Page load times have been a ranking factor for Google Ads for some time but Google have been pushing load times quite aggressively of late.  A recent article on the official google ads blog stated…

However, even the best ads struggle to deliver results if they’re sending people to slow landing pages, especially on mobile. In retail, we see that for every one second delay in page load time, conversions can fall by up to 20 percent.¹ That’s why we’re making it easier to diagnose and improve your mobile site speed.

Whilst there’s clearly merit in this drive it does mean that at least some the performance that Digital Marketing agencies can deliver is impacted by factors outside their control.

That’s also nothing new with pricing, merchandising, delivery etc all having an impact on conversion rate but PPC quality score is widely seen as a measurement of AdWords performance.  We’ve had load times as a quality score factor for a while but the clear message from Google seems to be that this is ramping up.  In the new Google Ads experience, you can see the mobile-friendliness of your PPC landing pages

As the Google article points out, more than half your traffic now comes from mobile and so it’s vitally important that your site is up to scratch both in terms of speed and in terms of mobile usability. You can also use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to check out your own site (and your competitors).