Placeholders ignoring sizing settings

Ethan

Manu123 So the placeholders themselves are respecting the sizes you set, but the grey box surrounding the placeholder requires larger sizing. The grey box allows the ad to be sticky, and this improves ad viewability, which in turn improves revenue. If you'd like, we can turn this feature off, so the placeholders won't have any padding. However, that'd reduce the viewability of the ads and will hurt revenue. Let us know if you want to turn this off or not.

Manu123

Hi Ethan, thank you, but I don't think the placeholders are indeed respecting the sizes I set. Look, these are the only sizes I allow for those placeholder:
On mobile and tablet:
Medium rectangle - 300x250
Half page - 300x600

On desktop
Billboard - 970x250
Large leader - 970x90

Also, I disables Adaptive sizing and Fluid sizes feature for them. But what you see in the desktop screenshot above shows that it clearly doesn't respect my settings. So what am I doing wrong here?

Regarding grey boxes and stickiness. I don't love it, but I'm willing to give it a go, as long as I have control over the sizes of the ads that are being displayed there. I need all ads shown there to always be of the same width: 300 for mobile and 970 for desktop. How can I achieve that?

Tucker_P_Ezoic

Do you have an example URL where you're not seeing sizing criteria respected for the actual ad creative that's being displayed? A screenshot of what you're seeing on that page would be helpful as well.
As was pointed out, the 'sticky' ads that create the larger grey box are going to have the creative respect the sizing criteria, but the box itself might be slightly larger to allow the ad to float and increase that visibility which in turn increases revenue (and doesn't hurt UX, we've tested on millions of pageviews a month before rolling this out as a full feature).

The screenshot you provided doesn't show the sizing not being respected necessarily, if you can explain what you mean exactly that might help us to understand the request.

Manu123

Hi Tucker,
please see the example screenshot in my original post, and here is another one. As you can see, in both of these cases the ad inserted into this placeholder is of a different size than what I selected for this placeholder. When I set the sized for other placeholders, for example in the sidebar, then every time I see an ad there it's of one of the sizes I set up. But with these two in-content placeholders it doesn't work - on desktop the ad is often narrower than 970px (the only width option I selected for desktop) and on mobile it's often wider than 300px (the only width option I selected for mobile and tablet). Whenever the placeholder happens to show the correct ad size on desktop, it's 970x250, which fits the width of the box neatly. And I want only this width of ads to show on desktop for this placeholder. On mobile, an example of the correct size would be 300x600, but sometimes I see ads there that are 359x717px.

So, my questions is how can I set these in-content placeholders in such a way that they only display ads that fit neatly within the width of the box, neigher crossing the borders of the box, nor being significantly narrower than the width of the box.

Manu123

Here is an example of mismatch on mobile:

Manu123

Example URL: https://armeniatraveltips.com/armenian-flag-history/

Imogen

Manu123 Hey, I've checked the URL and a few other pages on the site, and for in content ads I am only seeing 970px ads showing (as you can see below) on desktop, and 300px on mobile. What is the size of the ad from the mobile screenshot you sent? As far as I can tell this is a 300x600 ad, is this not what you want? Finally, are you confident you are viewing an up to date version of the site? When did you make these initial changes? It's important that you clear your browser cache out.

Manu123

Imogen

Imogen Hi, of course I clear my browsing data every time I change any settings of placeholders. Please see the screenshots below, I took them on my mobile phone. I simply reload the page 3 times, and only once of these three times the ad was displayed as I expect it - within the confines of the grey box. The fact I can't control how these in-content ads are being displayed makes me want to get rid of all in-content placeholders all together, but it's a lot of "real estate" on blog posts being wasted. I'm really feeling hopeless at this points.

Imogen

Manu123 Okay, I noticed this issue when I first visited the site via mobile. When accessed via /?nocache, the ad sizes seem to respect the chosen sizes: https://armeniatraveltips.com/horse-riding-in-yerevan/?nocache. Can you view this URL and let me know what you think? I am only seeing 300-width ads on mobile. You do have an additional size chosen for the length of the ads, so I did see these as well (300x250).

If you can confirm that you see the correct sizing on the URL I sent, we will need you to clear out the cache of any caching plugins you are using and make sure that you have disabled server-side caching at your host

Manu123

Imogen hi, unfortunately, when I visit the page with the URL you provided on my mobile phone, I can still see the ads in those two in-content placeholds varying in width even though they shouldn't. The width of the grey box remains consistent, but the ads shows within it sometimes match the width of the box (expected behavior), sometimes they exceed the box by about 10% on each side, and sometimes they cover the whole width of the screen completely ignoring the boundaries of the box. So, in essence the experience with ?nocache at the end is not different from what I showcased in the screenshots in my previous message.

