Facebook announced Wednesday that it will begin prefetching, or preloading advertiser sites, in order to boost its mobile performance and ease users? frustration with slow load times.
The social network also revealed in a Facebook for Business post that website landing page speed will become a factor in deciding which ads to show in order to ensure that mobile users have the best experience, adding that this will occur ?over the coming months.?
The thinking behind implementing prefetching was described as follows in the post:
Our goal is to improve user experience by helping businesses be the best mobile advertisers they can be, so we?re always developing new tools and insights to improve mobile experience. Today, we?re introducing prefetching?preloading mobile content in the Facebook in-app browser before a link is tapped. This can shorten mobile site load time by 29 percent, or 8.5 seconds, improving the experience and decreasing the risk of site abandonment. Learn more about prefetching, especially if you use third-party tag-based measurement. Over the coming months, we?re working to improve ad experiences for people by considering website performance and a person?s network connection in our ad auction and delivery system. In this way, we can better match ads to the moments when people can best engage with content. Helping to ensure the best ad experiences on mobile is key to providing value for both people and businesses on Facebook.
Facebook pointed out that up to 40 ...