There is a bug impacting a number of Google AdSense publishers where the anchor and vignette ads won't close for users. This has been an issue since February 13th and Google is reportedly working on a fix for the issue.
Google is also telling those impacted to keep Anchor and Vignette ads disabled until a fix is deployed.
There are a number of reports about this in the Google AdSense Help Forums. Here are some screenshots from those threads:
Notice how these are missing the ability to close the ads. A "bug" or a "feature"? I am just kidding.
I spotted this via Bruno Ramos Lara on X - but here is what I am told Google support told AdSense publishers:
Official update from Google Support: They confirmed it is a 'product-side regression' affecting multiple publishers starting Feb 13. They recommended keeping Anchor and Vignette ads disabled until a fix is deployed. They are actively working on it.
7:26 am Spain, the problem persists. Some forums are reporting that display ads are also misaligned, causing sideways scrolling, even if they are fixed-size.
— Bruno Ramos Lara (@brunoramoslara) February 18, 2026
Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help Forums and WebmasterWorld.
Update: This was fixed on February 19th, Google wrote:
We recently identified an issue where 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.Impacted publishers might have seen a temporary but significant increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) on iOS devices between February 12 and February 18, 2026.
We've now fixed the issue. As of February 18, 2026, the fix is being deployed globally.
We're sorry for any inconvenience caused by this issue.
