Ad refresh

Ad refresh means a slot shows more than one ad during a single visit. After, say, 30 seconds, the slot fires a new ad request and a new ad appears. Refresh can be time-based, event-based (user scrolls or clicks) or viewability-based (only refresh when the slot is visible).

Used responsibly, refresh makes sense for long visits, such as live sports blogs, games or tools where the user stays on one page for minutes. But it has two problems. Buyers often pay the same price for refreshed impressions, which are usually less valuable because the user has already seen ads in that slot. And aggressive, rapid refresh, especially when the slot is off-screen or the tab is in the background, is a hallmark of made-for-advertising sites and can cross into auto-refresh abuse.

Many buyers ask publishers and SSPs to disclose refreshed inventory, and some exclude it; ad platforms commonly set policies or minimum intervals for refresh. Measuring it transparently is part of healthy traffic quality.

Think of it like this

Ad refresh is like a billboard that flips to a new poster every half minute: fine on a busy road, suspicious if it flips every two seconds in an empty tunnel.

An example

A live cricket blog refreshes its in-view sidebar slot every 60 seconds. A reader who stays for 20 minutes generates 20 impressions from one slot instead of 1.