Are lightbox-style popups allowed when using Google Adwords?

Question

Hi,

Google's AdWords policies state:

Pop-Ups

Don't use pop-up windows on your site. We do not approve destination URLs that generate pop-ups when users enter or leave your landing page.

We consider a pop-up to be any window, regardless of content, that opens in addition to the original window.

This includes pop-unders, timed or intermittent pop-ups, mock system warnings, and pages that automatically initiate a download.

Does anyone know if that includes Lightbox effect popups that occur within the same browser window, and just lay on top of the content? The terms "popup" and "window" are ambiguous in the above policy, and it's not clear whether by "window" they mean simply the browser window, or whether the Lightbox content would count as a new window.

Anyone know for sure?

Thanks.

Answer 1

As long as the lightbox opens only on user's direct action of, supposedly, clicking a thumbnail to open a bigger version, I don't think it's treated as a popup per se.

Opening a pop-up/pop-under on page open or leave, or through clickjacking is evil and those are the cases condemned by the policy.

Here's a blog post from Adwords team about why popups are disapproved. You can see that lightbox does not fit the profile.

Answer 2

Agree with the above, have used lightbox on landing pages without any issues.