Ad refresh can provide publishers with meaningful additional revenue, but it can also affect users, advertisers, agencies and other participants in the advertising supply chain. These best practices are intended to promote responsible implementation, transparent transactions and confidence in the quality of refreshed inventory.
These recommendations apply to in-view and out-of-view ad refresh where relevant. They do not form part of the Acceptable Ads Standard and are not mandatory conditions of compliance. The Acceptable Ads Committee nevertheless strongly encourages publishers and other industry participants to follow them.
For purposes of these recommendations:
- In-view refresh occurs when an ad unit is viewable when it refreshes.
- Out-of-view refresh occurs when an ad unit is outside the user’s current viewport when it refreshes.
Transparency and advertiser protection
Declare refreshed inventory
Every party selling refreshed inventory should clearly disclose to its counterpart that the impression was generated through ad refresh. The disclosure should include the applicable trigger and minimum refresh interval. Where supported, this information should be transmitted programmatically. The IAB Tech Lab’s OpenRTB specification includes fields for declaring refresh mechanics, minimum intervals, and the number of times a placement has refreshed.
Maintain publisher-level transparency
Refreshing inventory should retain clear publisher, domain, and placement identifiers. Inventory from different publishers should not be bundled in a manner that prevents buyers from evaluating the viewability, refresh practices, or quality of the underlying placements.
Support independent measurement
Implementations should support reputable independent measurement of viewability and invalid traffic, subject to applicable privacy, security, and user-choice requirements. Measurement should be implemented in a manner that respects the protections of the user agent and does not require the blanket allow-listing of trackers.
Responsible implementation
- Do not refresh an inactive page. Ads should not refresh when the page is known to be hidden, minimized or displayed in an inactive browser tab. This does not prevent out-of-view refresh where the page itself remains visible and active. This is consistent with Media Rating Council guidance distinguishing ads in out-of-focus tabs from viewable impressions.
- Require a reasonable opportunity to become viewable. An out-of-view placement should refresh only where there is a reasonable expectation that it may become viewable. Relevant considerations may include the page environment, anticipated user navigation, and the placement’s historical viewability relative to comparable refreshing and non-refreshing placements. Out-of-view refresh should not be used to generate impressions from placements that the publisher knows, or reasonably should know, are unlikely to become viewable.
- Protect page performance. Refresh implementations should be designed so that repeated auctions and creative loads do not materially degrade page responsiveness, consume unreasonable bandwidth, or interfere with the user’s access to the Primary Content.
Review and evolution
Advertising technology and measurement practices continue to evolve. The AAC may update these recommendations as new evidence, technical standards and industry practices emerge.