Google AdSense Text Size Expands With Site
We had a guest over this weekend using my computer for a bit and the guest asked if I could increase the size of the page text because their eyes were bothering them a bit.
So, using Firefox (my browser of choice although some in the Opera community are still trying to convince me to change), I followed the normal task of increasing text size by selecting ‘View’ from the browser buttons, then Text Size>Increase.
I’ve changed text size before in the past, but either was on a web page which did not have Google AdSense running or I just did not notice, but as the text size increased in the browser, so did the size of the text in the Google AdSense ad box.
Let’s look at Search Engine Journal for an example. Here is a normal size AdSense Rectangle on the site:
And then I increased the size 4 times in the sequence below (you can use the Looksmart ad as a point of reference).
Still usable and all ads are included:
Two more clicks on increase result in an unreadable first ad:
Taking the increasing of the fonts one more step results in the advertising material almost being pushed from the ad space entirely:
Funny enough, the ad creative size stays the same, but the text is increased so large that the final ad is not even entirely shown in the AdSense box.
Sure, I do not increase my font size on an ongoing basis, but the whole experiment has me wondering how many people do, especially those with eye problems and senior citizens, who are an increasingly large Internet using demographic – and how the increasing of font size negatively effects contextual advertising performance among that group.
With the increases in font size on Firefox, the browser I was using, the Google AdSense ads were not the only part of the site which lost basic formatting and usability value, as the entire site was off except for images and other objects.
