Refresh is the most abused lever in ad monetisation, because it looks like free money. Serve the same slot four times instead of once and you have four impressions. The catch is that impressions are not what you get paid for — viewable, valuable impressions are, and buyers price your whole site on the average.
What the rules actually say
Google Ad Manager permits refresh when it follows a user action or a meaningful period with the slot in view. What is not permitted is refreshing on a timer with no regard to whether anyone is looking. The spirit is straightforward: an impression should represent a real opportunity for a human to see an ad.
Buyers enforce this independently of policy. If your viewability drops, DSPs bid less or exclude you, and the CPM decline applies to every impression, not only the refreshed ones.
The safe pattern
- 30 seconds minimum between refreshes on a slot. Shorter and you are generating impressions nobody had time to see.
- In view only. Gate every refresh on an IntersectionObserver check at the moment of firing, not at the moment the timer was set.
- Pause on tab blur. A background tab has no viewers. Use the Page Visibility API and stop the timer.
- Cap per session. Somewhere around 5 to 10 refreshes per slot per session keeps you well inside sane territory. Unlimited refresh on a long session is how sites end up with 20% viewability.
- Reset on real interaction. Scroll back into view, or navigating in a single-page app, is a legitimate refresh signal. Sitting still is not.
How the v7 engine enforces it
The refresh engine has a hard 30-second minimum that configuration cannot go below, plus a configurable per-session cap. Every refresh re-runs the full auction, so a refreshed impression is competitively priced rather than being handed to whoever happens to be cached. Out-of-view and hidden-tab slots are skipped rather than queued.
Where refresh makes sense and where it does not
It works on long-dwell pages: live blogs, sports scores, long-form articles, forum threads, anything where a user genuinely spends minutes with the same slot on screen. There, a refresh at 30 or 60 seconds represents a real second opportunity to be seen.
It does not work on short-dwell pages. If your average time on page is 25 seconds, refresh is generating impressions that cannot be viewed, and you are trading site-wide CPM for a volume number that looks good in a spreadsheet.
The honest test: after enabling refresh, did revenue per pageview rise while viewability held? If impressions rose and RPM was flat or down, refresh cost you money and you should turn it off.
Related questions
How often can you refresh an ad slot?
No more than once every 30 seconds per slot, and only while the slot is in view and the tab is active. Shorter intervals produce impressions with no realistic chance of being viewed, which lowers your viewability and therefore what buyers pay for all of your inventory, not just the refreshed slots.
Is ad refresh against Google Ad Manager policy?
Not inherently. Ad Manager permits refresh following a user action or a meaningful period with the slot in view. What is prohibited is refreshing on a blind timer without regard to visibility. Implement the visibility gate and the minimum interval and you are within policy.
Does refreshing ads increase revenue?
Sometimes, on long-dwell pages where users genuinely keep a slot on screen for minutes. On short-dwell pages it usually reduces net revenue: viewability falls, buyers reprice your whole site downward, and the extra impressions are worth less than the discount applied to the originals. Measure revenue per pageview, not impressions.
Should each refresh run a new auction?
Yes. A refresh that reuses a cached bid is not competitive and undersells the impression. Running the full auction again means the refreshed impression is priced on current demand. It also means the refresh carries the normal auction latency, which is a further reason not to fire them frequently.
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