Ep 1: Why ads slow pages, and what slow costs you

A reader taps your link, waits, and leaves before any ad loads.

Core Web Vitals are Google’s three speed scores, for loading, responding and staying still.

On news.example, the page loads the article, the ad library, a header bidding auction, then each ad. All of it competes for the phone’s processor. LCP, Largest Contentful Paint, times the main content. Good is two and a half seconds or less. INP, Interaction to Next Paint, times the response to a tap. Good is two hundred milliseconds. It replaced First Input Delay in March twenty twenty-four. CLS, Cumulative Layout Shift, scores jumps. Good is zero point one. Say your second ad requests at four seconds. A reader who leaves at three… never becomes that impression.

Today, run your busiest article through PageSpeed Insights and note the three mobile scores.

Next, reserve the slot, and fix ad-driven layout shift.