Been thinking a lot about the whole “why is the web so slow” thing lately. It gets people het up.
It’s been especially interesting because I’m getting a chance to look at empirical data for a couple of different properties this year.
The verdict is pretty simple — the web is slow because of ads. Period, end of story.
…But, well, not really. Because it’s not ads per se, it’s the way most mid-tier publications have to fill their ad slots.
Any given ad network can only fill a few ad slots, so automated JS round-robbins requests to sometimes dozens of different ad providers.
On each page load, for each ad slot. That’s how ad slots get filled, that’s how bills get paid, that’s how servers stay online.
The big step up is real direct ad sales, where someone books advertisers rather than relying on the automated systems to fill the slots.
Like so many things in publishing, that takes time, attention, and constant care and feeding. There’s no magic spigot to turn on.