Google Adsense is decade old utility. Back then, people mostly used desktops or laptops to surf the net. But with the huge surge of mobiles, game consoles, tablets and Smart TVs, internet accessibility has become much more. Under this scenario web designers are more inclined to design websites that are interface independent. It is called Responsive Web Design.
Advertisements have to be a part of this change.The Adsense allows a fixed width to the Ad tiles. But with the advent of responsive web design, this has proved to be a hindrance because a large ad tile may look good on a desktop screen but, if the same site is accessed from a mobile then the large Ad poses a problem while surfing.
A JavaScript code snippet has been released on the internet some time ago allowed the designers to help their Ads resize themselves according to the screen of the medium.Thus, a single Ad when viewed on a desktop will be 728 x 60 and on a mobile screen it will be 200 x 200.
But, this started a debate that using this code to alter the Ad size dynamically will be the violation of Adsense policies that prohibit alteration of Ad tiles size.
Michel Wester of a certain WebSonic.nl is a Adsense publisher in Netherlands contacted the Adsense team for a confirmation and given below is his reply which says that altering Ad tiles for interactive web designing is NOT a violation of policies.
“AdSense Ads can be accommodated to various screen sizes with some JavaScript snippet. To get benefit of responsive design, create several ad formats, such as 728 × 90, 300 × 250 as well as 468 × 60. Then you carry out an “if-else’ fragment so that the right ad format is displayed based on the size of the device of the user.
The example website that you sent has the correct JavaScript code that you can use. Well I would like to emphasize that further change the AdSense code is not allowed. Advertisements may also not be hidden with CSS.”
Thus, using the JavaScript code re-size snippet is completely legal. Also, the snippet does not alter the Adsense code but only requests for a different ad unit based on the visitor’s screen.