New AMP ad formats in the works as Google study shows higher eCPMs on AMP

Last week, Google shared the roadmap for developing feature enhancements for the accelerated mobile pages (AMP), including a status update for ad-related projects. On Tuesday, the company shared some early ad performance results on AMP content.

Within that roadmap are plans for adding support for pre-roll video ads in AMP video, sticky ads that stay at either the top or bottom of the screen as the user scrolls through content, and flying carpet ads which will likely look something like the example below, which is shown on the GitHub page for this project.

To get an early look at how ads are performing in AMP content, Google compared performance on AMP and non-AMP mobile pages from 150 publishers selling ads through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange in May. Viewability rates for AMP ads were higher for more than 80 percent of the publishers, and CTRs were higher for more than 90 percent of publishers on AMP content. Over half are seeing higher eCPMs, though lift varies depending on how optimized the non-AMP mobile sites are.

“We’ve been able to extend all of our custom ad products to AMP and have enabled it within our premium ad marketplace, Concert,” Joe Alicata, vice president of revenue products and operations of Vox Media, said in a statement.

Conor Beck, director, TownHall Media, reported improvements, including higher fill rates, engagement and eCPMs. “We’ve seen a 90-percent decrease in page latency, 96-percent decrease in unfilled impressions, 65-percent increase in ad engagement and 32-percent increase in eCPM. Perceived load time improved from approximately 17 seconds to two to three seconds.”

However, it’s still very early days for AMP — currently accessible from Google Search and News results. Slate and The Atlantic told Digiday that AMP pages account for just four percent or less of site traffic, even with nearly all content being formatted for AMP.