So is that allowed?

Yes

Is it optimal? That is a more difficult question to answer without seeing the content, and layout an so on.

I am of the feeling that more is not always better. Loading ads that nobody ever sees is not beneficial to you or to your advertisers. But what you describe does not sound excessive by any measure.

My biggest concern with your description is that it is focused on desktop. With the current state of Adsense and the Mobile web, the primary focus should be on mobile. How are the ads shown on smaller screens?

Best option is to experiment. You may also wish to consider the effect that other JS driven elements on the page will have on ad performance, but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

That 728x90 ad unit used to be a top performer but trends in mobile content consumption may have changed that. It may make more sense (and dollars!) to switch to a mobile ad unit. But experiment first, allowing for an adequate amount of time to gauge performance.

Sometimes we get too close to eking out every profit possibility that we can't see the forest. Back up a bit and look at the site presentation from the users point of view. On all devices. What works on desktop may not work on mobile.

Don't want to make assumptions. Is the site responsive?

@martinibuster I am using a responsive header actually. On desktop it's 728x90 while on mobile its a small header that perfectly fits the header.

@tangor Yes it's fully responsive. In my point of view, the ads are "acceptable" but not sure about Google's point of view... I mean I don't wanna risk my Adsense account for couple dollars. Eventhough I see many sites that has even much more ads like Dailymail, Mirrors, Independent, and much more. I have around 5k visitors a day, while some of the sites I mentioned have 5 millions or more so I can't compare myself to them. Their amount of traffic may make Google think twice before banning them.


@NickMNS I agree with you. I have removed the in feed ads because it's almost spamming my home page. Maybe not a lot but I don't want Google to consider it a violation.


My website is responsive and mobile friendly but the 160x600 banners don't show on mobile for example. On the other hand, page top level ads are only for mobile mainly. I never saw them while surfing my site on desktop.

I think @tangor is talking about user experience rather than complying with Google's placement policies. You want to place ads where they have the best impact - but you also want to avoid annoying or bombarding your visitors. A better user experience can translate into higher levels of returning traffic. I have found that "less is more" with Adsense, even with the three-ad-per-page restriction gone.

^ exactly!

alking about user experience rather than complying with Google's placement policies

Without forgetting that Adsense's policies is one thing, and Google Search another one. Lot of things permitted by the Adsense TOS can have a negative impact on Google Search.

I always want to make sure that the ads don't get in the way of the content.

I use following guidelines for myself:

1. Focus on content over ads, meaning visitors should always be served with the answers they're looking for within the first page view. And answers should be seen easily even with ads.

2. Ads should not mix or confuse visitors, meaning that purposely blending content / image placements.

3. Ads should have enough distance away from navigational proper areas that can cause misclicks, enough distance especially to satisfy tap targets on smaller mobile screens.

4. After satisfying above three rules that I have, I load ad max to 50% 1 to 1 ratio of content. With that said, I generally use 5~7 ad units on all pages. I don't like header ads that much but I do use it on some selected sites. Since they do take away that initial mobile view. I would not use header ads for my article sites personally, not until I have enough return visitors.

More is not always better for average RPM. But more ad units will almost always generate more raw income over time. 5 ads might generate something like 10%~20% more than optimized 3 ads placement. My thought is...why not? As long as I serve my visitors well and fulfilling what they seek, I am going to load as many ads as they can mentally handle.

With this overall implementation and strategy, I worry less about "optimal" placements since I already overloaded it. I now spend the majority of my time worry about content and UX.

Somethings are better to invest time and efforts in. I learned early on trying to optimize ad placements...is much harder than just trying to overload it in all the possible positions.

Back to OP: Your ad loading ratio is far lower than what I would do. Depending on the length and type of content, I would at least double the ad placements and mix in more ad sizes.

No sites are the same and they all serve different kind of audiences, certain audiences have much higher ad threshold. Really think about whom you are serving to, and how they are using your site. Create a few placement templates, and thoroughly test them. As time goes on, you will have a much better idea.

Pss. Page level ads are annoying, I refrain from things that I find annoying myself. Any additional tap or click to close ad window is 1 less click that visitors might do on the site. That's me. Unless page level ads generate 10x more RPM...which they don't for me, I don't use them.

@frankleeceo Thanks for your answer! But just have a question about your third point. How can I make sure the in articles native ads won't cause misclicks or invalid clicks? I mean they are by Google and the ads are just between the content, so for example how can I make sure my mobile visitors won't click on the ad by mistake while scrolling?

Misclicks while scrolling is hard to avoid (Unless visitors don't scroll at all). I would not put too much thought into it, but just making sure that the inserted ads have enough spacing away from navigational links, or other links (tap targets in general). I have seen people with ads directly adjacent to their site menu or "next/previous" links with 0px spacing which I considered to be an epic failure for the long term.

I seldom see misclicks via scrolling on my properties with longer articles, and I have 300x600 units on some of them in the middle of the article. (And if there's misclick, google probably deducts it immediately due to visitor backing out of advertiser's site, so I don't see it in my reports). And I think it's probably ok. At least I have not run into issues with my 300x600 ad slots in article.

I do not use in feed ads myself, I want more control with my ad placements in tune with my content individually. But if I am to use it, I would personally differentiate ad looks versus internal/external non-ad site links. In short, visitors should be able to tell between site content versus ad content. That's usually where I draw the my personal guidelines. With that said, many people find monetary success in blending site content with ads, but I believe that is shortsighted and funnel visitors away from your own properties. I want my sites to be a destination, not a doorway to advertiser's site. I personally want to keep my visitors on my sites for as long as possible, for as many pageviews as possible. And if anytime they're bored, they could always exit via an ad :) - I make that option very visible and doable.

I find sites that mimic their navigational button links to match google's buttons annoying too. It makes site harder to use.

Again...misclicks via normal usage like scrolling is generally outside of our control. As long as we do not use clever ways to induce the misclicks we will probably be OK. Like...2 or 3 stacked 300x600 units is probably NOT ok. Common sense is key. I personally think it's good that Google is relieving some of that ad placement responsibility to the publisher.

PS. I have seen people reported that sometimes sites trigger second tap confirmation requirements for ads, it could be that the misclick rate is above a certain percentage threshold. It does happen and google logs it. So if misclicks happen too often, sites will get that flagged, and for sure sites immediately losing that 50~70% rpm after losing those accidental clicks.

@frankleeceo Sometimes I face a small deduction of my daily revenue, I am afraid over the long run it will get my site flagged as you said because it almost happens daily. But in general, I don't think the activity of my site is specious. For example, I have around 150k page views a month with 1680 clicks on my ads, which is almost 1%. I don't see that rate "tricking the system" or anything because my countable clicks aren't even that high I think.

I am using WordPress and my theme doesn't support automatic placement for the in article ads so I have to install them manually on each article, which will take hours, that's why I am using a plugin that doesn't allow me to have a margin between my content/text and ads. But it's pretty obvious that it's an ad but we are left with the invalid clicks while scrolling on mobile.

There are plenty of WP plugins for ad placement; if the one you have doesn't give you enough control, then find another one.

@netmeg I found just one that is really popular, the others barely have 1,000 downloads or so which makes me afraid to try them in case they are using bad codes, so I get my Adsense account suspended.

I think the best way is going for manual codes implementation, but it needs some time to add the code to every article