Prefetching allows Facebook to download mobile content in advance. The company explains that advertisers will benefit from this development as mobile sites' load time will decrease, which may improve ad performance and engagement. Marketers may also see a decrease in the drop off that occurs between someone clicking on an advert and an advertiser’s mobile site fully loading.
In an
announcement, Facebook stated mobile site load time could be shortened by 29 per cent or 8.5 seconds with prefetching.
“
Facebook prefetches a portion of both organic and ad content. Prefetching is beneficial for people using
Facebook on slow or poor network connections. For people on
Facebook, prefetching loads mobile site content faster, which improves the
Facebook app experience on Android and iPhone devices,” it added in an
article on its Advertiser Help Center.
“For each News Feed mobile ad, Facebook attempts to predict how likely a person is to click on an ad. If the prediction score meets the requirements, we prefetch the initial HTML page when the story first appears on a person's screen.”
Over the coming months, the company will be improving advert experiences for people by considering website performance and a person’s network connection in its advert auction and delivery system. The aim is to better match adverts to the moments when people can best engage with content.
Tailoring its offering to areas with slow connections, Facebook recently introduced new features to its slideshow function. The tool's new functions allow advertisers to turn videos into slideshows, which are more easily viewed on a slow internet connection. You can read more
here.