Different ads with different browsers?

I see different ads with IE6 and FireFox!

[btas2]

Anyone else ever see this?

I just edited a page on my site and then viewed it with both IE6 and Firefox to make sure it displayed OK in different browsers. The page was fine but I saw different Adsense ads. Not just once, but each time. I reloaded the pages several times in each browser and the ads did not change. Same set of ads reloaded in IE6, different set of ads reloaded in FireFox.

Not only that, but I see two ad units in IE6, but only one of them displays in Firefox. I checked the source in each browser (looking for some sort of caching issues) but they were the same and HTML code for both pages had two ad units.

It will be interesting to check again in a few hours to see if this persists or if both pages eventually get the same ads.

BTW the Firefox ads were better targeted to the page..

[fish_eye]

I've never noticed much of a difference ... what did you find when you checked back?

[Born_User]

I have noticed the same issue looking at the same page from two different PC's simultaneously, with both machines using IE6. I don't think it's a browser issue. In my example, I had 2 machines side by side. Both were displaying the same page. But the ads were completely different for one over the other. In fact, I was displaying a right-aligned skyscraper ad along with a banner at the bottom. On one monitor, only the skyscraper ad was showing up. I looked again a few minutes later and they were different again. I don't think it's a browser issue (or... in my case, at least, it could NOT have been a browser issue).

[amznVibe]

I realize this thread is a few weeks old but I wanted to point out I have noticed this too.

Exact same URL, different browser (hence different user-agent?) different ads when refreshed at same time.

I have no idea why and would be curious to hear any insight.

[garyr_h]

Easy... it is static...

When you have 20 different sites paying 7 cents per click for the exact same keywords why would they show the same one EVERY time?

It even explains this before you sign up to AdSense...

[fish_eye]

Perhaps they assume that the Firefox audience is more geek-o-phile than IE and/or that webmasters are more likely to view with Firefox than with IE so they better get it right. [I'm joking of course.]

[budapesttips]

I think it might be because of cookies. Google uses cookies to do all kinds of tracking, I'm sure they use this info for targeting too. In the above cases, the different ads might have been displayed because the different browsers/pcs had different cookies from google.

ps: altough i'm following these forums since a while, this is my first post here, so hello everybody. :)

[fish_eye]

Hello budapesttips and welcome!

[amznVibe]

I just spotted a problem for webmasters because of different ads in Firefox.

There is no preview tool for firefox so I can't determine the ads that will be shown for the visitors!

Not very helpful Google. If they are lurking, perhaps give us a user-agent toggle in the preview tool (otherwise I'll just try spoofing one with an IE hack).