As one of the leading digital marketing agencies in India, SpiderWorks Technologies is managing the websites and AdSense accounts for several clients. Some of our clients recently started seeing this message in their AdSense dashboard:
“Earnings at risk – One or more of your ads.txt files doesn’t contain your AdSense publisher ID. Fix this now to avoid severe impact to your revenue.”
As the trusted digital marketing partner, SpiderWorks took the initiative to sort out the issue for them. For the benefit of all publishers, we are sharing the solution to the above problem.
The primary cause of the above error message on the AdSense dashboard is, the website has implemented the “Ads.txt” file but they failed to include their AdSense pub-id in the Ads.txt file.
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the international authority which defines the standards for online advertising, has defined a specification called Ads.txt. According to this specification, all websites that use advertisements should use a file called “Ads.txt” in the root of the website’s domain.
According to the specification, the Ads.txt file should define all the advertisement programs used by the websites. Each advertising program the website is participating should be defined in the Ads.txt file in a single line in the following format:
<FIELD #1>, <FIELD #2>, <FIELD #3>, <FIELD #4>
Field #1 – Domain name of the advertising system
Field #2 – Publisher’s Account ID (Required)
Field #3 – Type of Account/Relationship
Field #4 – Certification Authority ID (Optional)
Google is supporting the Ads.txt specification for their AdSense program. According to Google. Ads.txt file is not mandatory for the AdSense publishers. However, if you are using an Ads.txt file on your website, then Google would expect you to define your AdSense pub-id in the file in the specific format and if not used correctly, Google won’t serve ads on your site.
When some of our digital marketing clients reported the error “Earnings at risk – One or more of your ads.txt files doesn’t contain your AdSense publisher ID. Fix this now to avoid severe impact to your revenue.”, we analysed their websites and found that they are using the Ads.txt file on their site but their AdSense pub-id was not defined there.
When this error is reported on the AdSense dashboard, there will be an ACTION button provided next to the message. Click on the button to see more details. Google will show you the website on which an Ads.txt file is defined without your pub-id.
Scroll down and look below the name of the websites listed. You will see a message similar to this:
This will prevent a potentially severe impact on your earnings. Copy and paste the following code snippet into each ads.txt file:
google.com, pub-7317001610240998, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0
If you’ve already done this, please allow our systems up to 24 hours to reflect the changes.
You can solve the error by doing one of the following options:
1. Delete the Ads.txt file from your website’s root domain (or, subdomain, if applicable)
2. Copy and paste the specific line of text from the above message to your Ads.txt file
NOTE: The AdSense pub-id shown in the above text/image is a dummy pub-id. You must use the actual text from your own AdSense dashboard or use the correct pub-id of your account
We found the same error appeared for multiple clients for whom we are offering digital marketing services. This happened because they added the Ads.txt file to the website based on the advice from their IT management people but failed to specify their pub id.
SpiderWorks Technologies, established in 2005, is one of the leading digital marketing companies in India, managing the websites, advertising programs and digital marketing for several small, medium and large companies. With the trust and experience built over a decade of services in the digital marketing industry, we like to be the trust digital partner for you. If you are looking for any SEO, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Web designing or related services, feel free to contact us.