9 Possible reasons for your ad requests being blocked

This post was most recently updated on August 13th, 2020

You’ve implemented your ad code within your page source code, and now ads are showing. If you see a blank slot once in a while, then it might be an unfilled impression, but if that is happening on every instance, then chances are, ad requests are being blocked/rejected. Here are nine possible reasons that your ad requests could be blocked.

#1 – The site is blacklisted

A site gets blacklisted if it violates Google policies (e.g., inappropriate content, copyrighted content, spam activity). There won’t be any ad requests from the domain or referrer domain if it’s blacklisted due to reasons other than spam activity (for example, reasons such as inappropriate content, layout pushing the content, mislabeling of ads, etc.).

#2 – Ad tags syntax (or) parameters are implemented incorrectly in the page source code

The publisher may have implemented an incorrect tag (required parameter missing in the code). Also, at times some publishers implement conditional custom code ( Google Ad Manager tags). In such cases, ads will serve only if the custom criteria are met.

#3 – Ad code is nested with multiple iFrames

If the ad code is nested within multiple iframes, Google can’t determine the correct site information for an ad request. Hence, ad requests are rejected when your ad unit is within an iframe and has no content.

#4 – Crawler errors

Crawler Errors include any issues with the Google Crawler assessing and crawling the page for an ad request. No ads will be returned if there are any crawler errors.

For a web page with content behind a login page or membership area, the crawler requires login credentials to crawl the site.

Make sure to allow Google Media partners crawler in the robots.txt.

#5 – Unsupported language

Google Ad Exchange will only return ads for languages that are supported by Google, and it may serve blank ads on any sites with unsupported languages

#6 – Ad Request detected as Spam

An ad request may be detected as spam for various reasons including:

• Site has been manually flagged as spam
• Site is not whitelisted/allowed to serve on a pub ID
• Unauthorized sites will cause 100% spam.

#7 – Adblocker or JS blockers

If the user has installed ad blockers in their browsers, ad requests will not be fired.

#8 – The account doesn’t have a billing address

If the billing details aren’t updated in the AdSense/Google Ad Exchange accounts, the ads wouldn’t serve on the publisher’s account. Once billing information is updated, the ads will start serving on their site(s).

#9 – Google Ad Manager account reached the free impressions limit

In this case, unless a payment method is added, requests would get blocked. Eventually, the account might get suspended, if no action is provisioned.

Conclusion

There you have it, nine possible reasons for your ad requests being blocked. Are you still struggling to fix the issue? Don’t worry about it! Our team of ad ops experts can help fix the issue(s) and make sure you don’t have any more ad requests being blocked. Are you ready to increase your ad revenue? Sign up to MonetizeMore today!

Kean Graham

Kean Graham is the CEO and founder of MonetizeMore & a pioneer in the Adtech Industry. He is the resident expert in Ad Optimization, covering areas like Adsense Optimization,GAM Management, and third-party ad network partnerships. Kean believes in the supremacy of direct publisher deals and holistic optimization as keys to effective and consistent ad revenue increases.