You might have heard of polite loading before (in reference to loading digital adverts). The term gets used a lot, but you might never have been told what it refers to...
A polite load occurs when a digital advert that’s more than 150k in size (a rich media ad) tries to render on a website.
Polite loads are there to protect the functionality of a website. They ensure that the user experience isn’t affected by the size of adverts by causing a split in the rendering of large ads - so that they are effectively loaded in two separate parts.
The initial 40k of any rich media ad loads as quickly as possible but the bulk of the advert is only allowed to load after the content of the website itself, in its entirety, has finished rendering.
This respects the original intent of the publisher and website, makes the experience as seamless as possible for the user, and ensures that websites can remain functional and readable regardless of what’s going on ad-wise.
But how does this affect how you build digital ads?
The main issue ad designers have with polite loads is that they can result in a viewer missing an ad as they scroll through a website. You only get a second or two to grab a viewer’s attention as they scroll by and, if your ad isn’t already loaded (still trying to render, after having waited for all of the site content to load) you’ve lost your opportunity to be seen.
Building ads that are light is the best way to not trigger a polite load (creative and technical tips for how to do just that can be found on our blog) and if you need to make an ad larger than 150k, you can simply make sure that you have something nice that’s going to load in that 40kb polite moment.
If you’d like help building your digital ad builds - just let us know!
Working with specialists like Deviceful means that you can 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!
