A software regression in Google AdSense left anchor ads and vignette ads impossible to dismiss for users on iOS mobile devices, beginning February 13, 2026, and persisting for six days until a fix was deployed globally on February 18. Google confirmed the issue on February 19 through an official announcement in the AdSense Help Center, marking the bug as resolved. The episode exposed a significant gap between how ad formats are designed to behave and how they actually performed during one of the more disruptive AdSense incidents in recent memory.

The core problem was a rendering failure. According to Google's official resolution notice, "the 'close' button on anchor ads was not visible to some users on iOS mobile devices. This caused ads to occupy the full height of the screen without a clear way for users to dismiss them." In other words, full-screen ads appeared with no exit mechanism, leaving visitors unable to access the content underneath. The issue was characterized internally as a "product-side regression" affecting multiple publishers simultaneously.

The failure surfaced quickly in publisher communities. On February 13, a Reddit thread in r/Adsense documented the first reports, with the original poster noting that ads were "loading in full-screen 'expanded' mode, but the close/collapse button is missing." The thread identified a subtle technical detail: the close button had not disappeared entirely from the rendered page but had instead been pushed outside the visible viewport. According to the thread, "If I pinch-to-zoom OUT on mobile, I can see the close button is actually rendered OUTSIDE the viewport." This strongly pointed to a broken safe-area calculation in the anchor ad rendering logic, rather than a missing element in the ad template itself.

Publishers responded by disabling anchor ads entirely. Several noted that disabling only the collapsible variant was insufficient. "Deactivating the collapsable anchor ad was the first measure I took 3 days ago. It's not working. At least not in my case. Full screen ads come back immediately," wrote one user in the Reddit thread. Another publisher with approximately 15,000 daily visitors stated they had disabled all advertising until the situation was resolved, citing user complaints.

The Google AdSense Help Forum received parallel reports. A thread opened February 14 by publisher Paul Strauss described vignette ads on mobile as "often missing any sort of close button, and in some cases, it's impossible to get past the vignette overlay." Strauss noted the problem appeared to worsen over a 24-hour window, potentially coinciding with Google rolling out new vignette triggers. A product expert escalated the issue to Google on February 14, though with the caveat that responses "can sometimes take a long time."

The six days between the bug's first appearance and the deployment of the fix represent a significant window for a malfunction of this severity. Publishers reported measurable financial consequences during that period. One contributor to the Reddit thread estimated a loss of approximately $300 per day after disabling auto ads entirely to protect user experience. Another noted that AdSense revenue had dropped since February 13, without specifying a figure. The disruption arrived at a particularly sensitive moment: Google had only days earlier, on February 9, activated new additional triggers for vignette ads across publisher accounts, expanding the conditions under which full-screen formats appear to users.

The broader context matters here. The collapsible anchor ad format - the specific feature at the center of this regression - was introduced by Google in November 2024. At launch, the format was described as automatically enlarging ad height on mobile devices to improve viewability while maintaining user control, with users able to collapse the ad at any time. Publishers using AdSense had the feature activated automatically over a 30-day window following the November 14, 2024 announcement, without manual intervention. The February 13 regression essentially inverted that user-control promise: instead of an ad users could collapse, they were served a full-screen format with no visible exit.

What made the incident particularly damaging from a data integrity standpoint was the effect on clickthrough rate metrics. According to Google's official resolution notice, "Impacted publishers might have seen a temporary but significant increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) on iOS devices between February 12 and February 18, 2026." An undismissable ad is more likely to be clicked - accidentally or otherwise - than one users can simply close. Publishers relying on CTR data from that window for performance analysis or revenue forecasting will need to treat those figures with caution. Google did not specify whether any form of revenue clawback or data correction would be applied for the affected period.

The user experience implications extend beyond individual publisher metrics. Research has consistently linked intrusive ad formats to negative brand perception and increased ad-blocking behavior. A study previously covered by PPC Land found that disruptive formats such as pop-ups are viewed as disrespectful by users and can damage brand perception for advertisers whose ads appear in them. An ad that occupies the full height of a screen with no dismissal mechanism sits firmly in that category. Separately, research into dark traffic has shown that user frustration with intrusive advertising formats is one of the drivers pushing nearly 976 million internet users toward ad-blocking tools - often without those users even actively choosing to block ads.

From a technical perspective, the root cause appears related to how anchor ads calculate safe-area boundaries on iOS devices. Mobile browsers on iOS enforce safe-area insets - regions of the screen that account for notches, home indicators, and other hardware elements - and ad placements that fail to account for these insets correctly can render critical interface elements like close buttons outside the visible frame. The bug behaved inconsistently across sessions, with some anchor ad instances rendering correctly and others not. "It's not that every anchor ad renders uncloseable. Some of them are OK. Please browse 8 or 10 subpages and confirm it's OK," the original Reddit poster clarified. This intermittent behavior likely complicated Google's ability to reproduce and isolate the issue quickly.

