What ad sizes should I submit?

Let’s be honest: Google display ad specifications isn’t very helpful to a busy designer. It simply states different sizes that can be submitted without specifying how often they appear or how well they perform, and there’s a lot of them:

Yeah, this isn’t helpful.

Ideally, we’d see percentages for the different sizes (200x200 sees 0.5% of placements and so on) so we could only create the sizes with the most placement and best conversions. Unfortunately, that data is, assumably, particular to each industry and entirely dependent on each site’s code on what ad sizes it will accept.

After a couple rounds of submission of the entire set — 20 ads total — I realized an intersection of real-world observations and data that supports it: some of these ads were barely seeing impressions and interactions. In fact, I have never seen most of these sizes in use on the web. Google AdSense also states some sizes have low placements in a very hard to find page.

Looking to be more efficient with my time, I categorized the sizes with the intent of eliminating some: “the squarish ones”, “the tallish ones”, “the widish ones”, and “the ones for mobile.” Based on these broad categories, I pared the ads that I submit to only the ones that perform in each category (“the tallish ones” had two winners). These are my go-to sizes:

• 160x600
• 300x250
• 300x600
• 728x90
• 320x50

These sizes should also be tested as they are on Google’s “best performing list:

• 336x280
• 320x100

This list isn’t comprehensive as you may need to submit abnormal sizes for particular vendors: LinkedIn prefers a 1200x1200 or 1200x628.

A final reminder and some final notes

• This list is a based on my observations of my data in my industry and parsing Google’s recommendations.
• Jalopnik loves the 970x250 but I’ve rarely seen it used. Most sites will take a variety of sizes to display. It’s up to each site on what sizes will be shown — this is also why you need to run your own tests on your own audience!
• Remember ad placements aren’t use-or-lose. If it turns out 200x200 ads aren’t getting placed, the campaign funds aren’t lost — they are used elsewhere in the campaign and will result in placements in the other ad sizes. This list is in the interest of efficiency and hopefully saving some sanity.
• Upload a 2x sized image whenever you can — otherwise they will appear blurry on Retina displays.