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Google AdSense Adds Responsive Design Ad Units (Beta)

Barry Schwartz on July 31, 2013 at 12:40 pm

Google announced new ad units to support responsive design web pages. The ability for ad units to support responsive design was on the top of many publishers’ wish lists, and Google has finally introduced it.

Google warns this is a beta option, and you should make sure to test these units on your website carefully. Google said this new responsive ad unit “support a wide range of devices by working with your responsive design web pages.” Plus you can “dynamically specify the size of the ad that will be served, adapting it to fit the way your site renders a page on a particular device,” said Google.

Here is a screen shot of the beta option in the ad unit setup:

Here are the items Google wants you to be aware of when it comes to this new beta ad unit:

Be sure to specify fixed pixel values when setting the width and height of the ad to be served.
Make sure that the specified width and height match one of our supported ad sizes. Please note that link unit sizes aren’t supported at the moment.
The new ad code is responsive on initial page load only. Subsequent changes to the ad size, such as a screen orientation change, will not cause a new ad to be displayed. We know that this is an important feature for many of you and we’re currently working to address this.
Always set a default ad size in case some media queries aren’t supported.

A couple months ago, Google told publishers they are allowed to modify the AdSense code to make the ad units work well with responsive design web pages. This unit type should now ease the concern around that allowance.

In addition, Google also recently launched asynchronous ad units earlier this month.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here.