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In an effort to follow google adsense's policy of not pushing content down the fold with use of a very wide ad unit, I decided that on my webpages, I use only square ads so that text is around the ad unit and then the ad unit becomes less intrusive.

I'm also doing this on the mobile version of my site.

My question is what is the maximum width of a screen an adsense ad unit can take before google believes it pushes too much content down the fold?

I feel if I use too low of a width for ads, they wont be clicked on and I'll make no money. I also feel if I use too high of a width, then I could possibly push too much content below the fold.

Is there a special number (width percentage) I should go with here?

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Every site is different, depending on the market segment, ads available and etc.

I found that contextual text ads do better then graphic banners. Also, ads placed right below the headline outperform leaderboard ads in the header and square ads in the sidebar.

Best approach is to run a test on this. I have separated all my ads into different tags and named them based on placement,type and size. Sometimes even the text size and color make a huge difference.

Depending on how much traffic you get, within a few months you should be able to tell which ads perform better based on type, size and location. You can look this up in your Performance Reports -> Ad Units.

You can also run Ad Experiments and see what work for you. This option is under My Ads -> Content -> Experiments.

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  • I'm already doing tests and I'm avoiding responsive ad units for this reason. I'm delivering an ad unit equal to no more than 2/3rd's the size of the user's screen. Seems that I'm making ok money for mobile users with large screens but for users with screens under 450px viewing space, I'm making practically nothing, and I'm afraid to use the 300x50 ad unit on smaller screens (especially if someone uses a QVGA screen of 240x320px) as it pushes a ton of content below the fold and therefore may likely be an adsense policy violation.
    – Mike -- No longer here
    Dec 14, 2015 at 19:09
  • Did you look up what % of users are under 450px based on traffic? You might be getting a good RPM but not that much traffic. Chances are that its such a small group that it might not be worth giving yourself a headache. On my sites most revenue comes from desktop and tables.
    – dasickle
    Dec 14, 2015 at 19:15
  • Also, you should give responsive ads a go. I have seen my revenue increase when I switched over.
    – dasickle
    Dec 14, 2015 at 19:15
  • More of my revenue comes from desktop browsers and some come from tablets, but I'm making nothing from the 200x200px ad unit that serves users with screen widths between 300px and 450px and that's about 33% of my visitors. I evaluate my reports on the hour sometimes.
    – Mike -- No longer here
    Dec 14, 2015 at 19:25
  • Ouch...33% is a big chunk. Have you had any luck with text ads? They look more natural and scale great. That would probably be your best move. 200x200 on 300px screen is very invasive and annoying. Most people would only click on it by accident.
    – dasickle
    Dec 14, 2015 at 19:48

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