A recipe blog dropped its timeout from 1500ms to 1000ms — and earned more

A recipe blog dropped its timeout from 1500ms to 1000ms — and earned more

The timeout is the deadline header bidding gives advertisers to send a bid before the auction closes.

What happened: a food blogger set her timeout to 1500 milliseconds, thinking longer meant more bidders. Pages felt slow, and many readers left before ads even loaded.

The fix, step by step:
1. She lowered the timeout to 1000ms.
2. She measured for two weeks.

Result: ad revenue per thousand views rose about 9%, because faster pages meant fewer bounces and more ads actually seen. The few slow bidders she lost were worth less than the readers she kept.

In plain English: waiting longer for bids can cost you more than it earns. Test a shorter deadline.