Adventures in Responsive Design for Adsense

Darn, the "responsive ad" doesn't resize as I resize my PC's browser!

[Webwork]

I'm finally playhing with . . shudder . . responsive design.

Being an old coot means I'm sitting at a PC, caressing Wordpress, attempting to wrap my head around various WP frameworks and skins.

So, I finally buck up my courage, ask Google to spit out a responsive ad unit and proceed to insert that code into website I'm rebuiling to comport with responsive design mandates . . err . . guidance.

For some danged reason it looks as if the bottom of the responsive ad is "slightly disappearing" when a given page is viewed in full Firefox 22 inch monitor glory. I've been fiddling with margins, padding, <div> height settings and more to no particular success in getting the ad to display in all its glory. I'll keep hacking as I faithfully believe the problem is of my own making. I mean, the ad is only responding to "what it sees" in my site's design. I just have to give the ad server a more clearly outlined "room" (ad space / <div>) methinks. A bit maddening but . . but . . if you have an idea about how I'm screwing up please feel free to enlighten me.

BUT . . . WAIT . . "Houston, there's a problem . . . When I grab the sidebars and resize my PC's browser the responsive ads don't automatically resize! There MUST be SOMETHING WRONG!

It only took me about 1/2 hour to figure out that, once the ad is served, it's not going to resize again to please me as I fiddle with browser window sizes.

Gobsmacked stupid, as in "I outta be smacked with gob for being that clueless".

[explorador]

Webwork, my sites have been mobile friendly for quite a while, but not 100% responsive until now, I just had a "responsive" to some resolutions, but anything my CMS could detect as "mobile" triggered a fully mobile version, fast, very good user experience.

Now fully responsive and finally tried responsive ads, I don't think it's a good term because they don't resize or adjust, it just shows an ad fitting the current view and size, but if you resize... it stays. In some cases it can really break the site design when you rotate your ipad or tablet, phone, etc. Besides this, the new responsive ad performed like a charm in terms of revenue! but only for two days, then it sucks again. So, same experience as you: those ads won't resise.

[RedBar]

once the ad is served, it's not going to resize again to please me as I fiddle with browser window sizes.

I have found that it totally "depends" on the browser and platform. Some desktop browsers need a refresh, my tablets and smartphones generally do not ... do not ask me why!

[explorador]

RedBar, that's interesting, I haven't seen that behavior.

Tested on:
Android 4+ smartphone
Android 4+ tablet
Android 4+ large screen tablet
Ipad and IPhones

Will check perhaps something changed since last time

[Webwork]

Wouldn't a "refresh" execute a call to the adserver, ergo, upon resize + refresh = ad server that comports with the resized viewport?

When I resized the browser (viewport?) and then hit refresh THEN a size appropriate (downsized) ad was delivered.

YMMV. This whole business of rebuilding sites is proving to be a small PITA. Of course, if they were better conceived / designed / executed / maintained (in all repects) from the outset the "P" in the "A" might be a bit less Pful. :-/ ;)

[ember]

I hardly know anything about responsive design, but I put together a template using bootstrap and placed the responsive ads on it using the auto sizing. The ads look fine on desktop and every mobile device that I've used. They seem to resize fine or at least fit on the page. I must be missing something because it seems too easy.

I talked to another ad network yesterday and apologized for my old school static html sites, and she said no apology necessary. Less than 10% of the sites they work with have responsive design because no one wants to make the PITA change. So don't feel so behind the curve as I did.

[eek2121]

The ads fit on the page until you re-size the browse,r that's the issue OP is bringing up. Load up your site, then re-size it really small, and watch the ad be out of bounds. Out of the box, AdSense ads don't do this. I believe there used to be a way to do this via CSS media queries, but I've never looked into it.