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Why CDN for mobile campaigns? (13)

01-05-2015 05:39 AM #1 peterpan (Member)
Why CDN for mobile campaigns?

Hi guys,

I have a VPS with beyond hosting and was wondering why members use CDN (i'm looking at MAXCDN) for hosting images, etc when they already have a VPS?

I have been using pingdom to get my loading speed (ms) as low as possible and used caruman's guide but someone recommended hosting the images on a CDN for faster speed. Caruman recommended putting the .css and .js on the index.html but if my .js is 90kb wouldn't it be better to host it on a CDN?

Question #2 -

Would it be better to put the .css and .js files in the index.html or put them on a CDN too?

Question 3: If yes to #2, then why not just put all my files on a CDN and cancel my VPS?

Thanks for the insight!

01-05-2015 06:28 AM #2 erikgyepes (Moderator)

1) Imagine that your hosting is in US and you are targeting Vietnam. Your page load will be SLOW. You can actually try this tool as well: https://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php to see ping from all over the world for your LPs (good to compare VPS/CDN).

BTW using a 90kb js file on mobile lander is not very wise even from a CDN. I assume that it's a jQuery library - you can look around for more lightweight libraries or not use JS framework at all. I saw people using jQuery only because of a click event. Most of my LPs with images altogether are not more than 20-30kBs in size.

2) Yes - as far those are all static files (no PHP) go for it!

3) That's a good question - do a split test of VPS vs. CDN and you should get an answer (I believe there were also threads about this topic before), however you will need really significant numbers. As I said above - it depends where your hosting is and what country you are targeting. But in mobile where there are many global campaigns, CDN really makes sense.

01-05-2015 06:34 AM #3 andyvon (AMC Alumnus)

Simply put, the main benefit of a CDN is that your content gets distributed globally into multiple data centers and when a user visits your site he gets the content served from the nearest location.

So in theory, your site should load faster via a CDN, especially if your server's location is far from the user's location (e.g. US server, EU user). This should be split-tested though since a well-configured server can sometimes outperform the CDN, depending on the location.

The biggest limitation of a CDN is that it can only serve static content (images, html etc.), so if you want to use dynamic server-side stuff like php in your landers, you won't be able to do so if your whole LP is hosted on a CDN.

As far as your other questions go, the benefit of putting everything inside the index.html is that you have a single request vs. multiple ones if you split it up in multiple files that all have to be received individually.

01-05-2015 06:54 AM #4 peterpan (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by erikgyepes View Post
1) Imagine that your hosting is in US and you are targeting Vietnam. Your page load will be SLOW. You can actually try this tool as well: https://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php to see ping from all over the world for your LPs (good to compare VPS/CDN).

BTW using a 90kb js file on mobile lander is not very wise even from a CDN. I assume that it's a jQuery library - you can look around for more lightweight libraries or not use JS framework at all. I saw people using jQuery only because of a click event. Most of my LPs with images altogether are not more than 20-30kBs in size.

2) Yes - as far those are all static files (no PHP) go for it!

3) That's a good question - do a split test of VPS vs. CDN and you should get an answer (I believe there were also threads about this topic before), however you will need really significant numbers. As I said above - it depends where your hosting is and what country you are targeting. But in mobile where there are many global campaigns, CDN really makes sense.
After reading caruman's guide, i got my landing pages down to 100-200ms.... then I was doing some spying and saw a really awesome lander but jquery library was 90k ! i really want to test it but i know this alone will probably kill conversions for me since the file is so big... so it'll be better to host it on a CDN or i guess put it in my index.html... ?

01-05-2015 06:59 AM #5 peterpan (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by andyvon View Post
Simply put, the main benefit of a CDN is that your content gets distributed globally into multiple data centers and when a user visits your site he gets the content served from the nearest location.

So in theory, your site should load faster via a CDN, especially if your server's location is far from the user's location (e.g. US server, EU user). This should be split-tested though since a well-configured server can sometimes outperform the CDN, depending on the location.

The biggest limitation of a CDN is that it can only serve static content (images, html etc.), so if you want to use dynamic server-side stuff like php in your landers, you won't be able to do so if your whole LP is hosted on a CDN.

As far as your other questions go, the benefit of putting everything inside the index.html is that you have a single request vs. multiple ones if you split it up in multiple files that all have to be received individually.
how is MAXCDN or do you have any recommendations?

01-05-2015 07:56 AM #6 bbrock32 (Administrator)

^ 90kbs is not that much but if you notice it's killing your loading times just switch over to zepto.js.

MaxCDN has been good from my experience.

Also if you are starting out don't spend too much time on this. I doubt it will be the factor that will make or break your camps.

01-05-2015 09:06 PM #7 nitroman (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by erikgyepes View Post
1) Imagine that your hosting is in US and you are targeting Vietnam. Your page load will be SLOW. You can actually try this tool as well: https://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php to see ping from all over the world for your LPs (good to compare VPS/CDN).

BTW using a 90kb js file on mobile lander is not very wise even from a CDN. I assume that it's a jQuery library - you can look around for more lightweight libraries or not use JS framework at all. I saw people using jQuery only because of a click event. Most of my LPs with images altogether are not more than 20-30kBs in size.

2) Yes - as far those are all static files (no PHP) go for it!

3) That's a good question - do a split test of VPS vs. CDN and you should get an answer (I believe there were also threads about this topic before), however you will need really significant numbers. As I said above - it depends where your hosting is and what country you are targeting. But in mobile where there are many global campaigns, CDN really makes sense.
What avg. rtt would you say is good?

01-06-2015 03:19 AM #8 noipfraud (Member)

+1 for maxcdn

had good experience with them before as well and they run specials from time to time

01-06-2015 08:23 AM #9 mrneko (Member)

There are many pay as you go CDN services if you are just starting out. Most of them are only charging $0.08 - $0.14 per GB. Assuming you're running 10k - 15k clicks a day, you'll probably only be paying a few dollars per month (mobile site generally have very small image files/css/js). There are two really good ones that I've used before, one is XCDN which is powered by Akamai and Softlayer under IBM.

01-06-2015 09:42 AM #10 peterpan (Member)

Whoa thats awesome!!!! that is exactly what I need!

01-07-2015 07:23 AM #11 zeno (Administrator)

Oh, XCDN's nice!

I didn't realise there was a nice offering out there beside Rackspace Cloud Files that used Akamai's network.

I'll test it out a bit and may start recommending it instead, especially if it is completely origin pull.

01-07-2015 11:18 PM #12 noipfraud (Member)

interesting. anyone else used https://xcdn.exceda.com/pricing?

maxcdn's cheapest plan is $9/month... and depending on your traffic, you might need to add Asia + Australia, which adds $15/month

cdn is definitely getting more and more affordable these days

01-08-2015 08:24 AM #13 dlegia (Member)

don't buy cheaper CDN, choose best one.

Why?

When you move your landing pages static content on CDN you will immediately see EPC increase. In this case if you have chosen cheaper CDN will start to think what will happen if I move to better CDN provider - and the answer here is you will see even better EPC for your campaigns.

So choose best CDN and don't do things twice

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