User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/The Success and Future of Modernization/@comment-11733175-20180125195223/@comment-20644-20180125203816

We follow Google's definition of average page load time here: "The average amount of time (in seconds) it takes that page to load, from initiation of the pageview (e.g., click on a page link) to load completion in the browser." JavaScript is certainly a factor in that; the more a community adds to their JavaScript customization, the greater the chance that it will impact average page load times.

The rise in 2016 was a change in the form of advertisements. Programmatic advertising became more aggressive and video-heavy throughout the industry, and we followed suit. But as our advertising business evolved, we were able to put a plan in place at the beginning of last year to reverse that trend and focus our efforts on having fewer but more highly valuable advertisements.