Google has built an extensive history of updates to anchor and vignette formats over recent years. Anchor ads expanded to desktop screens in July 2021. Vignette ads followed to desktop in February 2022. Vignette frequency controls were introduced in October 2023, replacing a fixed 10-minute interval between impressions with publisher-configurable ranges from one minute to one hour. In May 2025, Google added granular positioning controls for both anchor and side rail formats. Each of these updates expanded the footprint and complexity of these overlay ad formats. Greater complexity in rendering logic creates more surface area for regressions of exactly the type seen in February 2026.

During the six days the bug was active, Google's guidance to affected publishers was to disable anchor and vignette ads entirely and wait for a server-side fix. According to the official Google Support statement quoted in Search Engine Roundtable, "They recommended keeping Anchor and Vignette ads disabled until a fix is deployed. They are actively working on it." No workaround was provided that would have allowed publishers to keep the formats running safely in the interim.

The fix was confirmed as deployed on February 18, 2026, according to Google's resolution notice, with the official announcement published February 19. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable, who tracked the issue closely, posted on X on February 17 asking a publisher in Spain to confirm whether the problem had cleared by morning. The response, time stamped 7:26 AM Spain time on February 18, was that the problem persisted, with an additional report that display ads were also misaligned on some sites, "causing sideways scrolling, even if they are fixed-size."

For publishers, the episode raises a practical question about reliance on automated ad formats where control over rendering is held entirely on Google's side. When a format breaks in a way that traps users, publishers have no immediate technical remedy beyond disabling the ad unit entirely - and even that carries a revenue cost that accumulates over days. One publisher in the Reddit thread described losing a "large ding in the revenue" after turning off anchor ads, which had previously been their highest-earning mobile format. The publisher noted that vignette ads continued to function correctly in their case, though reports from other publishers were mixed.

Google's apology was brief. The resolution notice closed with: "We're sorry for any inconvenience caused by this issue." The statement did not address revenue compensation, data correction for the inflated CTR window, or any technical explanation of what specifically failed in the safe-area rendering logic.

Timeline

  • July 2021 - Google expands anchor ads to desktop screens for AdSense publishers with anchors enabled
  • February 5, 2022 - Google launches vignette ads on desktop on screens wider than 1000px
  • October 28, 2023 - Google introduces vignette frequency controls, replacing a fixed 10-minute interval with publisher-configurable ranges from 1 minute to 1 hour
  • November 14, 2024 - Google launches collapsible anchor ads for mobile devices with automatic rollout to existing anchor ad publishers over 30 days
  • May 20, 2025 - Google adds positioning controls for anchor and side rail ads within Auto ads settings
  • February 9, 2026 - Google activates additional triggers for vignette ads across publisher accounts, expanding conditions under which full-screen formats appear
  • February 12-13, 2026 - Google AdSense anchor ads begin rendering without a visible close button on iOS devices; first publisher reports appear on Reddit and Google AdSense Help Forums on February 13
  • February 14, 2026 - Publisher Paul Strauss opens thread on Google AdSense Help Community reporting vignette ads missing close buttons; a product expert escalates the issue to Google the same day
  • February 16, 2026 - Reports confirm the bug is still active as of 21:30 NZT
  • February 17, 2026 - Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable posts on X asking publishers to confirm whether the fix has arrived
  • February 18, 2026 - Google deploys a global fix; Spanish publisher confirms at 7:26 AM local time that the problem persists, with additional reports of misaligned display ads causing sideways scrolling
  • February 19, 2026 - Google publishes official resolution notice in the AdSense Help Center, confirming the bug as resolved and acknowledging inflated CTR data on iOS between February 12 and February 18

Summary

Who: Google AdSense publishers running anchor and vignette ads on mobile, and their users on iOS devices.

What: A product-side regression caused the close button on anchor ads to render outside the visible viewport on iOS devices, making ads impossible to dismiss. The malfunction lasted six days, inflated CTR data for the affected period, and forced many publishers to disable their highest-earning mobile ad formats entirely, resulting in significant daily revenue losses.

When: The bug began on February 12-13, 2026, and a global fix was deployed on February 18, 2026. Google's official resolution notice was published February 19, 2026.

Where: The issue affected AdSense anchor and vignette ads on iOS mobile devices globally, with reports from publishers in New Zealand, Spain, and the United States, among others.

Why: A failure in the safe-area rendering calculation for collapsible anchor ads caused the collapse/close button to be positioned outside the visible screen area on iOS. The exact trigger for the regression remains undisclosed by Google, but the timing coincided with the rollout of new vignette ad triggers activated on February 9, 2026. The episode illustrates the risks publishers face when ad format rendering is controlled entirely server-side, with no client-level workaround available when bugs of this nature occur.

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