Google will stop using the browser back button as a trigger for vignette ads across its AdSense platform starting June 15, 2026, the company announced Wednesday, citing alignment with a newly adopted Search policy against back-button hijacking.
The change will apply automatically to all AdSense publishers who have enabled the "Allow additional triggers for vignette ads" setting. No action is required from publishers; Google stated it will handle the removal on its end.
Vignette ads are full-screen interstitial advertisements that appear between page loads. Until now, one available trigger for these ads was a user pressing the browser back button to navigate away from a page. That trigger will be retired across all supported browsers, including Chrome, Edge, and Opera.
The move follows Google Search's introduction of a policy in April 2026 targeting "back-button hijacking," a practice in which websites or scripts interfere with a user's ability to navigate backward to a previously visited page. Google said the change is intended to keep its publisher ecosystem compliant with the new user experience and search quality standards.
The update affects the suite of vignette ad triggers available to AdSense publishers but does not eliminate vignette ads altogether. Other triggers for the format remain in place.
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