Protecting your Revenue with Ads.txt
What is Ads.txt?
Ads.txt is a security protocol developed by the industry to help protect ad providers and publishers like you from bad ads and from scammers who want to scrape your ads. It’s simply a text file with a list of all your authorized ad providers with IDs that lets them know that they’re serving an ad to your site, and your site alone. And for you – you can rest assured knowing that we've approved each and every provider in our listing.
These lines might look random, but they give our network and our providers specific information about SHE Media's relationship with the providers.
How does Ads.txt protect your revenue?
From 2019 onward, early all major ad providers required an Ads.txt file– meaning they’ll only serve ads to sites with an Ads.txt file that contains their individual lines. When an ad loads - our code sends out a signal to our ad providers so that they can bid on your site. The first check they make is to see if you have an ads.txt file and the lines they're expecting to see.
If you are missing an ads.txt file or your file is incomplete, it can cause some providers to not place ads on your site. While some providers don't require it, they typically have lower quality, lower paying inventory - so unless your file is active and up to date, you are not maximizing your revenue potential.
We don’t want you to miss out on any revenue opportunities, so we strongly recommend you add an Ads.txt file to your site as soon as possible. And if you already have an Ads.txt file, please make sure you update it regularly. We constantly change providers, so if you are on a platform where you need to manually update your ads.txt lines - if you aren't updating it at least once a month, you could be hurting your revenue.
For sites on WordPress:
If you’re on WordPress, we highly recommend you adopt our SHE Media Infuse plugin to both manage your Ads.txt file as well as your ad units. It can inject your header code into your header file (and update it automatically) – eliminating any worry that a theme update will remove your ads, or that you might be running outdated code. Best of all, it will make selecting and changing your ad units as simple as adding our ad widget to your header or sidebar and choosing the sizes you want.
And the Infuse plugin will give you a hands-off way to stay up to date with our Ads.txt lines. As we add new providers or change provider lines, your file will update automatically. Just a check of a box, and you won’t miss out on any revenue opportunities.
Installation is easy – here’s our guide. (If you don't want Infuse to manage your SHE Media code, it is entirely possible to only use it to maintain your ads.txt file!)
For sites on Blogger or Squarespace:
If you’re on Blogger or Squarespace – here are the steps to get set up with an ads.txt file.
Questions? We’re happy to help! Email support@shemedia.com