Screen jumps with AdSense responsive ads

Our users are complaining about screen jumps when loading a topic on iphone. It seems very similar to this problem solved in july:

We use:

  • Digital Ocean Droplet 1 GB RAM, 25 GB disk
  • Ads plugin with adsense., release 2.4.0.beta 9
  • Online User plugin

It is a small forum with 800 users and these metrics:

We installed the Digital Ocean Metrics Agent to get more information.

Could it be a performance issue? Should we have to increase RAM?

Thanks in advance.

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My take: it is not a performance issue and whatever was fixed in July was not enough since it still occurs on mobile (the jumpiness) and only if the option to insert an ad every nth post is activated.

It was so annoying and disturbing to our users that we’ve had to just remove that option.

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Is ad insertion every N posts causing variable size posts on mobile @neil?

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I thought @eviltrout figured it out and it was fixed. @Cazadividendos @Paracelsus Which ad platform? Which ad size? You’re saying that the jumpiness is only on mobile?

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The problem only was reported on iphone. In android it works as expected, without jumps.
Ad Platform: Adsense
Ad Size: responsive size (both por general and mobile ads)
Adsense nth post code: 5

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I have (had) exactly the same settings of Cazadividendos except for the ads being every 10th post and both Android and IPhone users reporting the same behavior (specially on mobile Chrome).

Actually, I suspect the same thing happened in desktop version, but since there’s so much more vertical area you can still find it visually without having to re-scroll the whole time.

If you wish I can activate it and you can see for yourself, would that help @neil?

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Ok, so I’ve reactivated the option and there’s the jumpiness back. :smiley:

Demissão /AG Destitutiva / Eleições no Sporting - Direcção, SAD e Orgãos Sociais - FórumSCP

If you slowly scroll between post 684 and 686 (and stop the scrolling here and there like you were reading each post) you’ll see what we mean…

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I’ll try to summarize what’s happening here… :confounded:

I posted about this in another topic here, so please read:

Digging deeper, I tried using CSS to add dimensions to the container where responsive ads should be rendered in between ad posts. One example:

.adsense-post-bottom.adsense-responsive {
  height: 100px; // no taller than this pretty please
}

But… this happens:

I can’t find anything in the ad plugin or in core discourse that is adding these inline !IMPORTANT styles, so it looks like the adsense js has chosen the nuclear option and really wants to impose arbitrary heights on the container. So auto !important everything!

So it looks like AdSense has made it impossible. Options now are:

  1. Remove “responsive” as a size option from the AdSense plugin (fallback to 728x90 desktop, 300x250 mobile for those who are using the responsive size currently).
  2. Remove “responsive” only for between-posts placements (even though the jumping happens in all placements).
  3. Write a topic here on meta about the problem, allow people to keep using “responsive”, and link to it in the description of all AdSense size settings.
  4. The “auto !important” is coming from the ad plugin or core discourse and I can’t find it?

EDIT:

Maybe I understand this suggestion now:

So you’d need to be able to select “responsive” and then set the max width and max height in the plugin settings.

Closing this topic and will continue in this one:

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