Google Ads Switches to Simulated Throttling to Calculate Mobile Speed Score

Google has just announced an update to Publisher Ads Audits for Lighthouse (a tool to improve ad speed and overall quality through a series of automated audits).

Until now, all audit scores were based on the result of loading your page on a desktop CPU over an unthrottled, wired broadband connection. While mobile audits request the mobile version of your page (by identifying as a Nexus 5X phone), the results did not reflect actual mobile CPU and bandwidth constraints.

To address this, we are introducing a simulated throttling option. When enabled (only applies to mobile audits), mobile audit scores are calculated by first auditing your page under normal conditions, then using this data to simulate page load performance under mobile conditions. The simulation uses the Lighthouse mobile network throttling preset, which artificially limits both CPU speed and network bandwidth. This approximates the performance of an actual mobile device loading your site over a fast 3G connection.

I am not a Google Ads expert so I am not sure if these will impact the mobile speed score for your landing pages, but from the sounds of it, I believe they will. So keep an eye on that to see if they impact your quality score.