HarryB

I've changed some settings within our backend which should stop other sizes from serving in this location. Make sure you clear your browser cache and cookies and let us know how things are looking

Manu123

HarryB Hi Harry, unfortunately, the changes you made don't seem to have had any effect. The only caching I use comes from LEAP on Ezoic, I cleared that URL's cache in LEAP, then I visited the page to check how ads are displayed in those in-content placeholders. I refreshed the page over 5 times, both with the regular URL as well as with "?nocache" appended at the end. No effect, i.e. I can still see ads exceeding the boundaries of the grey box. It's strange but it looks like the second in-content placeholder tends to keep the ad within the boundaries of the box more frequently than the first one does, but they both show ads spanning beyond the box from time to time. What else can I do to establish control over what ad formats are shown in those placeholders?

Imogen

Manu123 Apologies it looks like the change Harry implemented had reverted, I've just added this change back in so I'm hoping this will have now resolved the issue. Mobile is still looking okay for me, can you check via another device / browser please?

Manu123

Imogen Hi Imogen, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have any effect. Please see the screenshot I took just now. I cleared the cache in the LEAP from that url, then I reload the page about 5 times on both my phone and PC. Sometimes it works, sometimes it faits. Is it just me who struggles with this?

Imogen

Manu123 Please can you go through your placeholders and make sure each one is configured how you want it to be? We had a look and saw a couple that were not set up to respect the sizes you want:

Manu123

Imogen hi Imogen, I tried, for both in-content placeholders, and it doesn't work. It doesn't save my settings after I click Save. As you can see in the screenshot you posted, the setup that I created using the browser extension only turns off the ad format (first column), but doesn't reflect the settings I put for Device (second column). When I try to set this up in the backend, in EzoicAds - > Placeholders, for example for Square (250x250) ad type I'd remove the ticks from all device taps and click Save. If I open the placeholder settings after that, the ticks are back. I also tried ticking the ad type box and unticking device taps, then it saves the settings. But if I go back to remove the tick from the ad type box (first column) after that and click Save again, it removes the tick from the first column but immediately brings back the ticks on Device types (second column). So, it's basically out of control. Could you please advise?

Imogen

Manu123 Okay, if you do not have the ad size ticked in the first column, the second column does not matter. My point from that screenshot was that you have a medium rectangle (300x250) placeholder enabled for desktop, whereas you initially said you only wanted: Billboard - 970x250 and Large leader - 970x90 on desktop. When checking EzoicAds, I am seeing alternative sizes enabled

Imogen

Manu123 I've had an other conversation with a member of our tech team who believe the issue might be taking place on mobile. Please can you update the sizes for desktop and mobile and let me know once this is complete so that I can take a look with the team? We've seen reports of this issue taking place on mobile devices, but not on desktop.

Imogen

I've edited that ad size in EzoicAds and my changes have been saved, can you clear out your browser cache, reaccess the dashboard and see if it allows you to edit the placeholder sizes? You only need to edit the placeholders sizes that have been ticked

haseebjutt

Imogen Hi, my blog placeholders are not generating, can you fix it?

Manu123

Imogen Hi Imogen, tbh, I don't know how you got to see the medium rectangle being activated for Desktop. It's definitely not what I wanted there, and I'm pretty sure that after "fighting" with this for a month now I've checked multiple times to make sure the settings are exactly as I want them. So, you are right, I didn't want that format on desktop, and now when I'm looking at it in EzoicAds it's not activated for Desktop. Maybe you deactivated it. If it's activated when you view it, but not activated when I do, then I don't know what might be causing it. I cleared the cache of my browser, and tried editing the placeholders in EzoicAds, I still can only edit boxes for devices on those formats that have a tick in the first column. If I make any changed in the second column on formats that are unticked in the first column, my changes don't get saved. But you said it doesn't matter, so I'm not going to worry about it. So, all in all, the settings appear exactly as I need them to, but then I look at my website, and the ad sizing is still out of control on mobile. I cannot check it on desktop, cause currently ads don't appear on my website on desktop. I don't know why it happens, and it seems to be quite random, but sometimes all ads disappear from my website when I view it on desktop, and later they appear again. It might have something to do with my VPN, but unfortunately, I cannot turn it off. Anyway, from my perspective nothing has changed since the last time I reported the issue, at least not on mobile, nor in EzoicAds. So, the issue is persisting - I don't have the level of control of the ad sizes being displayed on my website that I want to have.

Ethan

Manu123 Hi, you won't be able to view the ads if you have a VPN, so if you want to test the as in desktop you need to turn off your VPN temporarily.

Just taking a look at this, I don't think you've quite set the potential placeholder sizes up correctly. For example, you said there was a mismatch of ads on mobile, but you do have a half page ad enabled for mobile. Can you tell us what sizes you want exactly for each of your placeholders, per device? I feel this is the best way to try resolve this.

Lastly, in your first message you mentioned 'I don't even want to mention the fact I hate the way this grey box looks and the stickiness element of these placeholders. I figured that's something Ezoic insists on having.' - you can easily turn that off in EzoicAds, just scroll to in-content and turn them to static (it removes the padding from the placeholders too)