Would you like to create and manage the ads.txt file on WordPress? 

The Ads.txt file protects publishers from advertising fraud, and it can potentially increase your advertising revenue. In this article, we'll show you how to easily create and manage an ads.txt file on WordPress. We must not forget that before managing advertising on WordPress, you must create your website. If you haven't already: find out How to easily create a WordPress blog: Guide & Tutorial 

What is Ads.txt file?

The Ads.txt file allows publishers to declare who can sell ads on their website. It is an initiative created by IAB Tech Lab, a non-profit organization focused on improving digital advertising standards.

The initiative is supported by advertising platforms such as Google Adsense, Doubleclick and Ad Exchange and many other major digital advertising platforms. 

Why is the Ads.txt file important?

Ad fraud costs millions of dollars in damage to online advertisers and publishers every year. Malware continually tries to trick ad platforms with domain spoofing, bogus clicks, bogus impressions, and more.

The Ads.txt file improves the transparency of online advertising by allowing publishers to declare who can sell their ad directory. Here is how it works:

If you are an advertiser and someone tells you that they can serve your ad on a particular website, you can look at that website's ads.txt file. It will show you whether the company you are dealing with has permission to sell advertising space on that particular website or not. 

Discover more about advertising by consulting our article: Is Accepting Advertising On Your WordPress Blog Still Profitable?

Because this data is publicly available, it can be crawled, stored, and searched by advertisers, publishers, and resellers.

If you broadcast ads on your website using Google Adsense, DoubleClick or Ad Exchange, it is recommended to add an Ads.txt file.

Many other adware and software platforms support or require the ads.txt file to be declared.

How to create and manage Ads.txt files in WordPress?

The first thing to do is to install and activate the plugin Ads.txt Manager . For more details, see our step-by-step guide to way to install a WordPress plugin .

After activating the plugin, you need to visit the page Settings »Ads.txt to configure the plugin settings.

The plugin provides a simple text box where you can add lines to declare each platform or reseller. For example, you can add the following line to declare Google Adsense.

google.com, pub-0000000000000000, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

Remember to replace pub-0000000000000000 with your own publisher ID.

As you can see, this line has four fields separated by a comma. The first field is the domain of the company authorized to sell or resell your ad listing. After that it has your Publisher ID which matches your Account ID in the ad platform.

See also How to add advertisements in your articles on WordPress

The third field declares the relationship type DIRECT or RESELLER. The last field is optional and represents an identifier of the advertising platform. For all Google advertising programs, you will use the same unique identifier.

Troubleshooting at-risk income Error on Adsense

A missing statement in your ads.txt file may result in the following warning message in your Google Adsense account.

Gains at Risk: One or more of your ads.txt files does not contain your AdSense publisher ID. Fix this now to avoid a severe impact on your income.

This message indicates that your ads.txt file does not have your publisher ID. To correct this message, simply go to the page Settings »Ads.txt to make sure the publisher ID is correct in the plugin settings.

Footnotes : Since the ads.txt file is supposed to be in the root directory of a domain, this plugin currently only works for root level domain like example.com. This does not work for WordPress installed in a under-field, a subdirectory or a website in a multi-site network.

If you are also looking for alternative solutions that will allow you to display advertisements on your WordPress blog ?

We offer you here 3 WordPress plugins that will make the management and display of advertisements perfect on your WordPress website.

1. Ads24

Ads24 is a WordPress Plugin management of advertisements on a blog or a website. It allows you to create a shortcode for each of your ads or advertisements that you can place flexibly in the content of your publications and pages.

So you can place them above or below your content, above or below an excerpt, after a number of paragraphs, after a random number of paragraphs etc ... You can unlimitedly create ads for your WordPress website and you will not only be limited to the content of ads or advertisements, but you can also create floating ads for mobile devices.

Ads24 also offers other amazing features that will help you to run a perfect ad campaign. It has ad management which allows you to control the display period of an ad. VS'is also a WordPress Plugin of GeoTargeting which allows running different ads for different countries, so that you can serve relevant ads to targeted customers.

Download | Demo | Web hosting

2. Popup Banner WordPress Plugin - Float Banners

Popup Banner WordPress Plugin - Float Banners is perfect for quick and easy advertising. You won't always need a robust ad manager, so stick with something simple like: Popup Banner.

Setting the minimum screen width for display is one of its most powerful options. If you don't want to display banners for those on a mobile device, you can easily prevent it from doing so with this feature. Its other features are: 5 banner positions, tracking of views, clicks and CTR, customization of banner behavior, and more

Download | Demo | Web hosting

3. Adning Advertising

WP PRO Advertising System is a WordPress Plugin advertising management, which offers 18 strategic locations to help you display advertisements on your website. It also has a detailed statistics section from where you can see the performance of each ad.

This feature is crucial because it will help you improve your campaign and maximize your profits. Plus, since it is compatible with plugins such as Visual Composer -WPBakery- and Revolution slider, you can display your ads in the form of sliders or place them anywhere on your website.

This WordPress Adsense plugin also comes with a unique feature called background ads. It allows you to display ads as the background of your content.

Download | Demo | Web hosting

Other recommended resources

To go further, we invite you to read the following articles:

• 6 WordPress plugins to embed advertising on your blog
• 10 WordPress Themes to Create an Ads Web Portal
• 10 WordPress plugins to create an ads website

Conclusion

That's all for this tutorial. We hope it will help you protect yourself against ad fraud while dramatically improving your earnings. If you have any comments or suggestions, tell us about them in our comments section.

You will also be able to consult this selection of premium WordPress plugin which will allow you to manage transparently advertisements on your website. But in the meantime share this tutorial on your different social networks.