.com adservice.google.com trc.taboola.com adserver-us.adtech.advertising.… static.criteo.net st.mngbcn.com pagead2.googlesyndication.com fastlane.rubiconproject.com s.thebrighttag.com cdnjs.cloudflare.com use.typekit.net www.gstatic.com tag.contactatonce.com vinlens.com static.foxnews.com client.schwab.com cdnssl.clicktale.net fundingchoicesmessages.googl… c.evidon.com px.moatads.com ib.adnxs.com static.hotjar.com t.co ssl.google-analytics.com siteintercept.qualtrics.com cm.everesttech.net www.google.co.jp va.v.liveperson.net sslwidget.criteo.com script.hotjar.com secure.widget.cloud.opta.net as-sec.casalemedia.com www.jumpstarttaggingsolutions… secure.adnxs.com vars.hotjar.com ad.doubleclick.net display.ugc.bazaarvoice.com static.ads-twitter.com www.youtube.com cdn.taboola.com secure-ds.serving-sys.com ing-district.clicktale.net dmp.theadex.com mc.yandex.ru service.maxymiser.net ajax.googleapis.com s.yimg.com cdn.gubagoo.io analytics.snidigital.com fast.fonts.net lptag.liveperson.net apps.bazaarvoice.com js-agent.newrelic.com cdn.optimizely.com res.cloudinary.com cdn.dynamicyield.com lsco.scene7.com st0.mngbcn.com Host Volume 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,600 1,800 p90 Load Time 90th Percentile Load Time & frequency for top 100 third-party hosts. n=1,080M
What's the Risk?
Interactivity
The Impact of Ad Blockers
Results
8.98% pageviews with ads blocked (n=50M)
Metric With Ads Without Ads Difference
Page Load Time (ms) 6,130 4,600 -25%
Time to Interactive (ms) 5,480 4,260 -22%
LongTasks Time (ms) 1,270 241 -81%
First Input Delay (ms) 86 8 -93%
Page Size (MB) 2.69 1.99 -26%
Bounce Rate 68.8% 67.0% -2%
Time on Site (s) 410 708 +72%
Session Length (pages) 2.80 4.41 +58%
JavaScript Errors per Page 1.92 0.18 -91%
Conclusions
Third-party tags are pernicious
Ad Blockers significantly improve performance
Users with Ad Blocking enabled engage more
Thank you 🙏
📧 simon@hearne.me
📣 @SimonHearne
🌎 simonhearne.com
simonhearne.com/presentations/ad-block-perf/
Resume presentation
The State ofThird-PartyTag Performance
Simon Hearne
Web Performance Consultant