WordPress audio and video payload and the Core Web Vitals

87.9% of audited sites (55,611) ship no audio or video requests during initial load and pass LCP at 71% (1.9s median), compared with 63% (2.1s median) on pages pulling over 3 MB of media.

Field data PhoneDesktopAll Scope All sites October 2026 edition · Phone field outcomes · WordPress sites only
WordPress Scoped to 63,295 sites out of 203,892 analyzed (cms) Compare with all sites →

87.9% of WordPress sites use no audio or video requests audio and video payload, and 71% of those sites have a good LCP, against 70% of all WordPress sites.

The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · WordPress: 63,295 crawled sites · 36,524 with phone field dataBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
1

Core Web Vitals pass rate

Sites with no audio or video requests audio and video payload have a good LCP most often: 71%, against 70% of all WordPress sites. Sites with 500 KB to 3 MB of audio/video media media payload have it least often, at 62%.

SitesGood, needs improvement, poor LCPMedian
All WordPress sites36,52470%2.0s
No audio/video media 87.9%31,88271%1.9s
Heavy media (over 3 MB) 2.7%1,08863%2.1s
Light media (under 500 KB) 8.4%3,16563%2.1s
Medium media (500 KB to 3 MB) 1.0%38962%2.2s
GoodNeeds improvementPoorSites: with Chrome field data
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · WordPress: 63,295 crawled sites · 36,524 with phone field dataBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
2

Audio and video payload usage

No audio or video requests is the most used: 87.9% of WordPress sites.

No audio/video media 87.9%
No audio/video media 87.9% Light media (under 500 KB) 8.4% Heavy media (over 3 MB) 2.7% Medium media (500 KB to 3 MB) 1.0%
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · WordPress: 63,295 crawled sites · 36,524 with phone field dataBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
3

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 500 KB to 3 MB of audio/video media sits in time to first byte (TTFB): 1110 ms median for no audio or video requests against 1249 ms for 500 KB to 3 MB of audio/video media. Overall median field LCP is 1.9s for no audio or video requests (TTFB 1110 ms, load delay 352 ms, load duration 181 ms, render delay 241 ms) versus 2.2s for 500 KB to 3 MB of audio/video media.

Median LCP phase breakdown (Chrome field p75) Load delay Median LCP
All WordPress sites 26,0501116 ms355 ms242 ms355 mslab 346 ms2.0s
No audio/video media 22,8201110 ms352 ms241 ms352 mslab 343 ms1.9s
Medium media (500 KB to 3 MB) 2751249 ms368 ms282 ms368 mslab 356 ms2.2s
Light media (under 500 KB) 2,2251165 ms371 ms255 ms371 mslab 363 ms2.1s
Heavy media (over 3 MB) 7301119 ms382 ms245 ms382 mslab 369 ms2.1s
TTFB Resource load delay Resource load time Element render delay
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · WordPress: 63,295 crawled sites · 36,524 with phone field dataBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
4

Audio and video payload per framework

jQuery sets the audio and video payload to no audio or video requests on 88% of its sites, and 69% of jQuery sites have a good LCP, against 70% of all sites.

FrameworkAudio and video payload on its sitesGood LCP
All WordPress sites 63,295 sitesNo audio/video media 88%70%
Alpine 380 sitesNo audio/video media 78%Light media (under 500 KB) 17%78%
jQuery 60,314 sitesNo audio/video media 88%69%
Vue 4,844 sitesNo audio/video media 84%Light media (under 500 KB) 11%67%
React 2,233 sitesNo audio/video media 85%Light media (under 500 KB) 11%63%
No audio/video media Light media (under 500 KB) Heavy media (over 3 MB) Medium media (500 KB to 3 MB)
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · WordPress: 63,295 crawled sites · 36,524 with phone field dataBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
5

Audio and video payload or the framework

Does the framework explain the audio and video payload difference?

On jQuery, 69% of sites with no audio or video requests audio and video payload have a good LCP, against 62% of jQuery sites with under 500 KB of audio/video media. Within jQuery, sites with no audio or video requests have a good LCP more often. On Vue, 69% of sites with no audio or video requests audio and video payload have a good LCP, against 57% of Vue sites with under 500 KB of audio/video media. Within Vue, sites with no audio or video requests have a good LCP more often.

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 55,611 sites (87.9%) with no initial media requests, 71% pass field LCP at a 1.9s median, versus 63% (2.1s median) under 500 KB and 63% (2.1s median) above 3 MB.

The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · WordPress: 63,295 crawled sites · 36,524 with phone field dataBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
6

Understanding audio and video payload

Set preload="none" on below-the-fold video blocks and always attach a compressed WebP/AVIF poster image to hero background videos. On WordPress, 87.9% of sites load no initial video/audio (71% good LCP) while 8.4% load light media (63% good LCP).

The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · WordPress: 63,295 crawled sites · 36,524 with phone field dataBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
Related signals Stylesheets per page → Script initiator → Image dimensions set → Image source mix → By Arjen Karel · 63,295 crawled WordPress sites (36,524 with phone Chrome field data, October 2026) · How we measured