Can I run a leaderboard ad?

You can, but we don't recommend it.

Heather Tullos avatar
Written by Heather Tullos
Updated over a week ago

At Mediavine, we offer several optional ad units to customize your ad experience.

Leaderboard ads are targeted above your desktop content which puts them in the first screenview. The typical size of a leaderboard ad is 728 X 90.

Leaderboard ads are only offered on desktop traffic.

We do not recommend Leaderboard ads for several reasons.

  1. Ads in the first screenview load with the page (though they still load asynchronously) which slows things down. A slower site creates a poor user experience which reduces time on site. Reduced time on site reduces your opportunities to make additional revenue from other ads on the page that are not interrupting the reader's experience.

  2. Leaderboard ads tend to have low viewability because readers immediately scroll past the first screenview. That low viewability pulls down your sitewide average which can reduce advertiser spend on all of your other ad units.

  3. If you are using the Optimize for Desktop Pagespeed setting, leaderboard ads won't serve because it defers all ads from the first screenview.

Instead of leaderboard ads, we recommend the Desktop Adhesion unit. It has viewability that is above 95% in most cases, CPMs are high, and it does not interrupt the reader's experience.

If your site consists of mostly SHORT FORM CONTENT (content that does not require readers to scroll past the initial screenview) and is heavy on desktop traffic, a leaderboard ad might be a good fit.

In order for you to enable leaderboard ads on your site, a Support Engineer will need to target a CSS selector in Mediavine's admin. Otherwise you won't have the option to enable this ad unit.

If you think a leaderboard ad might be a good fit for your style of content, you can reach out to publishers@mediavine.com so that we can assist with that targeting for you.

Once the leaderboard ad is targeted in our admin

You will be able to enable and disable the ad unit directly from your Mediavine dashboard.

Settings > Ad Settings > Optional Ad Units

Did this answer your question?