Removing ads pays off in rankings only if those ads were genuinely degrading your Core Web Vitals or page experience past the threshold, or were intrusive in a way that harms users, not as a general rule that fewer ads simply ranks better. And even then it is a tradeoff, because the ads carry revenue you are giving up. The honest verdict is that ad removal helps only where the ads were actually hurting experience, so the decision is conditional and has to be weighed against income. Page experience signals shift over time, so treat the specifics as worth confirming.
The reason there is no blanket benefit is that Google does not reward a lower ad count for its own sake. What it weighs is the resulting experience: how fast the page loads, how stable the layout is, and whether ads disrupt the content. Ads that load heavy scripts, push the page around as they appear, or block the content can drag your Core Web Vitals and experience metrics below acceptable thresholds, and those are real ranking and usability problems. Cleaning those up is what produces a gain, because you are fixing the underlying experience issue, not because you removed advertising.
If your ads are well-implemented, lightweight, and not pushing your metrics past the line, removing them is unlikely to lift rankings and will simply cost you revenue. The page experience signal is one input among many, and a page that already loads well and serves intent does not climb just because it now shows fewer ads. So the question is not “do I have ads,” it is “are these specific ads measurably harming my experience scores or annoying users,” and only a yes makes removal a ranking play rather than a revenue cut for no return.
The practical move is to remove or fix ads only where they genuinely harm experience, and to weigh that against the revenue at stake. Measure your Core Web Vitals and check whether ads are causing the failures, then target the offending placements, often by optimizing or repositioning them rather than stripping ads wholesale. Fix what is hurting the page, keep what is not, and confirm the gain against the income you would lose before pulling anything.