What is ads.txt? How to fix an ads.txt alert in Google AdSense Account

When I logged into my Google AdSense account yesterday, I saw a red warning saying that one or more of my websites does not have an ads.txt file. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to solve this problem.

What is ads.txt?

“Authorized Digital Sellers”, or “ads.txt”, is an IAB initiative to improve transparency in programmatic advertising. Publishers can create their own ads.txt files to identify who is authorized to sell their inventory. The files are publicly available and crawlable by buyers, third-party vendors, and exchanges. You can learn more about an ads.txt file at the following links:

Now we know what caused this red warning.

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

If you have got earnings at risk error on your Google AdSense account that means ads.txt file is important for you to run ads. An ads.txt or authorized digital sellers is initiative of IAB (IAB Technology Laboratory) that helps to ensure that the ad placement you are using on your site is sold through the authorized sellers (like- AdSense). In simple words, by placing an ads.txt file to your website CPanel you are giving permission to the sellers to place ads in your website or blog. The IAB has taken this initiative to prevent the Ad fraud activities.

What causes this issue?

If you are using Google AdSense as your publisher (Advertising source) and getting error message “Earnings at risk – One or more of your sites does not have an ads.txt file. Fix this now to avoid severe impact to your revenue”, you must need to create ads.txt file and place it your CPanel/Hosting Panel to avoid Ad placements.

How to solve it?

This article helps you to know how would you create ads.txt file, place it to CPanel/Hosting Panel, and keep using AdSense services without any interruption. To solve this problem, we need to add an ads.txt file to the root level of our domain (for example, https://example.com/ads.txt ). Now, step by step guide.

Step 1. Go to your hosting panel (CPanel/Hosting Panel Admin) and locate “File Manager”

Step 2. Locate “root directory” such as Public_html (in my case) and Click + to expand.

Then, click “Create File/File” from the toolbar.
This action will bring a screen for you. Type file name “ads.txt”
Click Create New File/Save.

Step 3. We have successfully created ads.txt file in your CPanel/Hosting Panel. Find and select “Edit” to make settings.

Step 4. Above action will open up a page for you where you can add or edit text. Now we need to add the following line:

google.com, pub- 9036158272XXXXXX, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

Finally, click on Save Changes or Save Settings.

Note: Do not forget to change the publisher ID from 9036158272XXXXXX to your’s.

To check your AdSense publisher ID:

Login to your Google AdSense account
From the left panel, navigate and click on “Account” section.
Then, click on “Account information”
Now, you will see your Publisher ID: pub-9036158272XXXXXX

This is all what need to do in order to fix “Earning at risk” error from Google AdSense. After a few hours, when your site is crawled by search engines and found ads.txt file is present.

You can test, either ads.txt file is placed correctly by visiting “yourdomainname/ads.txt” and it will show you the placed ads.txt file.

Important:
I have recently got “earnings at risk” error on my Google AdSense account and by doing above steps it has resolved successfully. Though, it took around 18-20 hours after implementing above settings.

If you are using another Ad network or publisher (such as Media.net, Infolinks, AdBlade, etc.) to display ads to your website or blog, you should contact to your Ad publisher in order to get the right code. Above tutorial is helpful to you if you are using Google AdSense as your publisher.

Check more details on Google Support Page