Google AdSense Auto Ads offers a simple and straightforward way to place ads on your website. If you are new to advertising or simply don’t have the time to deal with manual setup and placement of ads, then Auto Ads is a great way to monetize your website. Despite the tool’s simplicity, every now and then it happens that publishers notice no ads appear on their website. If this is the case for you as well, check out five of the most common reasons why your Google AdSense Auto Ads might not be showing.
1. Did you turn off your adblocker?
While it may seem obvious, to check if your website displays ads correctly your browser adblocker needs to be off. Too often we forget that tool is working in the background and keep wondering what’s wrong with the setup. Before digging any deeper just quickly check if your ad blocker is on. If that’s not the case, then keep reading to find other possible scenarios where Auto Ads won’t show.
2. Is your site approved already?
To check if you’ve already added your site go to Sites > Overview. The site you want to monetize should be marked with Ready. If the status is Not reviewed you would have the option to Request a review. In case you get the following message “Something went wrong. Please try again later.” carefully check if you entered the correct URL. If the message pops up even after that, it means that your site is most probably not yet eligible for AdSense.
If your site is marked with Requires review, then most probably you haven’t placed ads on it for a while (min. 5 months) and it has become inactive. The site will need to go through the review process one more time before you can place ads on it again.
Another status you may see about your site is Needs attention. This means there are some issues with your site that need to be fixed before you can start monetizing it.
Last but not least, you may see Getting ready next to your site. This means you need to give the review process a few extra days, up to a couple of weeks in some cases.
3. Did you add the tags to all of your pages?
While with Auto Ads you don’t need to place ad unit tags on your pages, you do still need to place the AdSense code in the head of all the pages you wish to monetize. Simply copy and paste the code from your Ads page between the <head> and </head> tags on each of your website’s pages. While you are on your Ads page, don’t forget to check if Auto ads are enabled for your site.
4. Check your ads.txt file.
If you haven’t yet, we highly recommend that you create an ads.txt file for your website. It gives you control over who is allowed to sell ads on your website and helps buyers identify counterfeit inventory.
If you don’t yet have your own ads.txt, you can create one via your AdSense account. Go to the Sites page in your account, then click the Down arrow to open the Create an ads.txt file for “yourwebsite” message. From there you can download the file and add any other ad networks you work with that will provide you with their information. Next, you need to upload your ads.txt to the root directory of your website and check if you see it correctly in your browser.
If you do already have an ads.txt uploaded, check whether your publisher ID is correctly stated there. Ads.txt files need to be formatted according to the IAB Tech Lab requirements so that they can be verified by Google. Your ads.txt file should contain a row that looks like this:
google.com, pub-0000000000000000, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0
The text in red is where your publisher ID must go. You can find it in the Account information section of your AdSense account.
5. Check for policy violations and/or invalid traffic.
In your AdSense account go to Account > Policy center. Check if there are any issues or violations listed here. In the Sites with issues section you will find information about the site that has policy violations, the number of pages that have issues, and whether you have received a warning, if your ad serving has been limited or disabled, or if only certain pages are affected.
If you find any must-fix policy violations here, you need to take immediate action to bring your site to compliance. Then you’ll need to request a review by Google, which typically takes around a week to complete.
If the Must fix field for the issue says No, then this is what Google calls a policy restriction. You are still able to place ads on your site, but with limited demand. If you decide to fix these issues, you will once again need to request a review.
To prevent getting violations due to invalid traffic, you should avoid clicking your own ads or asking others to do it. Monitor for suspicious activity by regularly checking your Ad Review center to assess if certain ads, advertisers, and/or categories should be blocked. However, always try to keep your blocking to a minimum to prevent big drops in revenue.
If your account gets suspended for a policy violation or invalid traffic, you will not be able to request a review and can only wait for the suspension period to end. Of course, you should work on the issues in the meantime, otherwise, your account can be permanently disabled.
Wrap Up
Ad tech can be a bit overwhelming when you are just starting out. There are so many rules, regulations, and policies that it might be hard to stay on top of it all. Not to mention the environment keeps changing rapidly and keeping up with all of the requirements is truly quite the endeavor all on its own. It becomes easy to miss even obvious details, so don’t despair if it takes you a while to get your ads up and running in the beginning. Google AdSense Auto Ads is an effective tool to start with and will save you a lot of effort and time that can go towards building your unique and valuable content.