Clarification about "large" ad unit

[interesujace]

Hi,

I am a bit confused.

From google:

Publishers may not place more than one "large" ad unit per page. We define a "large" ad unit as any unit similar in size to our 300 x 600 format. For example, this would include our 300 x 1050 and 970 x 250 formats, our 750 x 200 and 580 x 400 regional formats and any other custom-sized ad with comparable dimensions.

Note that here they didn't say 300x600 is "large" ad unit. They said similar to 300x600 such as 300 x 1050 and 970 x 250 formats, our 750 x 200 and 580 x 400 are "large".

The reason I am asking is I am using all 3 responsive ads on my site, but adsense automatically puts 2 300x600 on my site. Just want to make sure this is allowed. Many thanks.

[LuckyD]

I think you need to restrict the size of the div tag where the responsive code is placed in. To my knowledge, this policy is applied for fixed and responsive unit across your site.

[interesujace]

Surely adsense is clever enough to not break its own rules? i.e. inserting 2 300x600 units should it be not allowed?

[not2easy]

You control the size of the space that a responsive ad can fill. If you do nothing to limit that space you are requesting those ad sizes. At some point it may be noticed.

[LuckyD]

@Intersujace, AdSense load ads asynchronously and won't take other ads on the page into account (and you wouldn't want them to).
Imagine if you have three responsive units on your site. AdSense will fill them all at the same time by looking who's bidding on them. If they would also check for other sizes on your website to determine which ads to serve, the load time of the ad would increase.

One would assume that the load time of an ad is negatively correlated with eCPMs, so I don't think you would want AdSense to do that. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[interesujace]

Thank you for your insight. It makes sense so maybe I should change the one of the responsive to another format. But in any case, google should make it clear whether 300x600 is "large" unit or not.

[netmeg]

I'm pretty clear that 300 x 600 is a large ad unit. And even if I weren't, I figure the risk ain't worth the potential reward.