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Responsive ad where I don't want it

numnum

6:14 pm on Aug 13, 2014 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

I'm finally getting around to experimenting with responsive ad units, and I've encountered a few surprises. Here's one: I changed my top banner ad to a responsive unit so it tightens up according to screen size and my CSS media queries -- no problem.

Now, here's the thing: I've kept a 360x250 ad below the main content (article) column as is, but since I implemented the responsive unit at the top the 336X250 bottom ad has decided to intermittently expand to fill its container (width:500px). And it's pretty ugly, even by G's standards -- a stack of single-line text ads with a reveal-on-hover feature. Anyone else experiencing this?

To prevent all this, I suppose I can put the bottom ad in its own <div> and restrict its width to 336px. Or, I can set the ad option for image only, which I assume won't expand. Or, I can do nothing and assume that Google knows best when it comes to optimizing ad performance.

[edited by: incrediBILL at 8:32 pm (utc) on Aug 13, 2014]
[edit reason] titled fixed per OP request [/edit]

ken_b

6:30 pm on Aug 13, 2014 (gmt 0)

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Not sure if this would help, but have you tried disabling "Allow & Block Ads > Ad Serving > Expandable Ads"

numnum

6:59 pm on Aug 13, 2014 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Here's G's description of its expandable ads:

"Expandable ads - show ads that expand beyond the ad unit size following a user-initiated action"

Disabling expandable ads doesn't address the issue at hand. The ad on my site is expanding to fill the container width when it loads -- without any user-initiated action.

not2easy

7:43 pm on Aug 13, 2014 (gmt 0)

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It isn't an expandable ads issue, it is that they use your css to figure out the biggest ad that can fit into a space that is made available on the responsive ads.

I had the footer ad in a plain div with a default 100% width. Found out that was a bad idea, because they will use 100% of the width for desktop views. It is limited now. If the container element has a limiting size it won't be bigger than that. I didn't know they had ads that wide..

ian_D

8:21 pm on Aug 13, 2014 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

I've had the accordion text blocks for a few months now. They are pretty ugly. They do get a much higher CTR but their CPC is often 50-25% of the same ad in a larger format.
I switch those to a 728x banner or just remove that unit completely for a while if CPC drops too much.
It has nothing to do with any adsense settings or css, it's just google experimenting with another form of smart pricing, often where it's not needed.