We’ve all heard the adage ‘if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?’. Well, if an ad's created but no one sees it, can it make an impact?
No. It can’t.
Now, we (here at Deviceful) consider ourselves experts in, and champions of, media-conscious creative. So we’ve got some advice for you, concerning how you might go about improving your ad-build process to increase the likelihood of ads loading in time for passive scrollers-by to see them.
Media-Conscious Creative
From the moment we begin working on a specific ad or campaign we make a concerted effort to always bear in mind its eventual presentation to its audience. Being conscious of the user’s actual moment of connection with the ad ensures that, from conception to delivery, we always make performance-informed decisions concerning the design and build of our digital ads.
So, as we make our way through the design and build process, we constantly ask ourselves ‘will this element improve the key moment of connection with an audience member or impact it negatively?’
If it looks like an element has the potential to detract from the ad’s success, by making the ad visual too cluttered or the ad file size too big, it simply doesn’t move forward as a potential inclusion.
So, if you really want to tackle the issue of your ads’ render-times to the best of your ability, then that could and should be a determining factor during the entire processes you chose to employ when deciding what you want included in your ad.
Specific things to consider when building your ad:
1. If the inclusion of an element will increase the size of your creative files. The ad itself can become too heavy if the files it contains are too large which means it will naturally take more time to render on a webpage and potentially not be seen by people scrolling by.
2. If there’s a large amount of server requests happening. They’ll end up extending the load time of the advert, which will increase the chance of people missing it.
3. If there are too many domains involved. Delivering ad components from multiple domains increases the load time as (for every different domain used) the browser has to run DNS lookups which hamper the efficiency of the loading. It’s best to avoid using more than 4 domains (even for heavy rich media ads) so avoid creating a situation where you might have your images hosted on one server, an odds gambling API coming from another and the ad itself hosted somewhere else.
4. If you can apply minification anywhere. Unnecessary code snippets can waste processing time so removing any extra characters should be done when possible.
‘If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic’
- William Bernbach
Whilst there are plenty of rendering factors that exist outside of your control, focusing on building media-conscious creative will allow you to maximise the render-speed of the digital adverts you build.
So, let’s all agree to prioritise and champion media-conscious creative from now on.
It’s a simple solution to a fundamental problem that far too many of us encounter. So if you aren’t already - start employing it today!
If you want to make ads that are guaranteed to load properly and make an impact, why not partner with us?
Working with specialists like Deviceful means that you get faster, smarter, and more scalable ads that bridge the gap brilliantly between creative and media.
So, don’t let your creative let you down - speak to our specialists to stay ahead!
