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Growing your
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Get started building your digital business with Ad Manager today.
Setup Guide

Table of contents
This guide is meant to help you successfully set up inventory in your Ad Manager account.
Plan on spending several hours thinking through your structure and creating inventory in Ad Manager.

4 Welcome to Google Ad Manager

5 Key terms to know

8 Set up your account

11 Step 1: Create your inventory

14 Step 2: Generate ad tags

16 Step 3: Place code on your site

18 Step 4: Create orders, line items, and add creatives

37 Step 5: Approve your order

39 Ads.txt, Unified Pricing Rules, GDPR

43 Resources

43 Glossary
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Welcome
We’re glad you’re here.
Setup Guide

Grow your digital business

Spend more time growing your business and connecting with your users, let Ad Manager handle the rest.
Ad Manager is a comprehensive platform to grow ad revenue and protect your brand wherever people are
watching, playing, or engaging. With a simple, analytics-focused interface, rich features, and optimization
insights, Ad Manager powers you to maximize the value of every ad impression. This guide will show you
how to set up your account and begin growing your ad revenue today.

Determining if Ad Manager is right for you

Ad Manager is a good fit for your business if you need:

● A central place to traffic your direct deals from advertisers, ad networks, and house ads to
websites, mobile apps, videos, or games.

● More complex queries and reports to gain advanced insights.

● Access to features such as programmatic direct deals, third party demand, and more granular
blocks and protections.

Doesn’t sound like you? Check out Google AdSense, a complete solution for small businesses.
Setup Guide

Key terms to know

Before we dive into content, let’s make sure you understand the basic terminology of Ad Manager.
Understanding these terms will make your set up process easier and more direct. You can also reference
the glossary at the end of the guide.

Ad unit If you were to take your site or app, print it out, and cut out all the spaces on which
you’d like to show ads, these would be your ad units. They can also be referred to as ad slots.

Inventory Inventory in Google Ad Manager is the space on your website or app where you display
ads. Ad units are the components for your inventory and represent the main sections of your
content.

Line item Line items act as the map for your campaigns. They specify how long the campaign
will run for, what demand sources it should use, which ad units it should target, and any other
criteria that you include.

Order Orders represent all the components of a campaign. It holds the line items, ad units, and
creatives that make up a given campaign.

Google Publisher Tags (GPT) These tags are the physical code that you add to your page.
You place these tags on parts of your site or app that you want to show ads.

Guaranteed line items Line items are divided into two groups: guaranteed and
non-guaranteed. Guaranteed line items are used for inventory that you’ve directly sold to an
advertiser, buyer, or brand.

Non-guaranteed line items Non-guaranteed line items are used for inventory that you haven’t
sold directly to an advertiser, buyer, or brand, and that you’d like to allow to compete in the
open auction against other ad networks.

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Setup Guide

How does Google Ad Manager work?

Google Ad Manager is an ad server that allows you to connect ad networks and traffic ads across
websites, the mobile web, apps, and games to earn ad revenue for your business.

Ad Manager puts you in control and gives you the flexibility to determine how ads are shown on your pages.
You can think of Ad Manager like a GPS system. You put in your constraints (your destination, transportation
mode, tolls/no tolls) and it gives you the best possible route.

Ad Manager does this with ads. You tell Ad Manager where ads can show, how much you’d like to earn, how
networks compete with each other, and Ad Manager will display the best ad on your page. Simple as that.

Learn the basics of ad serving on Skillshop, our one-stop-shop for learning about Ad Manager.

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Setup Guide

Serving ads through Ad Manager: What, why, how

To serve ads through your site or app, you need to set up several key items in your Ad Manager account.

● Create your inventory: Create the actual ad units that go on your page. We refer to these ad units as
your inventory. After you create an ad unit you’ll generate Google Publisher Tags. These tags are pieces
of code that you put on your site or app where you want ads to show.

● Traffic ads: To display ads on your inventory, set up orders, line items, and add creatives.

○ Orders represent the campaign set up between you and the advertiser.

○ Line items are within each order. These are the map or traffic guidelines that you give Ad
Manager. You can have multiple line items per order.

○ Creatives are within each line item. These are the visual aspect of the ad. You can have
multiple creatives per line item.

● How do orders, line items, ad units, and creatives work together?

Ad units are the spaces on your page where you place ads. Together, they make up
your inventory. Line items can target multiple ad units on a given page or app.

Orders represent the larger campaign for a given advertiser. To fully launch your ads,
you’ll need to approve the order.

Line items sit within orders. These act as the map for the order and contain all of the
information about how ads will show, how long they’ll run for, and who they should
target.

Creatives are within line items and are the actual image or video that you’ll see on
your site or app.

For some line items, like AdSense, Ad Exchange, and Third Party line items, you’ll add code as the creative. For Standard or
Sponsorship line items where you partner with a specific buyer, you’ll use the image or graphic provided by the buyer.

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Setup your account

The next few sections teach you how to create

inventory in your account. You should budget several
hours to work through these sections. Feel free to
break it up or power through.
Setup Guide

5 steps for successful inventory setup

Get started with Google Ad Manager by following these 5 steps. Before you begin, we
recommend reading this brief introduction of advertising with Google Ad Manager to help
provide context and insight to your account setup.

1 Create your inventory

2 Generate ad tags

3 Place code on your site or app

4 Create orders, line items, and add creatives

5 Approve your order

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Setup Guide

Pre-work: Set your account up for success

Setting up your Google Ad Manager account is important to drive revenue growth, create positive user
experiences, and allow you to spend more time creating content. Follow these best practices as you setup
your account to improve your revenue.

● Value CPMs and Frequency Caps

○ Use this value CPM formula to calculate the value CPMs of your buyers.

○ Update your value CPMs once per week to make sure you’re maximizing your auction prices.

○ Set frequency caps to maximize the value of each impression. We suggest 3 per user per day based on
a fill rate of 50%. The lower your fill rate the lower you should set your frequency caps. Use the equation
on page 7 to calculate your fill rate.

● Trafficking

○ Set all third-party networks for non-guaranteed inventory to Price Priority to get the best price per CPM.
Traffic your Ad Exchange and AdSense line items to Type = Ad Exchange or AdSense.

○ Create an Ad Exchange or AdSense line item targeting all of your inventory or at ‘Run of Network’ as a
catch-all for your inventory. Set this line item at Type = Ad Exchange/AdSense.

● Troubleshooting

○ Identify and troubleshoot your ad units with the highest number of unfilled impressions through the
query tool.

● Simplify your setup

○ Remove non-serving line items.

○ Create a separate creative for each ad size for a clear setup.

○ Eliminate passbacks. Passbacks reduce CPMs due to loss of targeting criteria and add latency, which
lowers your viewability.

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Step 1: Create
your inventory
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Setup Guide

Step 1: Create your inventory

Imagine printing a hard copy of your home page and cutting out all of the ad space. These empty spaces
represent the inventory you sell to advertisers.

● Plan your inventory structure. Create a hierarchy of pages flowing from your homepage to different
subpages. We recommend that your ad units have a similar hierarchy (top-level for homepage, level
below for sub pages).

Let’s look through a sample structure. Let’s say you’re a news publisher with a sports section. You could
create a parent ad unit for sports content with lower-level child ad units for baseball, soccer, and tennis
content. When you target these ad units, you can either select the parent ad unit, which will include all of its
child ad units or any individual child ad unit.

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Setup Guide

● Create an ad unit. Click into your inventory tab and select ad unit and then create new ad unit.
Decide on an “Ad Taxonomy” — or naming system — which will help you determine which ad units
are associated with specific locations on your website. Use this as your guide to help you
understand performance reports and gain insights into your ad units.

○ Example: Homepage_Leaderboard_Top_728x90

● Enter a name for each ad unit that describes the page, location, and size of the ad unit.

○ Example: Homepage_Leaderboard_Top_728x90

● If needed, override your Target window to be _blank so that when a user clicks on the ad unit, the
ad directs to a new tab.

Note: Placements and key-values help you group ad units and target them collectively based on specific
criteria. If you’re interested in implementing placements or key-values, click on the links to learn more.

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Step 2: Generate
ad tags
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Setup Guide

Step 2: Generate ad tags

The next step in the account setup process is installing ad tags. You might need your developer for this
step. After the Google Publisher Tags are installed and you’ve approved your order, ads should begin serving
on your website within 24 hours.

● Generate your ad tags. Click into Inventory

then Ad units and find the ad unit for which
you want to create an ad tag. Click ‘Generate
tags’ on the top right corner.

● Next, you’ll be asked for some specifics

about your tag. You can read more on these
specifics in the Help Center. For Google
Publisher Tags we recommend leaving
“Enable single request” checked, checking
“Collapse empty divs”, and unchecking
“Create passback tag”. Add in the relevant ad
sizes.

● Add any necessary custom targeting for your

ad unit.

● Add any additional tag parameters (there

may be none available).

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Step 3: Place
code on your site
Setup Guide

Step 3: Copy and paste ad tag code onto your site

● Make sure you include both the <head> and <body> tags for each ad unit, and only call ad units in the
<head> that you will serve in the <body> for the web.

● Place this code on the parts of your page where you want the respective ad units to serve.

The <head> code will go below your <head> tag and before your </head> tag. The body code should be
placed throughout your <body> on parts of the page where you want to serve ads.

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Step 4: Create
orders, line items,
and add
creatives
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Setup Guide

Step 4: Create an order, line items, and add creatives

We’ll break this step down into several sub-steps since the type of order will depend on the type of line
item that you’re interested in creating.

Pre-work

● Add companies to your account. A company is typically an advertiser or agency that buys ad
space and supplies creatives. Companies can be advertisers, agencies, ad networks, house
advertisers, house agencies, partners, or a viewability provider. If you have third party ad
networks that you’d like to traffic line items through, add them here.

Background

Within step 4 there are several sub-steps:

● A. Create an order

● B. Add line items to that order

● C. Add creatives to those line items

Steps A, B, and C vary based on the type of advertiser that you’re creating the order for. To ensure
you’re effectively creating your desired order and line item type, we created four sections that outline
the steps required for each advertiser type.

● Direct Deals: If a buyer has contacted you directly to advertise on your site or app, then follow
the direct deal instructions.

● Ad Exchange: If you have an Ad Exchange account, jump to the Ad Exchange section to learn
how to create orders, line items, and add creatives for Ad Exchange.

● AdSense: If you’d like to traffic AdSense through Ad Manager, read the instructions for how to
link your account and begin trafficking AdSense.

● Third party ad networks: For non-Google Authorized Buyers and other third party ad networks,
follow the directions in this section.

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Direct Deals
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Setup Guide - Direct Deals

Direct Deals: Orders, line items, creatives

If an advertiser has contacted you with interest to advertise on your site through a direct deal, follow these
steps to create your order / line items.

Part A: Create an order

● Create an order. To run a new ad campaign in Ad Manager, create a new order. Click Delivery > Orders
> New order.

○ Name your order something that will help you to remember what this order is for.

■ Example: If you receive a request from an advertiser named Your Adventure for a
summer campaign, you could name your order YourAdventure_Summer_Campaign

○ Enter the name of the advertiser or network

■ Example: Your Adventure

■ Note: If you’ve used this advertiser before they’ll pop up in the drop down. If not, you’ll
be prompted to add them as a company

○ Set the trafficker, or the person in your organization responsible for this line item.

○ Fill in any additional advanced settings that are relevant to your order.

○ Click ‘Add line item’ to add a line item to your order or click ‘Save’ to save this order and add a
line item at a later date.

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Setup Guide - Direct Deals

Part B: Create a line item

● Create your line item: now that you have an order, you’ll need to add your line items. You’ll be
prompted to create a display or video line item. Select display if you want to show standard ads or
video if you want to show video ads.

○ Ad type: for a display line item, the Ad type will be set to standard. For Video line items the
display type is set to Video.

○ Name: line item names must be unique within the order so name it something unique.

■ Example: YourAdventure_Summer_Homepage_728x90 (728x90 is the size of a

leaderboard)

○ Line item type: since this is a direct deal, you’ll either want to set the line item to Sponsorship
or Standard.

■ Use Sponsorship when you want to give an advertiser a certain percentage of your
impressions (ex. 70% of your monthly impressions).

■ Use Standard when your advertiser wants to hit a specific impression goal with
defined start and end dates.

■ The priority / priority value will adjust based on your selection. If you have multiple
standard campaigns running at the same time, you can set one to prioritize over the
other through the high, normal, and low options, which will prioritize the line items
accordingly.

○ Expected creatives: here you’ll

add in the relevant ad sizes for the
creatives that you plan to show.
These should align with the sizes
of the creatives provided by the
advertiser.

○ Add any additional settings

necessary.

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Setup Guide - Direct Deals

● Delivery settings: you’ll need to set up the core line item settings such as the line item type, dates for
running, cost and discounting. These settings help to determine how the campaign will run, its length
in time, and cost.

○ Type: since this is a direct deal, you’ll either want to set the line item to sponsorship or
standard.

■ Use Sponsorship when you want to give an advertiser a certain percentage of your
impressions (ex. 70% of your monthly impressions).

■ Use Standard when your advertiser wants to hit a specific impression goal with
defined start and end dates.

○ Start time / end time: use the start and end dates requested by your advertiser.

○ Goal / quantity: If you use a sponsorship line item you’ll see a percentage goal here. This is
the percentage of impressions that the advertiser wants to show. If you use a standard line
item you’ll see a quantity here, this is the exact number of impressions that the advertiser
wants to show.

○ Rate: the tool tip helps to explain the different options for rates. For Sponsorship / Standard
line items you’ll likely want either CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) or CPA (Cost per
action).

○ Discount: if you want to offer your advertiser a discount you can include that here. (Note: the
discounted rate will not be used for auction competition, only the rate set in the rate field will
be used).

Delivery settings for Standard priority Delivery settings for Sponsorship priority

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Setup Guide - Direct Deals

● Adjust delivery: in this next section you’ll set the delivery settings such as deliver impressions,
display creatives, rotate creatives, deliver on certain days and times, and frequency limits. These
determine how your creatives and impressions will serve.

○ Deliver impressions: this field references how quickly you want impressions to serve: evenly,
frontloaded, or as fast as possible. Note: you will only see this option for Standard line items.

■ Evenly: Google encourages publishers to use the Evenly option to deliver impressions
equally over the course of the campaign.

■ Frontloaded: attempts to deliver impressions ahead of schedule by as much as 25%

during the first half of the campaign.

■ As fast as possible: delivers up to the impression goal as quickly as possible.

○ Display creatives: use this to determine how many assigned creatives can be displayed on a
given page. The tool tip explains the different options and how creatives will appear.

■ Example: if you select ‘Only one’ and you have the line item targeting two ad units on
your homepage then only one creative from this line item will show in one of the ad
units, while the other ad unit might show a different line item’s creative.

○ Rotate creatives: if a line item has multiple creatives associated with it, you can adjust how
often the creatives display. The question mark tool tip helps to explain each of the different
options.

○ Day and time: you can set the times and days when you want the line item to serve.

○ Frequency: you can set a per user frequency cap if you don’t want a single user to see the line
item multiple times per day.

■ Example: if you set a per user frequency cap of 3 per day, a given user will see a
creative from this line item a maximum of 3 times in a given day.

● Targeting: add any necessary targeting for your line item that your advertiser requested.

○ In this section, you might want to create key-values or placements to create stronger targeting
abilities.

● Click ‘Save’.

Note: you might see a ‘Check inventory’ button at the bottom of this page. You can use this to confirm
whether ad impressions or clicks are available before you book inventory in a line item. Learn more.

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Setup Guide - Direct Deals

Part C: Add creatives

For each line item you create, you’ll need to upload creatives.

● Click into your line items tab and select your newly created Sponsorship or Standard line item.

● Select the ‘Creatives’ tab.

● Click ‘Add Creative’

○ If you have creatives already uploaded into your Ad Manager account you can select ‘Existing
creative’. If you’d like to upload creatives now, select ‘New creative’.

○ Select the ad unit size for which

you want to select/upload a
creative.

○ Select the type of creative

you’d like to upload. If you have
specific creatives from your
advertiser select the relevant
creative type. Otherwise, upload
an image creative in the
‘Image’ category.

○ Name your creative and upload

the image file, select the density
and destination URL. Adjust
advanced settings as needed.

○ Click ‘Save’ to upload your creative. When taken to the creative screen click ‘Save’ again to
save your creative.

○ Continue to Step 5 to approve your order.

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Ad Exchange
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Setup Guide - Ad Exchange

Ad Exchange: Orders, line items, creatives

If you have an Ad Exchange account and want to create an Ad Exchange line item you can follow these
steps. Before you create this line item, think about what inventory sizes you want this line item to target.

Part A: Create an order

● Create an order. To run a new ad campaign in Ad Manager you’ll need to create a new order. Click
Delivery > Orders > New order.

○ Name your order something that will help you to remember what this order is for.

■ Example: Ad_Exchange_Run_of_Network_web

○ List Ad Exchange as the advertiser.

○ Set the trafficker (the person in your organization responsible for this line item).

○ Fill in any additional advanced settings that are relevant to your order.

○ Click ‘Add line item’.

Part B: Create a line item

● Create your line item: now that you have an order, you’ll need to add your line items. When you click
‘Add line item’ you’ll be prompted to select a display or video line item. Select Display if you want to
show standard ads or Video if you want to show video ads.

○ Ad type: for a display line item, the Ad type will be set to standard. For Video line items the
display type is set to Video.

○ Name: line item names must be unique within the order so name it something unique.

■ Example: Ad_Exchange_Homepage_728x90

○ Line item type: set this to Ad Exchange.

○ Expected creatives: list the expected sizes of creatives that you’d like this line item to serve.

○ Delivery settings: if you don’t have a specific date/time in mind just set these to ‘Immediately’
and ‘Unlimited’.

○ Adjust delivery: if you have days and times that you’d like this Ad Exchange line item to serve
or wish to set a per user frequency cap you can do so here.

○ Targeting: in this section you can select all of the relevant ad units that you’d like to target.

● Click ‘Save’.

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Setup Guide - Ad Exchange

Part C: Add creatives

● Click into your Ad Exchange line item and select the creatives tab.
● Click ‘Automatically generate creative’.

Once you select ‘Automatically generate creative’ you should see a creative pop up in your line item.

Save your line item and your Ad Exchange line item is now complete!

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AdSense
Setup Guide - AdSense

AdSense: Orders, line items, creatives

First, to create an AdSense line item you’ll need to link your AdSense account to your Ad Manager account.
You can follow these steps to do so. If you’re not seeing the option to link your account, submit a question
via the Help Center.

Part A: Create an order

● Create your order: To run a new ad campaign in Ad Manager you’ll need to create a new order. Click
Delivery > Orders > New order.

○ Name your order something that will help you to remember what this order is for.

■ Example: AdSense_Run_of_Network_Web

○ List AdSense as the advertiser.

○ Set the trafficker, or the person in your organization responsible for this line item.

○ Fill in any additional advanced settings that are relevant to your order.

○ Click ‘Add line item’.

Part B: Create a line item

● Create your line item: now that you have an order, you’ll need to add your line items. When you click
‘Add line item’ you’ll be prompted to select a display or video line item. Select display if you want to
show standard ads or Video if you want to show video ads.

○ Ad type: for a display line item, the Ad type will be set to standard. For Video line items the
display type is set to Video.

○ Name: line item names must be unique within the order so name it something unique.

■ Example: AdSense_Web

○ Line item type: set this to AdSense.

○ Expected creatives: list the expected sizes of creatives that you’d like this line item to serve.

○ Delivery settings: if you don’t have a specific date/time in mind just set these to ‘Immediately’
and ‘Unlimited’.

○ Adjust delivery: if you have days and times that you’d like this AdSense line item to serve or
wish to set a per user frequency cap you can do so here.

○ Targeting: in this section you can select all of the relevant ad units that you’d like to target.

● Click ‘Save’.

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Setup Guide - AdSense

Part C: Add creatives

● Click into your AdSense line item and select the creatives tab.

● Click ‘Add Creative’.

● Write in a name for your creative.

● Select ‘Import ad unit code snippet’.

To import a code snippet you’ll have to log into your AdSense account to create ad units and get the code
from those ad units.

● Log into your AdSense account.

● Create your ad units.

○ Under Ads select ‘Ad Units’ and click ‘Display ads’.

○ Name your ad unit something you will remember.

○ Preview different shapes of ads using the ‘square’, ‘horizontal’, and ‘vertical’ buttons at the
top.

○ Select a ‘Fixed’ ad size or a ‘Responsive’ size.

○ Click ‘Create’.

● Edit your ad code.

○ After clicking ‘Create’ you’ll be prompted with an AdSense code snippet. In order to import
this into Ad Manager, you’ll have to edit the code snippet so that it’s in the right format.

■ Copy and paste the code snippet from AdSense into your Ad Manager creative page.

■ Follow these directions to edit your code snippet until it’s in the correct format for Ad
Manager (see sample on next page).

● Click ‘Save’.

Note: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous code

● Asynchronous: Code that is split up into smaller pieces. When a user visits your page, if certain ad units
are not immediately in view, they might pause or wait to load until the user begins to scroll down. This
allows for other processes to occur and reduce latency.
● Synchronous: Code that is executed all at the same time. This means that if a user visits your page, all ad
units will load with the entire page, even if they’re not immediately in view.

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Setup Guide - AdSense

Sample code from AdSense.

Edited code in Ad Manager formatting. Read more about how to edit your code to Ad Manager formatting.

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Third Party
Networks
Setup Guide - Third Party Networks

Third Party Ad Networks: Orders, line items, creatives

You can traffic third-party ad networks through our Ad Manager account using non-guaranteed line items.
You select how these Ad Networks will compete against each other and against Google in the auction based
on the line item priority (Network, Bulk, Price Priority, House).

Part A: Create an order

● Create your order. To run a new ad campaign in Ad Manager you’ll need to create a new order. Click
Delivery > Orders > New order.

○ Name your order something that will help you to remember what this order targets.

○ Enter the name of the advertiser or network.

■ Example: Ad Network 1

○ Set the trafficker, or the person in your organization responsible for this line item.

○ Fill in any additional advanced settings that are relevant to your order.

○ Click ‘Add line item’ to create your line item for this new order.

Part B: Create a line item

● Create your line item: now that you have an order, you’ll need to add your line items. When you click
‘Add line item’ you’ll be prompted to select a display or video line item. Select display if you want to
show standard ads or Video if you want to show video ads.

○ Ad type: for a display line item, the Ad type will be set to standard. For Video line items the
display type is set to Video.

○ Name: line item names must be unique within the order so name it something unique.

■ Example: AdNetwork_A_Homepage_728x90

○ Line item type: review the line item priorities before determining what you want to select here.
We recommend setting line items to ‘Price Priority’ so that the highest paying bidder wins the
auction.

○ Expected creatives: list the expected sizes of creatives that you’d like this line item to serve.

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Setup Guide - Third Party Networks

● Delivery settings:

○ Start / end time: if you don’t have a specific date/time in mind just set these to ‘Immediately’
and ‘Unlimited’.

○ Limit: if you don’t have a limit that you want to place on the number of impressions that this
line item can win then select ‘None’.

○ Rate: set the rate at which you want this line item to compete at and add a value CPM.

■ Note: for ad networks that are not associated with Google, Ad Manager cannot see what the ad
network is bidding in real time. So, Ad Manager uses the value CPM as a proxy for the networks
actual bid. You should update your value CPMs on a regular basis using this equation to ensure
you’re earning the most value from every auction.

○ Adjust delivery: if you have days and times that you’d like this line item to serve or wish to set
a per user frequency cap you can do so here.

○ Targeting: in this section you can select all of the relevant ad units that you’d like to target.

● Click ‘Save’

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Setup Guide - Third Party Networks

Part C: Add creatives

● Click into your new line item and select the creatives tab.

● Click ‘Add Creative’.

○ If you have creatives already uploaded into your Ad Manager account you can select ‘Existing
creative’. If you’d like to upload creatives now, select ‘New creative’.

○ Select the ad unit size for which you want to select/upload a creative.

○ Select the type of creative you’d like to upload.

■ If you have a creative or creatives from this Ad Network that you’d like to serve, you
can upload them here via the relevant creative type.

■ If you don’t have specific creatives from the Ad Network:

● Select ‘Third party’.

● Name your creative.

● Copy and paste ad unit code snippet from your third-party network into the
code box.

● Adjust any settings necessary.

○ Click ‘Save’ to upload your creative. When taken to the creative screen click ‘Save’ again to
save your creative.

○ Move on to Step 5 to approve your order.

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Step 5: Approve
your order
Setup Guide

Step 5: Approve your order

Once you’ve created your order, line item, and added creatives. You now must approve your order before it
begins serving.

● Click into the Orders tab.

● Select the relevant order.

● In the top left click ‘Approve’.

Your ads should begin serving shortly after you’ve approved your order. You made it, great work!

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Ads.txt, Unified
Pricing Rules,
GDPR
Setup Guide

Declare authorized sellers with ads.txt

What is ads.txt?

● Ads.txt stands for Authorized Digital Sellers and is a simple and secure way for publishers and
distributors to publicly declare the companies they authorize to sell their digital inventory. Ads.txt
increases transparency in the inventory supply chain, gives publishers better control over their
inventory, and helps to decrease bad actors in the ads ecosystem.

Why do I need it on my site?

● Ads.txt helps to let potential advertisers know that you’re not selling counterfeit ad inventory and
provides authentication for your inventory in the ecosystem.

Implement ads.txt:

● Step 1: Create an ads.txt file

○ Create a .txt file on your computer and host it at the root level of your domain. For
example, if your domain name is “example.com” your .txt file should be:
https://example.com/ads.txt
● Step 2: Declare authorized sellers
○ In the .txt file, include a separate line for each authorized seller. Each line requires three
pieces of data with one optional piece: <Field #1>, <Field #2>, <Field #3>, <Field #4>
○ The line item in the ads.txt file with each field filled out should look like this:
“google.com, pub-000000000000000, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0”
■ <Field #1>: the domain name of the advertising system (required).
■ <Field #2>: Your publisher account ID (required).
■ <Field #3>: Type of account/relationship (required).
■ <Field #4>: Certification authority ID (optional).
○ Read this help center article to view examples and detailed descriptions.
● Step 3: Ensure that your ads.txt file is crawlable
○ Create a robots.txt file to help search engines understand which pages they can and
cannot crawl on your website.
○ This file should live at the root level of your domain (ex. https://example.com/robots.txt).
○ Create your rules to allow or disallow access to certain pages.
○ Read this help center article to learn more about robots.txt.

Learn more about the Ads.txt project.

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Setup Guide

Protections and unified pricing rules

What are protections?

● Protections give you control to block/allow advertisers, brands, ad technologies, categories and
more across your account.
○ Keep in mind, excessively blocking categories could significantly lower your revenue. To
maximize your revenue, avoid blocking entire categories and instead block specific URLs
and their subdomains.
● To protect your brand, you can block competitors, other brands, and general or sensitive
categories from appearing on your site.

What are unified pricing rules?

● Unified pricing rules (UPR) are a new, centralized way to manage floor prices across all of your
programmatic indirect demand, including Ad Exchange, Exchange Bidding, and remnant line
items (Network, Bulk, Price Priority). UPR replace Ad Exchange pricing rules.
● In a first price auction, buyers pay what they bid, meaning you no longer need Ad Exchange floor
prices to close the gap between the highest bid and second bid.
● Simplify your pricing strategy by focusing on business objectives and constraints:
○ Evaluate opportunity cost of serving a paying ad versus a house campaign (which could
drive subscriptions or purchases).
○ Channel conflict or cannibalization of direct campaigns.
● Unified pricing rules are not prioritized, and their order is not important. We advise using a broad
(i.e. lower floor run of network) to narrow (i.e. higher floor for specific inventory segment) pricing
rule structure to ensure you have the most effective setup for your business.

Note: In your first 2-3 weeks on your account we recommend avoiding creating unified pricing rules.
Early on, you’ll want to increase demand as much as possible to help the ad ecosystem learn about your
page, your audience, and earn the highest CPMs possible. Once your rules are up-and-running, a new
Insight Card within your Ad Manager account will automatically inform you if there are revenue
opportunities from adjusting your price current floors.

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Setup Guide

Are you based in the EU or do you have a high number of EU visitors?

Learn how to comply with the GDPR.
What is GDPR?

● GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. This law requires digital publishers to provide
information to app and site visitors about their use and sharing of personal data, cookie use, mobile
ad IDs, and other forms of local storage. Usually, sites must collect consent from visitors to obtain
and use this data.

Take these steps to help your site/app be compliant with GDPR:

● Add a consent function to your website, many of which are free of charge. For example:
○ Cookie Consent by Silktide
○ Cookie Control by CIVIC
○ OneTrust
○ Cookiebot by Cybot
○ Cookie Consent Kit by the European Commission
● Integrate your consent function with the advertising tags on your pages. This ensures that your users’
preferences are respected.
○ For Google ads, find more information here.
○ If you’re using Google services as a publisher, we offer other tools to help publishers with
compliance, for example:
■ AMP: User control components in AMP to support consent requests.
■ AdMob: SDK updates and availability of new APIs.
■ Funding Choices for user consent: Solution to help publishers gain consent for serving
personalized ads to EEA users.
● Test your site to ensure proper implementation.

Visit Cookie Choices to learn more and visit our Help Center for FAQs.

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 Proprietary +
Confidential

Resources
Setup Guide

You’re all set up!

Now that you’ve set up your inventory in Ad Manager and started serving ads, you can use a variety of free
resources to make sure you earn the most from every impression

● Ad Manager Help Center - search the help center to find information on all aspects of Ad Manager.

● Skillshop - improve your Ad Manager knowledge with Skillshop through trainings and step-by-step
instructions.

● Ad Manager on Air - watch videos from our Optimizations Specialists about how you could earn
more revenue on Ad Manager.

● Ad Manager forum - crowdsource answers from trusted Ad Manager experts and community
members.

● Tips from us - opt-in to communications in your Admin tab so that you can receive tips from our team
about ways to improve your Ad Manager account performance.

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 Proprietary +
Confidential

Glossary
Setup Guide

Key equations and terms to know

Before you get started setting up your account, make sure you have a good understanding of
these key terms and equations to help simplify the setup and optimization process. Text in blue is
a link, click to learn more.

Fill rate Value CPM

.
Total revenue received from ad
Ad requests that returned ads tag(s) associated with selected
Fill rate = X 100% line item
Value CPM = X 1000
Total ad requests
Total number of impressions
Ad Manager sent to the
selected line item(s)

Frequency caps Value CPM

Frequency caps limit the number of times that a Value CPM or cost per thousand impressions
given user can be served a line item within a is an amount you specify to help Google Ad
given time period. We recommend a cap of 3 per Manager estimate the value of a line item.
user per day for a fill rate of 50%. This is the price at which the line item
competes against other line items.

Order Placements
To launch a new campaign, create a new order. Placements group ad units together to form a
This order should include at least one line item, collection of one or more ad units where an
ad unit, and creative. advertiser’s ad can be displayed.

Key-values Line-item
Key-value targeting lets you define custom Line items act as a subset of trafficking
targeting criteria, such as search terms or criteria. View the various line item priorities
specific pages. For line items that target on page 10.
key-values, the ad server only serves it to ad tags
that include that key-value.

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Setup Guide

Key terms to know

Guaranteed line items Non-guaranteed line items

Guaranteed line items are those in which Non-guaranteed line items are those that
you serve impressions on a defined compete in the Open Auction at various
percentage or impression number goal for priorities and delivery rates. If AdSense and
a period of time from a given advertiser Ad Exchange are not eligible to compete, the
(Sponsorship or Standard). priority sequence within non-guaranteed
inventory is network, then bulk, then price
priority, then house line items.

Programmatic Guaranteed Protections

You and the buyer negotiate a price and terms Protections allow you to block/allow
for inventory that is reserved specifically and advertisers, brands, ad technologies,
only for that buyer at that price. categories, and more across your account.

Campaign goal Unsold/remnant inventory

Your campaign goal can vary based on the Unsold or remnant inventory is
type of campaign. For example, a campaign non-guaranteed inventory that has not been
goal could be a certain number of filled by Ad Exchange or any of your line
impressions or percentage of all impressions items.
over a specific period of time.

Inventory Support options

Inventory is simply the ad slots on your page. Ad Manager offers a variety of different
These are the spaces on your site or app that support options to troubleshoot and answer
you sell on the open auction or directly to your questions. Use the resources listed to
buyers. help you improve your account performance.

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Setup Guiide

Key terms to know

Viewability Preferred deal
An impression is considered viewable when it has This is where you and the buyer negotiate a
appeared in the user’s browser and had the price and terms for inventory that the buyer can
opportunity to be seen. Viewability data can help optionally bid upon. The buyer has an initial or
publishers increase the value of their display “preferred” opportunity to secure the inventory
inventory as advertisers increasingly want to buy at the negotiated price though they are not
viewable impressions. obligated to. If the buyer does not buy the
inventory it becomes available on the
Open Auction.

Trafficking Ad unit
When we use the term trafficking, we’re referring Ad unit is synonymous with inventory. Ad units
to the route in which ads are served to your are the spaces on your page that you make
inventory. You can think of your line item settings available to buyers. Ad units can be a variety of
as your traffic cop, directing requests from buyers different sizes.
to the appropriate line items.

Tags
Native Tags refer to the code that you place on your
Native ads are ads that match the look and feel
site or app. When a user visits your page, the tag
of your site. You can create Native ads under the
calls Ad Manager to ask for an ad to show to
inventory tab.
that user.

Help Center Priority

The Help Center is a resource available to you to For every line item you create, you need to set a
ask questions and search for answers regarding priority. Ad Manager uses priorities to determine
Ad Manager. You can use the Help Center for tips, which line items serve before others. This helps
implementation guidelines, and to learn about new to keep your directly sold inventory on track to
features. On the ‘Community’ tab, you can ask hit its goal and helps you to determine how open
other Ad Manager users questions. auction line items will compete.

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Strategic Partner Welcome Pack

eCPM Terminology
In your Ad Manager account, you can see three different eCPM metrics. So
what do they all mean? Let us explain.

CPM = Revenue per one thousand impressions

Ad Request eCPM
Ad request eCPM represents the revenue you receive per request you made for a creative; the calculation
factors in fill rate. Ad networks that have high CPM ads but offer low fill or whose ads are unlikely to convert
are disadvantaged.

Ad Request eCPM = Revenue / Ad Requests

Matched eCPM
Matched eCPM removes the impact of the fill rate. When fill rate is ignored, a network’s CPM can decrease if
many of their ads are high CPM, but less likely to pay--for example, a video that only pays after one second of
play time. This metric helps to standardize how different networks count impressions and pay at different
points in the ad serving process.

Matched eCPM = Revenue / Matched Queries

Ad eCPM
Ad eCPM is the default eCPM metric in Ad Exchange. This metric accounts for the fact that many networks
count impressions and generate revenue at points after the creative is served. Ad eCPM removes the impact
on ads that are served, but do not result in impressions and may not generate revenue.

Ad eCPM = Revenue / