Hello,
I'm Mervi Eskelinen!
An artist, nerd and sorcerer, dedicated to make world softer and better for everyone, and to get you to make more art. Make art, change the world!
Google AdSense goes Responsive
Previously the Google ads had static sizes, width and height that remained the same no matter what size your screen was. It was a problem, since wide ads would crop on the smaller screens and smaller ads weren't very effective on the wider ones.
Now Google AdSense advertisement is working better on responsive websites. There's an actual responsive ad version, which you can use with media queries to change the ad size depending on the screen size. That's pretty cool.
Of course in order to implement this you have to understand a little bit of css and media queries. Slapping the code on your site and hoping for the best may not work as intended.
The responsive ad size is available per usual: Create a new ad unit, name it and choose "Responsive ad unit (BETA)" from Ad size. Then do all the configurations, such as the colors and fonts as well as choosing the ad type and custom channels if you use them.
The code works partially as with the static sizes. There are actually two modes: Smart sizing, which I wasn't able to get working on my site and Advanced, which works with media queries.
Smart sizing is supposed to get the size of the ad automatically depending on the screen size. Advanced requires tweaking the sizes with media queries by yourself. The media queries required can of course be added inline with your ad or to your css file. Advanced version also comes with some example css.
The ads must be set to the supported Google Adsense ad sizes. Different sizes are for different ad types, so remember to check if your ads will be Text ads and/or Display ads. It may or may not affect the performance of the ads.
The responsive ads don't work perfectly. When you adjust the screen size (for instance changing from portrait to landscape on a device) the ad size isn't adjusted accordingly. But when the site is loaded (or refreshed), the ad size is adjusted based on the media queries. But hey, it's still in beta.
I've now wrote the word ad so many times I'm feeling dizzy. Read more about blogs, design and advertisement, if you are interested.
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