Landing pages with active ads: what we find when we measure them from a phone

Edited by Solucom · 10 November 2026

Between 2 and 5 November 2026 we measured from a phone 58 landing pages with active Meta ads: half of them showed the main content after more than twelve seconds, against the 2.5 seconds Google sets as the threshold. Almost always the cause was a single file, which can be found and fixed quickly.

Here we explain what we measured and with which limits, the causes that keep recurring and how to run the same check yourself. We only cover the technical side: offer, copy and conversions are out of scope.

What we measured

We took the pages from the Meta Ad Library. It is public, and for every active ad it shows the address the ad leads to.

Each page was opened the way someone who taps an ad opens it: on a phone, on a mobile network, following the link with the parameters Meta adds. The measurement is the one from PageSpeed Insights by Google for mobile devices, repeated twice. A browser then checks redirects, JavaScript errors and how the page opens in the in-app browser of Facebook and Instagram.

The first number we look at is LCP, Largest Contentful Paint: the moment when the main element of the page appears, usually the headline or the opening image. Google rates a value up to 2.5 seconds as good and above 4 seconds as poor.

Two limits need to be stated up front. PageSpeed runs a lab measurement on a simulated mobile network: anyone can repeat it, but it does not match the experience of every visitor. And our list comes from our day-to-day work, with most of the pages belonging to a few advertisers. It is a snapshot of what we monitor, not a sample of the market.

The numbers

Across the 58 landing pages, spread over 17 domains:

• the median LCP is 12.2 seconds, the average 13.9;
• 64% exceed 8 seconds;
• one page in three exceeds 16.

In a separate study at the end of October, on 512 active Italian ads, 15 out of 25 Italian WordPress landing pages exceeded 4 seconds.

This figure should be read alongside an older one: according to Google research from 2016, when a page takes more than three seconds about half of mobile visits are likely to be abandoned before the page appears. Every visit that comes from an ad has already been paid for.

The causes that keep recurring

Uncompressed opening images

This is the most frequent cause. A 3 MB background or opening photo, often in PNG, a format suited to logos and flat graphics and unsuited to photographs.

What to fix: export the image in WebP or AVIF at the size it is displayed, and declare it as a priority resource. An opening photo fits in 150-200 KB with no visible difference.

Animated GIFs

We found a 2.9 MB GIF at the top of a page. GIF is a thirty-year-old format and it is inefficient for animations.

What to fix: replace it with a short muted looping video. For the same result it weighs a fraction.

Videos embedded in the first screen

A YouTube or Vimeo video embedded at the top makes the browser download its player before the visitor has decided to watch it.

What to fix: show a cover image with a play button, and load the player only on click.

The same script loaded several times

On some pages of 12-17 MB the same external script was downloaded three or four times, because several blocks of the page each loaded it on their own.

What to fix: load it once and defer everything the first screen does not need.

The link that no longer leads anywhere

This is the rarest case and the most expensive. On any given day unreachable pages are few. When it happens, though, it happens in bulk: we saw over a hundred ads still active pointing to a domain that no longer responded.

What to fix: here there is no file to fix. What is needed is a repeated check on the active ads, because the page stops responding while the campaign stays on.

Why the problem stays there

In the cases we saw, the pages were well made, by competent people. The problem comes from how they are checked.

Whoever checks a landing page does it from the office computer or from a phone connected to wifi, with the images already cached. The page opens at once. On the mobile network of someone arriving for the first time, the times are different.

Then, with the campaign running, the page changes: an image replaced, a section added. Each change is small and none of them comes with a new measurement.

For sites that sales and leads depend on, we also cover this on the page about WordPress mission-critical.

How to check it yourself

1. Open the Meta Ad Library and search for your page. Copy the address an active ad leads to.
2. Paste it into PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile tab. The desktop score says little about people who arrive from an ad.
3. Read the LCP. Below 2.5 seconds it is fine, above 4 it needs work.
4. Scroll to the element marked as the main content: PageSpeed tells you which file it is and how much it weighs.
5. Repeat the measurement at another time. A single value may depend on the server at that moment.

This is why, in our check, one measurement is not enough: we report a problem only if three measurements hours apart confirm it.

When the page is fine

It happens, and it should be said just as clearly. One of the pages we measured showed the main content in 2.1 seconds, with a weight of 696 KB, no redirects and no errors. In that case there is nothing to do, and knowing it avoids unnecessary work.

Sources: Google: Largest Contentful Paint, thresholds, The Need for Mobile Speed (2016), PageSpeed Insights; Meta: Ad Library. Our own measurements of 2-5 November 2026 and research of 30 October 2026. Checked on 6 November 2026.

Want to know how your landing pages open? Send us a landing page with active ads through Solucom Check: within two working days you receive the technical check of that page and of the others we find with your active ads, with the measurement, the cause and the file to fix. You can forward it to your developers as it is.