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.
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.
87.9% of WordPress sites use no audio or video requests audio and video payload, and 97% of those sites have a good INP, against 97% of all WordPress sites.
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%.
Sites with no audio or video requests audio and video payload have a good INP most often: 97%, against 97% of all WordPress sites. Sites with 500 KB to 3 MB of audio/video media media payload have it least often, at 95%.
Audio and video payload usage
No audio or video requests is the most used: 87.9% of WordPress 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 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.
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.
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.
jQuery sets the audio and video payload to no audio or video requests on 88% of its sites, and 97% of jQuery sites have a good INP, against 97% of all sites.
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.
On jQuery, 97% of sites with no audio or video requests audio and video payload have a good INP, against 96% of jQuery sites with under 500 KB of audio/video media. Within jQuery, sites with no audio or video requests have a good INP more often. On Vue, 96% of sites with no audio or video requests audio and video payload have a good INP, against 94% of Vue sites with under 500 KB of audio/video media. Within Vue, sites with no audio or video requests and under 500 KB of audio/video media have a good INP about equally 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.
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).
By Arjen Karel · 63,295 crawled WordPress sites (36,524 with phone Chrome field data, October 2026). How we measured.