Publishers are working on abandoning Google’s AMP framework

Some online publishers are working on abandoning Google’s program, which was created to optimise the reader’s mobile browsing experience since it “generates less advertising revenue”.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, publishers like Vox Media LLC, Buzzfeed’s Complex Networks, and BDG have started testing, or are considering, “using their own versions of mobile-optimised article pages” instead of building them using Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) framework. Washington Post had already stopped using AMP last year.

Publishers exiting from AMP means that those media companies are now less reliant on Google. Google’s dominance over digital advertising has already strained its relations with media publishers and the company has also been accused of anti-competitive behaviour in a lawsuit filed in December 2020.

Google introduced AMP in 2015 and this framework is supported by an open-source working group. The AMP pages are designed to load instantly, as compared to pages not made using the AMP framework, thus helping visitors on a page have a better experience. AMP pages load instantly because the page restricts HTML/CSS and JavaScript, thus making it easier to render. They are also automatically cached by Google AMP Cache to improve their load times on Google Search.

According to the WSJ report, an unredacted version of the lawsuit alleges that the AMP pages have been “specially designed to make it more difficult for ad space to be auctioned on platforms other than Google’s ad exchange”. There are also allegations that Google “made ads that didn’t use AMP load with a one-second delay”.

A Google spokesperson had then said that the lawsuit’s allegations were false and that its “engineers designed the system to load webpages faster”.

Publishers and media executives who have stopped using AMP said that it gave them more control over the page design and ad formats, thus making it easier to sell ad space in auctions. They are also able to sell/auction ad spaces in more ad marketplaces through “a system known as header bidding”, and this is “ultimately boosting competition and prices for their ad space”.

Google said that publishers can sell ad space on AMP pages through header bidding as well, but that practice includes using more data which makes the webpages load slower. The company also has its own alternative to header bidding, something it calls Open Bidding. 

Media executives have said that they expect non-AMP pages to “garner at least 20 per cent more advertising revenue than AMP pages in most cases, without affecting loading speeds”.

The WSJ report further states that some publishers started “winding down their AMP efforts after Google tweaked its algorithm so that pages’ loading speeds, interactivity and visual stability became factored into its search rankings”.

Google had explained that it changed its algorithms and put new standards in place to optimise user experience and the publishers’ search-result performance without having to create separate AMP pages. The company had also said that it would “stop featuring only AMP content on its top-stories carousel”.

Publishers feel that if truly there is equal opportunity for AMP and non-AMP pages, they’d rather focus on the latter. But at the same time, some publishers are also worried that moving away from AMP might hurt their traffic.

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