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Ads.txt guide

Next: Troubleshooting ads.txt issues

Authorized Digital Sellers, or ads.txt is an IAB Tech Lab initiative that helps ensure that your digital ad inventory is only sold through sellers (such as AdSense) who you've identified as authorized. Creating your own ads.txt file gives you more control over who's allowed to sell ads on your site and helps prevent counterfeit inventory from being presented to advertisers.

We strongly recommend that you use an ads.txt file. It can help buyers identify counterfeit inventory and help you receive more advertiser spend that might have otherwise gone toward that counterfeit inventory.

If you use ads.txt, you must include your publisher ID in your ads.txt file. If there's an ads.txt file present on your site and your publisher ID is missing from it, Google will reject all ad requests from your site.

Fix ads.txt issues in AdSense

If there's an issue with ads.txt on your site, you'll see an alert in your AdSense account. To prevent severe impact to your revenue, follow the relevant steps below to fix the issue.

Note: It may take a few days for your changes to be reflected in AdSense. If your site doesn't make many ad requests it may take up to a month.

Create an ads.txt file for your site

AdSense provides a personalized ads.txt file that you can download from your account. The personalized ads.txt file includes your publisher ID. Your publisher ID must be included and formatted correctly for your ads.txt file to be verified.

1. Sign in to your AdSense account.
2. If there's an alert on your homepage, click Fix now. Otherwise, click Sites.
3. Click the Down arrow to open the "Create an ads.txt file for..." message.
4. Click Download. Your ads.txt file is automatically downloaded.
5. (Optional) If you’re using another ad network, remember to add that network to your ads.txt file. Contact your ad network for their ads.txt information.
6. Upload your ads.txt file to the root directory of your site. The root directory of a site is the directory or folder following the top level domain (example.com/ads.txt).
7. To verify that you published your file correctly, check that you successfully see your file's content when you access the ads.txt URL (https://example.com/ads.txt) in your web browser. If you can see the file in your web browser, it's likely that AdSense will successfully find it.

Add your publisher ID to an ads.txt file

If your publisher ID is missing from your ads.txt file, you can copy it from your account and add it to your ads.txt file.

1. Sign in to your AdSense account.
2. If there's an alert on your homepage, click Fix now. Otherwise, click Sites.
3. Click the Down arrow to open the "Add your publisher ID to these ads.txt files" message.
4. Click Copy.
5. Paste the line into each of your ads.txt files.
6. Your ads.txt file should now look like this, where pub-0000000000000000 is your own publisher ID:
7. google.com, pub-0000000000000000, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

Note: Your ads.txt file must be formatted as specified by the IAB Tech Lab in order to be verified. If you need additional help, review the ads.txt specification.

Ads.txt troubleshooter

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