Why I place a 320x100 mobile unit, and Google shows a responsive ad?

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Why I place a 320x100 mobile unit, and Google shows a responsive ad?

I suspect that the responsive unit takes longer to be shown

guarriman3

8:40 am on Jan 28, 2021 (gmt 0)

Hi,

I'm trying to follow the official support guidelines by Google (https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6357180?hl=en), and placed a 320x100 ad unit above the fold for mobile users.

<div class="slot_320_100"><center><ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:inline-block;width:320px;height:100px" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1234" data-ad-slot="1234"></ins><script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script></center></div>

CSS:

div.slot_320_100{min-width:320px;min-height:100px}

However, Google is showing a responsive unit, adjusting the ad to screen size.

I do not understand this. Am I doing something wrong? I load the AdSense script in a lazy way, loading the JS when user starts to scrolls down. Since the ad is placed above the fold, I see how the responsive ad takes longer to be shown, and sometimes users do not see it.

Any tip is appreciated. Thank you.

lammert

11:12 am on Jan 28, 2021 (gmt 0)

Google can/will optimize mobile ad sizes when it sees fit. The help document about ad size optimization [support.google.com] might help you to fix this.

guarriman3

5:43 pm on Jan 28, 2021 (gmt 0)

Hi @lammert,

Thank you very much for your nice answer. Indeed, I had enabled the option "Let Google optimize the size of your mobile ads". I did not remembered it.

So my questions are:

If Google recommends (https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6357180?hl=en) to place 320x100 above the fold, why then they modify the size?

Should I turn off that option to take control of the sizes of the ads I place? The rest of the ads are responsive.

Do bigger ads take more time to be loaded? I'm suspecting that I'm losing percentage of 'Active View Viewable' because I placed responsive ads above the fold with lazy load.

NickMNS

6:09 pm on Jan 28, 2021 (gmt 0)

I'm not sure that is the problem.
It may relate to this parameter:

data-full-width-responsive="true"

Which is set to true on mobile by default.

No data-full-width-responsive parameter
Even when the data-full-width-responsive parameter isn't present in your ad code, your responsive ad unit will still expand to the full width of the user's screen on mobile devices in some instances. Although it won't do so as frequently as when the parameter is present and set to "true".

Source here:
[support.google.com...]

If Google recommends ... why then they modify the size?

1- Because it is an auction, the more buyers that are able to participate in the auction the higher the price, restricting the ad size limits to some extent the number of bidders for that ad slot.
2- Bigger ads get clicked more

Should I turn off that option to take control of the sizes of the ads I place? The rest of the ads are responsive.

That is a decision you need to make, but from my point above, in theory allowing ads to expand should result in higher revenue. Now will that increase be sufficient to warrant the resulting ugliness of the layout? Only you can answer that.

Do bigger ads take more time to be loaded?

They shouldn't, it is the size of the ad that is bottleneck, the difference due to size is likely marginal at best. The speed killler is all the tracking scripts.

I'm suspecting that I'm losing percentage of 'Active View Viewable' because I placed responsive ads above the fold with lazy load.

I do not see the logic of lazy loading above the fold content. What is triggering the load? Does you page layout account for the height of the ad when the ad isn't present or does the page adjust when the ad finally appears. If the page adjusts, then you are causing a re-flow, thus slowing things down and interfering with content on the screen causing a bad UX, even in the case when the user has scroll past the ad.

AdSense ads are loaded async, they will not block the loading of your page. Lazy loading ads that appear lower on the page can make sense, as there is no point in loading content that no one will ever see (I don't mean now ever scrolls down your page, I mean if you don't scroll no ad appears), but content in the view of the user should be loaded asap.

guarriman3

6:36 pm on Jan 28, 2021 (gmt 0)

Hi @NickMNS,

Thank you very much for your kind and informative answer.

I think that the point is why I started to use lazy load of AdSense units, and why I'm obsessed with not showing ads on the first page load.

I received tons of alerts by Google about the speed of my mobile pages Google Search Console, and decided to load *all* the AdSense units in a lazy load, with the "window.addEventListener(scroll" JavaScript function. I removed the load of the 'adsbygoogle.js' of each unit code and, when the user starts to scroll down, then I load the 'https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js' library and the ads are shown.

The problem: the first ad above the fold is not shown until the user starts to scroll down, but some users do not see that first ad above the fold.

I guess that if I include the 'adsbygoogle.js' in the first ad unit above the fold, it will be shown. However, I do not know the impact on the speed of my pages. I'll try further.