Auto refreshing a block (flex)

Hey Ashley! What is your use case for wanting to do this? Just make sure a block has updated content? Refreshing ads? What's up? =)

Hi Christine! Thanks for asking. We are looking at possibly using an html or regular block to house an ad, some content, or ad and content in the same block, that can auto refresh on an interval basis. Google has relaxed its stance on refreshing ads as long as the content around it also refreshes so we are looking at a test to see how our site and audience reacts to that experience. The ad and content dont have to be in the same block as long as we put the two blocks near each other and they both refresh but if both assets can live in the same block, that is also ok.

One thing we are working on right now is having auto refresh of ads. I literally just saw the development version of this yesterday, so it is coming very soon.

What we're looking at is a new set of choices around ad refreshing:

- All applicable ads refresh whenever triggered (default behavior)

- Only applicable ads in the viewport refresh whenever triggered

- Auto refresh all applicable ads in the viewport due to user action on a 60-second timer

- Do not refresh ads

So, this means that the auto refresh setting will refresh designated ads (in Ad Manager you can choose them, in DFP it means all of them), that are in the viewport, every 60 seconds as long as there is a user action, such as scrolling down the page to reveal new content and articles.

When we were testing this, we had the timer set at refreshing every 5 seconds, if there was a user action. That's a really long time when you're scrolling down a news article, honestly! And, it isn't refreshing every 5 seconds over and over ... it only does it when the user scrolls down the page (or clicks on a slideshow or paging), so this doesn't feel spammy at all.

I'm looking at this page for the DFP / AdX rules: https://support.google.com/adxseller/answer/6286179?hl=en 

We also are working with our programmatic vendors to make sure whatever we do will be approved by them as well.

Let me know what you think of this!

Christine, can you email me about this? We would like to have a brief chat about it. Thanks!