• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 20, 2019

After running a test with Volkswagen and the publisher EL PAÍS, Google announced Wednesday it will now serve advertisements built for AMP HTML -- which are ads built using the Accelerated Mobile Pages framework -- and on regular web pages too. 

As of January 2019, 12% of all display ads served by Google are now AMP HTML ads, up from 1% a year ago. Perhaps because the framework addresses performance and security concern. Ads load faster in AMP. And they require less resources.

An estimate from eMarketer released Wednesday shows U.S. advertisers will spend more than $129 billion on digital advertising in 2019, compared with the $109 billion they plan to spend on traditional advertising including television, newspapers and radio. In the U.S., about 37.2% will be spent with Google, per eMarketer.

Making ads that are faster and require fewer resources improves the user experience and appears to increase the advertiser's return on investment as well as the publisher's revenue. 

Tests suggest that moving from a standard HTML page to an AMP page, with the same HTML5 ad, produces a 26% increase in click-through rate (CTR). Moving that same ad to an AMP page with AMPHTML ads results in an additional 48% increase in CTR, according to Google.

Volkswagen and the publication EL PAÍS worked with creative agency DDB and media agency PHD to improve the user experience for consumers who could potentially purchase one of the cars in the 2019 Tiguan TDI 150 R-Line.

The auto manufacturer tested AMP technology for their landing page and the ads that would drive users from the web into showrooms. EL PAÍS had to configure four line items in their ad server, featuring a 2×2 combination of ads, AMP vs. non-AMP and creative type AMPHTML vs. HTML ads. This allowed them to compare the performance characteristics. They also tested two types of landing pages -- HTML and AMP.

The tests increased conversion rates by 76% with the first end-to-end AMP campaign, according to a recently published case study. While the CTR rose 87%, the cost per acquisition fell by 43% and conversions rose 76%.

Google said it will soon add Display & Video 360 support to deliver AMP HTML ads to AMP pages as the company continues to invest in improving the experience for users.

Once mobile app support launches in the second quarter of 2019, advertisers can transition to creating one AMP HTML ad to have it render across all environments and devices.