What is Ad Refresh?
Ad Refresh, also referred to as auto-refresh ads, is a technique that allows publishers to increase the number of ad impressions served per pageview by reloading ads for active users on site. Refreshing ad inventory enables publishers to update ad content without having to refresh the entire webpage.
What are the benefits of Ad Refresh?
Refreshing ad units is a sure-fire way to increase the size of your ad inventory. More impressions usually mean more money; so setting a unit to refresh offers an enticing opportunity to do that without adding more units to a page. Therefore, the main benefit of Ad Refresh is the potential to increase ad revenue by increasing impressions without increasing traffic or load time.
Are there any drawbacks of Ad Refresh?
As with most things related to ad monetization, the reality of Ad Refresh is a little more complex than simply switching it on and earning more revenue. Refreshing ad units can increase revenue, but it can also have the opposite effect – or even get you banned if you do it wrong.
Policy varies between AdSense and AdX when it comes to ad refresh. The short version is that AdSense is mostly against it, whilst AdX allows it if you declare it. Let’s look at both cases in more detail:
This article was originally posted in June 2016 and has been regularly updated since. It was most recently updated in May 2020.
Refreshing AdSense ads
Generally, the rule here is don’t refresh. The exception is when the ad refresh is user-initiated. This means that you can load a new ad into a unit when the user interacts with the page, but can’t reload based just on elapsed time. An example of a valid refresh would be triggering a new ad request as the user clicked through a slideshow. If that slideshow was automatic (requiring no user interaction) then the refresh wouldn’t be allowed. This is one reason why publishers opt for Ad Exchange over AdSense – read on.
The wording of some articles on the Google Ad Manager help pages often confuse publishers on this issue, but AdSense policy is quite clear:
“Publishers are not permitted to refresh a page or an element of a page without the user requesting a refresh. “
Refreshing Google Ad Manager Ad Exchange ads
The Google Ad Manager Ad Exchange (AdX) provides more flexibility through the rules system. With AdX you can automatically reload or refresh ad units, as long as you declare that this is what you do. This declaration allows buyers to choose whether or not to have their ads appear in refreshing ad units. Failing to declare which portions of your inventory will auto-refresh is a violation of Google policy.
How to declare ad inventory that refreshes on Ad Exchange
The declaration can be made in by navigating to INVENTORY > AD EXCHANGE RULES > PUBLISHER DECLARATIONS then adding a “new display publisher declaration” to identify your refreshing inventory.
The declaration asks you to identify what triggers a refresh:
User behaviour: Ads only change based on a user-initiated navigation. There is no minimum refresh interval for ads triggered in this way. This method might apply to single-page-applications that allow the user to navigate without loading a new URL.
Event-driven content changes: Ads are refreshed based on custom events pre-defined by the publisher. Such triggers can only be used to refresh ads after a minimum of 30 seconds. For example, when a publisher refreshes a page with new content, this may trigger the ad to refresh.
Time intervals: The ad refreshes based solely on elapsed time. There must be a minimum of 30 seconds between refreshes. For example, ads might refresh after 120 seconds have passed.
Greater flexibility in ad implementation is just one of the advantages that Ad Exchange offers. Click here to learn more about Ad Exchange and how you could benefit from switching to AdX on your website.
Revenue considerations
Having your ad unit refresh is not guaranteed to increase revenue, even in the short term. Some factors worth considering include:
Some advertisers will not bid: Declaring refreshing units will stop some advertisers bidding on them. This could reduce impression CPM.
Overall viewability and CTR may be negatively affected: Particularly in cases of ad refreshing based on time intervals rather than user interaction. This is because viewability can be negatively impacted as refresh triggers do not always take into account whether the ad unit is inside the user’s viewport. If ads are outside the user’s viewport but are refreshed anyway, this worsens viewability and makes inventory less valuable.
Bids could be reduced: Impressions on refreshing units may be less effective for some advertisers and bids could be reduced as a result of performance even when auto-refreshing ads are acceptable to them, this can result in lower impression CPMs. However, the aim of Ad Refresh is to offset that dip by increasing volume. As such, when implementing Ad Refresh it is best to focus on the value of the page views and how much a user is worth, looking at both Page RPM and Session RPM, as opposed to Impression RPM.
CPC ads likely to perform worse: Each unit can only get clicked once, so publishers with a large proportion of CPC bidders may see little benefit from refreshing ads, or even a reduced yield if the highest-winner bidder’s ads go unseen.
How long are users spending on page: If few users are spending 30 seconds or more on page then the results from auto-refreshing will be minimal.
User experience considerations
Ad Refresh does not slow down the initial page load, though it does consume additional data when ads are refreshed. Refreshing ads means loading more creatives. However, this load does not stand between the user and the content.
Sites with significant mobile usage (particular users accessing outside of Wi-Fi), those that already have heavy pages and those whose users are likely to have slow connections will be most impacted by load time. The types of ads you accept should also be considered, as the load from a refreshing text unit vs a refreshing rich media unit can differ greatly.
