Audio and video payload and the Core Web Vitals
90.5% of audited sites (190,856) ship no audio or video requests during initial load and pass LCP at 83% (1.5s median), compared with 79% (1.7s median) on pages pulling over 3 MB of media.
90.5% of sites use no audio or video requests audio and video payload, and 83% of those sites have a good LCP, against 82% of all sites.
6.2% of sites use under 500 KB of audio/video media audio and video payload, and 96% of those sites have a good INP, against 95% of all sites.
Core Web Vitals pass rate
Sites with no audio or video requests audio and video payload have a good LCP most often: 83%, against 82% of all sites. Sites with under 500 KB of audio/video media media payload have it least often, at 78%.
Sites with under 500 KB of audio/video media audio and video payload have a good INP most often: 96%, against 95% of all sites. Sites with no audio or video requests media payload have it least often, at 95%.
Audio and video payload usage
No audio or video requests is the most used: 90.5% of sites.
The four LCP phases
Across the four LCP sub-parts in Chrome's field data, the largest gap between no audio or video requests and under 500 KB of audio/video media sits in resource load delay: 312 ms median for no audio or video requests against 358 ms for under 500 KB of audio/video media. Overall median field LCP is 1.5s for no audio or video requests (TTFB 646 ms, load delay 312 ms, load duration 140 ms, render delay 221 ms) versus 1.6s for under 500 KB of audio/video media.
Across the four LCP sub-parts in Chrome's field data, the largest gap between no audio or video requests and under 500 KB of audio/video media sits in resource load delay: 312 ms median for no audio or video requests against 358 ms for under 500 KB of audio/video media. Overall median field LCP is 1.5s for no audio or video requests (TTFB 646 ms, load delay 312 ms, load duration 140 ms, render delay 221 ms) versus 1.6s for under 500 KB of audio/video media.
Understanding audio and video payload
How autoplaying video streams saturate initial bandwidth
When a <video> tag loads without preload="none" or an optimized poster image, the browser fetches megabytes of video segments concurrently with critical stylesheets and hero assets. Across 190,856 sites (90.5%) with no initial media requests, 83% pass field LCP at a 1.5s median, versus 78% (1.7s median) under 500 KB and 79% (1.7s median) above 3 MB.
Set preload="none" on below-the-fold <video> elements and always specify a lightweight compressed poster image on hero videos. Across all audited sites, 90.5% ship no initial media (83% good LCP, 1.5s median) versus 2.3% shipping over 3 MB (79% good LCP, 1.7s median).
How audio and video payload plays out per platform
What the field data shows when you isolate a single CMS or framework.
WordPress 65,509 sites WordPress pages with initial video/audio requests pass LCP 7 points less often than pages with no media.
Across WordPress sites, 88% transfer no audio or video during initial load (71% good LCP, 1.9s median) and 8% load initial media under 500 KB (64% good LCP, 2.1s median).
Shopify 8,573 sites 22% of Shopify storefronts load video or audio on initial load.
Shopify's Liquid video_tag filter outputs HTML <video> tags for product and section media. Across Shopify stores, 78% ship no initial audio/video media (96% LCP pass rate, 1.3s median), 12% load under 500 KB (95%), and 8% exceed 3 MB (94%).
React 9,570 sites 81% of React apps load no audio or video streams on initial render.
Across React sites, 81% load no audio or video requests during initial navigation (84% LCP pass rate, 1.4s median) and 12% load under 500 KB (86%).
By Arjen Karel · 210,902 crawled sites (196,263 with all devices Chrome field data, October 2026). How we measured.