Google/Doubleclick Ads: impact on page speed
Category: Advertising
This entity covers Google Ads conversion tracking, remarketing tags and ad delivery through Google Ad Manager. On sites that display ads it is usually among the heaviest third parties, because every ad slot runs its own scripts and iframes.
On 15 % of the 4108 homepages measured, Google/Doubleclick Ads is among the five heaviest third parties. Where it is, it takes a median of 172 ms of main-thread time; on the heaviest quarter of those sites it takes 267 ms or more.
15 %
of homepages: among the five heaviest third parties
172 ms
median main-thread time
267 ms
main-thread time on the heaviest quarter (p75)
277 KB
median transfer size
Distribution across homepages
Percentiles across 604 homepages with Google/Doubleclick Ads.
| Percentile | Main-thread time | Transfer size |
|---|---|---|
| p25 |
5 ms
|
11 KB |
| Median |
172 ms
|
277 KB |
| p75 |
267 ms
|
332 KB |
| p90 |
530 ms
|
654 KB |
In context
By median main-thread time, Google/Doubleclick Ads ranks 18th of 65 third parties in the benchmark, lighter than Klaviyo and heavier than Google Maps.
On 29 % of the homepages where it appears, Google/Doubleclick Ads alone uses 250 milliseconds of main-thread time or more, the mark from which Lighthouse flags third-party code.
Homepages with Google/Doubleclick Ads weigh 4.6 MB at the median (JavaScript: 2.0 MB), homepages without it 4.2 MB (JavaScript: 1.5 MB).
Often loaded together with
Share of homepages with Google/Doubleclick Ads where the other tool is also among the five heaviest third parties.
- Google Tag Manager 82 %
- Facebook 29 %
- Other Google APIs/SDKs 18 %
How to spot Google/Doubleclick Ads on your page
Typical hosts are googleadservices.com and googlesyndication.com for conversion and remarketing tags and securepubads.g.doubleclick.net for Google Publisher Tag ad slots. Publishers who display ads and shops who only measure conversions both appear under this entity, yet their costs differ by an order of magnitude. Before comparing your value with the median, check which of the two cases applies to your site.
How to reduce the impact of Google/Doubleclick Ads
- Lazy-load ad slots below the fold instead of requesting all of them at page load.
- Reserve the size of every ad slot in CSS to avoid layout shifts when the ad arrives.
- Limit the number of ad slots and header-bidding partners per page.
- Fire conversion and remarketing tags only on the pages where they are needed.
Frequently asked questions
How can I load Google/Doubleclick Ads with less impact?
Lazy-load ad slots below the fold instead of requesting all of them at page load. Reserve the size of every ad slot in CSS to avoid layout shifts when the ad arrives.
Does Google/Doubleclick Ads affect Core Web Vitals?
Google Ads tags touch two metrics. Conversion and remarketing scripts add main-thread work during page load, which weighs on INP when visitors interact early. Where Google ad slots are shown on the page, slots without reserved space push content down when the ad arrives, a classic source of CLS.
Method and sample: Third-Party Benchmark.