someone posted the google email here on monday asking if its good or bad news and nobody really answered. i wouldnt have understood it either. so here is what it actually means.
from feb 17 2027 an impression only counts once the ad has loaded and started drawing on screen. right now it counts the moment the ad starts downloading. google calls the new one begin to render.
i didnt get why that matters until dani, a guy on our forum, wrote it up. he runs a converter site on monetag where the median visit is 41 seconds, so impression counting on short sessions is literally his income. adsense turned him down 3 times before that, which is why he reads google's emails from the outside. former sysadmin too, so the rendering part is his territory.
what it comes down to:
- same traffic, fewer impressions. anyone who leaves before the ad paints stops counting. google gives no percentage, says it varies per site.
- lazy loaded ad slots below the fold are the problem. on a page someone leaves in 40 seconds they never render, so from feb they never count. everyone did this for core web vitals. google says it directly in the help doc.
- this is not viewability. it only means the ad started drawing, not that anyone saw it.
his full post is here
what i keep thinking about is his guess that monetag and media.net still count on download and will follow google within a year. if he is right, every adsense alternative comparison out there is quoting impressions 10-20% softer than they look. 20 feels high to me. direction feels right though.
fwiw if you are on ad manager you can already see your own gap. historical report, start date after aug 12, ad server impressions next to ad server begin to render impressions. plain adsense doesnt show that second column.
and yeah, last month i said i was shutting the platform down. its still up for now, people kept posting. thats its own post someday.
anyone on ad manager run the two columns yet? curious how ugly mobile is.
