Refreshing inventory updates ad content without necessarily having to refresh the entire contents of your page. You may choose to allow ads that dynamically reload to provide a better user experience or meet industry standards.
You can set a refresh rate for ad units in Ad Manager settings, and implement refreshes using GPT.
Ad inventory that refreshes is allowed to compete. However, you must declare which portions of your inventory refresh per advertising industry guidelines on refresh transparency. Adding declarations on refreshing inventory in Inventory rules lets buyers know, through the Real-Time Bidding Protocol, that they're purchasing refreshing inventory, the triggers that cause the refresh, and the minimum interval to expect between refreshes.
Failure to declare inventory that refreshes or improperly declaring it (for example, declaring the wrong trigger type or refresh interval) is a violation of Google policy, and we will notify you of any violations we detect.
There are three types of refreshes that can take place, and each is triggered in a different way.
- User action refreshes are based on user-guided navigation.
Some examples of user action refreshes:
- A user visits a page that has a split screen, with an ad on one side and infinitely scrolling page content on the other. As the user reaches the bottom of one article, the next article loads and the ad content refreshes.
- A user filtering a set of e-commerce results
- Loading a new station or channel on a radio/video player
- Clicking to reveal previously hidden content
Some examples that don't qualify as user action refreshes:
- Users merely being active on a page
- Hovering or non-navigational mouse actions that don’t surface substantially new content
- User scrolls that do not surface substantially new content
- Mouse clicks on a screen as part of gameplay
- Event-driven content changes cause both page content and ads to refresh based on publisher-initiated events.
Some examples of event-driven content changes:
- Loading of a new song or clip in an auto-playing audio/video playlist
- A publisher refreshing a page with new content
- Significant events such as scores that are depicted in a sports tracker
Some examples that don't qualify as event-driven content changes:
- Small publisher updates solely for the purpose of generating new ads
- Events that typically occur in a time frame of less than 120 seconds
- New comments from users
- Time interval refreshes are configured to occur at predetermined intervals of time.
For example, a publisher that expects users to spend a long time on a single page may create a refresh that causes ad content on the page to change after a certain length of time (say, 120 seconds).
There is a minimum interval of time that must take place between ad refreshes, as indicated in the publisher declarations. Please ensure that the declared minimum accurately reflects the ad behavior on your site.
Create declarations for inventory that refreshes
You must set up Inventory rules that define the types of refreshes that you've activated for your inventory.
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Click Inventory
Inventory rules
- Click the appropriate inventory type sub-tab (for example, Display).
- Click New [inventory type] publisher declaration.
- Enter a name for your declaration.
- Decide which inventory to include or exclude in your targeting.
- Expand one of the targeting sections, such as "Inventory."
- To include selections to the targeting criteria, hover over the item and click Include
.
- To exclude selections in the targeting criteria, hover over the item and click Exclude
.
- The selected items appear in the right column of the targeting table.
- To remove a selection, click Remove
to the right of the selection.
- You can choose to implement your ad units as "Sticky ads".
A sticky ad is a persistent/fixed ad unit that stays visible while the user scrolls content on the page up or down. - Check the boxes under "Refresh triggers" to indicate that the selected inventory refreshes. You can select one or more refresh types for the same inventory, and each declaration applies to all targeted impressions.
- For each refresh trigger that you declare, specify the minimum time interval between ad refreshes. This declares to buyers that the ad content for this inventory will not refresh any faster than the interval you selected.
- Click Save.
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to the right of the selection. Rules only allow you to declare that ads refresh; they do not control the behavior of ads on the page. Declaring an ad unit as refreshing in the UI doesn't implement refreshes on your inventory.
We recommend using user action or event-driven refreshes when possible as the behavior of ads on your web pages must match what you declare to publishers in Ad Manager.
Available minimum intervals for refreshPublishers must declare a refresh interval in the UI. Select the minimum duration for which you'll display a given ad, unless the user ends the session either by navigating to a new page, closing the browser, or other equivalent means. Minimum rates allowed are as follows:
| Desktop and mobile web | Mobile app | |
|---|---|---|
| User action-based | No minimum | No minimum |
| Event-triggered | 30 second minimum | 30 seconds minimum / 60 seconds recommended |
| Time-based | 30 seconds minimum | 30 seconds minimum / 60 seconds recommended |
If you want to refresh at a rate that isn't available in the UI, you must select a rate that is less than the actual rate at which you refresh ads. For example, if you prefer to refresh at an interval of 220 seconds, you should create a declaration with an interval of 180 seconds. If you were to declare that your refreshes take place at an interval of 240 seconds instead, this would be a violation.
Some buyers require a refresh declaration of greater than or equal to 240 seconds.
In general, the longer the interval between refreshes, the more desirable your inventory is to buyers.