Earlier we saw how Facebook wanted to speed up and optimize your web experience through its Instant Articles which is a program that hosts publishers’ content directly in the News Feed. Last month, Google went in to announce a similar program that could speed up mobile web browsing.
This program, Google’s “AMP” project or the “Accelerated Mobile Pages Project,” as it’s also known, will make mobile browsing a charm. According to the web giant, we’ll be able to see the results of AMP earlier than expected, as early as in the first few months of 2016.
According to Google, thousands of publishers have expressed interest in having their pages optimized, including now a few big names like CBS Interactive, Thrillist, International Business Times/Newsweek, Al Jazeera America, AOL and others. Ad partners like Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick and AdSense have also now announced their plans to work with the new framework.
Most web pages are heavy on content because of extraneous code, tracking scripts, and advertisements that slow down the pages’ ability to load quickly on mobile devices. Facebook’s approach was to host the publishers’ pages directly into a user’s News Feed, thus speeding up load times while still offering layouts and formats that make the Instant Articles feel like publishers’ websites.
According to the social networking giant, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, National Geographic, NBC News, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC, Slate, Daily Mail, Huffington Post, The Washington Post, Vox Media, and others have already signed up for this program.
According to reports, publishers keep 100 percent of their ad revenue when they sell their own ads, or 30 percent if Facebook sells the ads.
Google’s approach is similar, if not identical to what Facebook is doing. The original blog post announcing AMP reads:
Publishers increasingly rely on rich content like image carousels, maps, social plug-ins, data visualizations, and videos to make their stories more interactive and stand out. They also need to implement ads and analytics in order to monetize the content and to understand what their readers like and dislike.
The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project provides an open source approach, allowing publishers to focus on producing great content, while relying on the shared components for high performance and great user experience. The initial technical specification—developed with input and code from our partners in the publishing and technology sectors—is being released today on GitHub.
This holds to show that Google knows most publishers’ show stopper is rich media content. Not just this, Google also acknowledged the fact that publishers also need to implement ads to keep their content free and need to be able to utilize analytics.
Google’s AMP aims to speed up load times and make web pages load instantaneously. This will be done regardless of the page containing rich media content like video, animations or graphics, including things like Twitter and YouTube embeds. Google has introduced a new framework for this project named AMP HTML based on existing web technologies that allow for lightweight web pages.
Initially, Google had said it already had signed up nearly 30 publishers worldwide. Tech companies signing up for the program included Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Nuzzel, WordPress.com, Chartbeat, Parse.ly, and Adobe Analytics.
Publishers like Vox Media, La Stampa, BuzzFeed, The Washington Post, Mashable, BBC, The Economist, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Daily Mail, The Guardian, The New York Times, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Gannett, Hearst, The Telegraph, and others have already indicated their support for AMP. These publishers have also been active through Facebook’s Instant Articles.
Google’s partnerships are now expected to include R7.com and NZN Group in Brazil; CBS Interactive, AOL, Thrillist, Slate, International Business Times/Newsweek, Al Jazeera America, and The Next Web in the U.S.; El Universal and Milenio in Mexico; The Globe and Mail and Postmedia in Canada; and The Local Media Consortium (LMC), a partnership of 70+ media companies representing 1,600 local newspapers and TV stations.
Analytics firms like comScore, Adobe Analytics, Parse.ly, Chartbeat, Nielsen, ClickTale and Google Analytics, are also supporting AMP.
If you want to know what AMP actually tastes like click here (g.co/ampdemo) from your mobile device, then search for a news term.