How to refresh ad units
All of that considered, auto-refreshing units is a viable approach for many and something that we encourage publishers to test. The easiest way to implement it is to use the mechanism built into Google Ad Manager (click here for instructions).
It requires use of asynchronous GPT tags – this allows you to set a custom refresh period in milliseconds, so be sure to stick to the minimums outlined above.
Mat has been supporting content creators on the web since 1996. As Co-founder of OKO Digital, Mat became the first person in the UK qualified to AdSense partner status and repeated this first with Google Certified Publishing Partner programme.
Many thanks
Hi, very interesting article.
I am considering changing the type of ad (not just actually refreshing it) under user interaction if the user change the content of the page (not need to download new html or ajax just using javascript with data already downloaded).
A question, if using Google Ad Manager (in order to have more target specific ads with categories), I select the ad sense network what rules should apply:
The ones in Google ad manager for refresh or the ones in Adsense. I mean, can I just order a new add (as per adsense rules, or should I wait 30 seconds as per Ad Manager rules?
Thank you very much
If you are using AdSense then you need to stick to AdSense policy even if you are delivering those ads through another adserver (including Google Ad Manager).
To be honest I don’t really like the idea of auto-refreshing ads in 60 seconds and so on
As you said there it can decrease CPM
I don’t think there is any advertiser who does not want their Ad to be viewed for a long time
I really do get confused a lot about DFP and Adsense. holykey1.com
You always need to consider the format in context of the website you are monetizing. I used to do a lot with webcam content. It wasn’t unusual to see pages being viewed for 15 or 20 minutes as an average. In those situations a single ad impressions would have struggled to cover the bandwidth cost. Refreshing at a moderate interval gives the opportunity to keep that content free to consume and has very little impact on user experience.
For most sites a 1 min refresh would have zero impact on either user experience, CPMs or earnings. Users just don’t hang around that long. In other cases it is the right tool for the job. Advertisers are generally more concerned about having their ad seen rather than it being seen for long periods, and you can find this sort of approach supports high viewability and CPMs by ensuring that every impression is is view.
I’ve had to remove the link to your site BTW as it was triggering security warnings.
Is it possible if you can just simply create a java-script function to refresh the every 10seconds?
Hi David,
It’s pretty simply to create javascript that will automatically refresh the unit. Being simple doesn’t mean that it is within policy though.
If you refreshed an AdSense unit every 10 seconds then you shouldn’t be surprised if that results in an account ban and refund of earnings. Similar if you did it with an adx unit that wasn’t declared as being refreshed.
This article was more about the policy than the mechanics.
One think that really disappoint me is that “Google offers different policies for the same type of ad and giving relaxation to the Premium Publisher”
Why is this soo?
AdX and AdSense are different products, so it is a bit misleading to talk about “premium publishers” (a meaningless phrase) having different policies. In the case of reloading or refreshing units there are simply different policies for the two products.
One reason for this is that they have different capabilities. AdX has a rules system that can be used to declare inventory behaviour such as refreshing units. AdSense doesn’t have this mechanism, so advertisers would not be aware that that they are buying lower value inventory.
Why don’t they just add this feature to AdSense then?
In truth it isn’t needed. It’s needed in AdX as it is shared inventory. Larger publishers create inventory to suit their sites then sell that through a number of channels. If AdX wants to compete in those channels then it needs to be flexible. AdSense generally runs through dedicated units so this need doesn’t apply.
AdX accounts are generally given to larger publishers, which means that they also have closer account support. The more established nature of the publishers plus the closer reduces the risk of refreshing units being abused. For those working with Partners (such as when our publishers work with us), the partner takes on that responsibility.
Thank you for your replying.
So I just implemented a 90 second refresh on a couple of our above-the-fold AdExchange units, and the revenue impact in the first couple of days has been tremendous – a 70% increase in overall revenue. We’ve followed all of the documented guidelines, and the ads are properly declared as a 90 second refresh in the AdX console.
Our average time on page is quite good, so we’re serving about 2.3x as many impressions as we were before. However, my concern is that with the refresh, CTRs have dropped to near zero levels, and that might get us in hot water with AdX. Do you think that’s something to worry about, or are the lower eCPMs and higher CPCs just going to sort themselves out on the demand side. I’d love to keep the significant revenue boost if it’s not putting us at risk with AdX.
Opinions? Anyone else out there doing ad refreshes with AdExchange care to share their experiences?
You are absolutely right: Implementing refreshes can kill CTR on some sites. This isn’t great, as poor performing units will see their CPMs start dropping once advertisers and Google’s algos catch on.
Whether refreshing causes a significant CTR drop varies from one site to another. It is very dependent on the placement of the units vs content and how quickly the refresh happens. The biggest drops we have seen are on long content pages where the unit refreshes before the user has scrolled down (you can watch Active View numbers for an indication on whether this is happening).
We’ve also seen a lot of refreshing code implemented incorrectly, sometimes causes “ghost impressions” with zero viewability. This is particularly worrying as it looks a lot like ad fraud from the buy side.
Refreshing ads definitely have to be managed closely, with visit CPM being the key metric to watch. The fact that there is a delay between changes in ad performance and CPM performance can make this tricky.
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