<b>Throttling the Leaderboard to Lift It</b>

<b>Throttling the Leaderboard to Lift It</b>

Counterintuitive viewability booster: delay the above-fold ad request by ~400ms so the LCP element paints first.

What it does — lets your hero image/headline render before the ad fires, so the ad lands in a stable layout the user actually sees.
Setup effort (3/5) — requestIdleCallback or a setTimeout-gated GPT.display().
RPM lift seen — +5 to +9% on the top unit; viewability on the leaderboard jumped from low-50s to 70%+ because it stopped painting mid-scroll-correction.

Pros — better LCP (SEO win), higher top-unit viewability and CPM.
Cons — a 400ms delay means a sliver of fast-bounce users never see the ad at all; total impressions dip slightly.

Lift: ★★★★☆ — Risk: ★★☆☆☆
Best for: image-heavy pages with poor LCP. Skip on text-only pages that already paint instantly.