I’d like to look at updating the ad experience on mobile devices. Either looking to have the 320x50 ads fill the full width, or potentially look at introducing 300x250 ads.
Can anyone think of a way to have the 320x50 ads take up full width, solely by updating CSS?
@neil could we consider adding an option to change the size for mobile ads to 300x250, or at least on the ones every nth post?
Thx for the details. Yes, I’m referring to the Discourse DFP plugin.
One part of what I was wondering was whether there was a way to set the width / viewport of the page so that it is closer to the ad size. Note that on a Nexus 6p for example, the width of the page is 435. If we could set a fixed width for the entire page to 340 and then the viewport adjusted to that, then the ad experience for 320x50 should be better.
The other point was to consider actually moving to 300x250 sizes, which I’m seeing much more on mobile views.
The target should be to optimise for “users” not “ads” - some of what you are saying sounds a little backwards.
It’s also possible to target multiple ad unit sizes for the same ad slot…
… this way the advert would be optimised for the user based on the ad network’s knowledge.
i.e. what works best for the combination of available adverts, user, target device, display sizes etc.
The only issue here is that the automatically selected ad unit size would need to be catered for / detected by Discourse to ensure vertical scroll position is not messed up.
Agree @DeanMarkTaylor. But if there’s a way that the 320x50 ads can be more legible, I’d like to achieve that. The concept of multiple ad sizes for the same slot is interesting, but it doesn’t resolve the issue of ads that look too small for a certain screen size.
It might make sense for @neil to look into GPT tags, but I think adding an option to use 300x250 ads for the nth ad might achieve the same effect and be easier to implement.
The revenue/performance of 320x50 on Discourse is terrible - near zero. I have proposed the support for larger banner sizes at least a couple of times here. With mobile browsing going up, the webmaster’s revenue will go down, as 320x50 will generate only a fraction of what the desktop banner does.
Support for 320x100 and 320x320 would be a much needed improvement.
The most popular (and recommended by Google) ad size 320 x 250 is there, along with some others. Let me know if I missed any. There were also some sizes missing for the non-mobile ad units, so I added those.
@charleswalter@BCHK The update is deployed on your sites now so please try them out and let me know your results. When I switched to 320 x 250 it was rendering blank rectangles, but after an hour they began to be populated. It seems to be normal for DFP/Adsense… /shrug
Thx Neil. We work with an ad exchange, so they will be providing us new tags that I can schedule through DFP. Can I suggest adding in 320x100 and 300x600? I know the 300x600 sounds large, but I’m thinking of testing it at the bottom of the topics.
Done! Give them a try. FYI, after changing the ad size setting, it seems to take some time for the ad network to pick it up and start showing ads of the requested size.
That label is a requirement on many sites. AdSense may integrate a notice in their ads, but other ad networks don’t and require sites to add their own labels.
As for ad sizes, that’s entirely up to you. Your ad network settings (ad units, inventory, creatives, etc.) determine which ad sizes you should choose. Don’t choose settings that don’t match any ad inventory you’ve defined otherwise the ad network will probably display a blank rectangle.