Policy

More ads or paid promotional material than publisher-content

There is no published ratio. Google weighs what you sell on a screen against what you made for it, and on a thin mobile page the selling side wins sooner than most publishers expect.

By Mario Bailey · Published October 8, 2026

The rule is a single line: Google does not allow its ads on screens "with more ads or other paid promotional material than publisher-content." Google publishes no percentage and no pixel count, and it does not say whether it compares by area, height, or number of units. What it does publish is what goes on each side of the scale, and that is where most people misjudge it.

What counts on the ads side

Google's glossary defines "ads," without the Google qualifier, as "any advertising, whether served by Google platforms or not." So the comparison is not only your AdSense units. Another network's units, direct-sold banners, and Google's own anchors, side rails, and Multiplex grids all sit on the same side.

The rule also names "other paid promotional material," and neither the help article nor the glossary defines it. Our conservative reading: if someone paid to be on the screen, or you are paid when a reader clicks, count it. That takes in affiliate product boxes, sponsored post widgets, and third-party recommendation widgets that carry paid links. Google has not said each of these counts. We would not bet a site on the argument that they do not.

What counts as publisher-content, and what does not

Google's help article says publisher-content includes "images, videos, games, article text and user-generated content created or managed by the publisher." It then excludes "whitespace, header or footer content, or links to other content on the site." The glossary also leaves out site navigation and related content links.

That exclusion is the trap. Your header, menu, footer, related-posts grid, and the empty space around everything are not on the content side at all. On a short page the real content can be a few paragraphs, and that is all your ads are weighed against. Category, tag, and archive pages are the most exposed, because most of what they show is links to other content on the site.

How a page ends up here

Rarely on purpose. Some typical routes, as illustrations rather than Google's list:

A thin page with the full stack. A short page carrying in-page Auto ads, an anchor, a side rail, a sidebar unit, and a Multiplex block at the bottom. Google says in-page Auto ads are placed "based on the page's layout and amount of content," but anchors and side rails are separate settings, and your manual units are your own decision on top of all of it.
Layers nobody totals. Auto ads, manual units, a second network, and an affiliate plugin, each configured on its own. No single setting is excessive. The screen is.
Mobile. A desktop layout with ads in a sidebar can look balanced. On a phone the sidebar collapses into the same single column as the article, so every unit now sits in the content flow.
Infinite scroll and feeds. A unit after every few short items in an endless list, where the items are themselves mostly links to other pages on the site.
Empty states. Fixed ad slots on a template with variable content: a search with no results, a listing gone out of stock, a stub. The ads stay and the content does not. That case can also fall under the sibling screens without publisher-content rule.

Screens, not sites, and apps too

The rule is written about screens, and Google defines a screen as the surface where a user interacts with content, "including but not limited to web pages and app screens." Two consequences follow. One page can be in violation while the rest of the site is fine, and the Policy center does list page-level issues separately. And the rule applies in apps: the same policy text appears in the AdMob Help Center. For an app, Google asks you to upload the fixed version to your app store before requesting a review, and offers a separate review option for fixes made server-side without a new build.

Is it a "Must fix"?

Google's 2021 Policy center redesign highlighted the issues that are a "Must fix." The current AdSense and AdMob help pages describe the same idea in other words: there are policy issues, regulatory issues, and advertiser preferences, and "you're required to fix policy issues." This rule is a Google Publisher Policy, so it is a policy issue. Whatever label your console shows, it is not optional.

What it does to your ads depends on the status beside it. Google lists Ad serving at risk (a warning with a fix-by date), Restricted ad serving (not all advertisers can bid, so demand may be little or none), and Disabled ad serving (all advertising blocked). Its help pages do not say which status this rule receives. The one Inventory value rule they do name, screens without publisher-content, is enforced with Restricted ad serving. Read the row in your Policy center rather than assuming.

The 30% figure you may have seen

The Coalition for Better Ads classes a mobile page as a disruptive experience when ads take up more than 30% of the vertical height of its main content. That is the Coalition's standard, not Google's threshold for this policy, and Google publishes none. It is still a fair sanity check: a page under 30% by height is nowhere near ads outweighing content on that measure, though Google does not say it measures by height. The 30% line, and the quieter costs that start below it, are in our ad-density ceiling study.

How to fix it, in order

Open the issue. In the Policy center, click Fix next to the site to reach the Issue details page. Some issues include screenshots, and Google notes they may not show every instance, so check the whole page.
Total both sides on a phone. Count the ads side: Google units, other networks, sticky formats, affiliate boxes, sponsored widgets. Then count what is actually yours, leaving out the header, footer, navigation, related links, and whitespace.
Cut ads first, on the template. Auto ads now has advanced settings for banner ads, a maximum number of ads per page and a minimum distance between them, which replaced the ad load slider on April 16, 2026. Anchor and side rail ads switch off separately, and page exclusions keep Auto ads off one URL or every page under a URL prefix, such as a tag archive. Remove manual and third-party units from the same templates.
Add content only if it is real. Expanding a page that deserved more is a fix. Padding is not: Google's glossary calls unintelligible filler low-value content, and ads beside it break the sibling rule.
Apply it everywhere the template runs. Google says its review processes "can't detect every issue," and the Policy center only lists violating sites with ad requests in the last 7 to 10 days.
Request the review. Click Fix, then Start review process, and choose that you fixed the violations. Several page-level issues can go into one review, within a limit Google sets per 30-day period. Google says it typically responds "within a week but sometimes it can take longer"; watch the Status column and your email.

The calm version of this rule

Google's own help article says "less can be more," and warns that a cluttered page may send readers elsewhere. That is the argument behind our net-positive placement test: every unit has to earn more than it costs in reader attention. The units that fail it are usually the ones that tip a screen into this violation. If Auto ads is doing the placing, our calm Auto ads setup keeps the anchor, turns vignettes off, caps the number of banner ads, and pulls back any placement that does not measure well.

Run the placement test Every policy message

Source: Google, More ads or paid promotional material than publisher-content. Quotations are Google's. Current as of October 2026.