Collapsing Adsense Skyscraper Banners?

[worker]

Is there a way to have the Adsense banner collapse to the size of the number of ads shown?

If only one ad is available, the skyscraper should shrink down so that it does not display blank white space.

And if there are no ads available, the code could shrink down to just one non-clickable line.

This would address the big blank problem.

Since we are not supposed to mess with the code, is there a way to suggest this to Google?

Any other way to approach this issue?

[robho]

This did work fine before the addition of the colour options - all we need is for that older code (within google) to be available again rather than anything new.

I emailed Google about this a couple of days ago, but haven't had any reply.

[worker]

I never made any changes to my code after adding it pre-color options.

So, if what I described should be happening, it's not happening for me.

I never saw collapsing/expanding skyscrapers though. They've always showed either ads or ads plus blank space, and they've always been the same size.

And if they are only going to show public service ads on a page, then there should be an option for it to collapse and not be visible.

That way when/if the page begins to show ads, they could then expand to show the available ads.

How would I go about suggesting this idea to Google? GG, do you read this forum?

[robho]

I didn't change the adsense code on my pages either, but after the introduction of the colour options, the code within the iframe, produced by google at runtime, has changed to always show space for 4 ads.

Before that change, the skyscrapers were indeed collapsable, showing just the number of boxes needed. Looked very nice on a contrasting background, and I was designing new changes around that look, but now the empty boxes just look silly.

Since the change is within the code they produce at runtime there's nothing we can do to alter it, which is why I asked for the option to keep it as it was. Still no reply though, must be very backlogged on adsense support.

[chiyo]

robho your experience is very different from us. Right from the start whether there was 1, 2, 3, or 4 ads showing the iframe was alwats the size of 4 ads.

[robho]

Not the only one: see [webmasterworld.com ] and (as far as I can tell, it's unclear) [webmasterworld.com ].

Maybe it depends on your specific design how noticable it was, with a really contrasty background the smaller frame for 1-3 ads looked nice.

To clarify: the iframe probably was occupying the space for 4 ads - I had nothing below - but the unused spaces were not visible, i.e. transparent and no border.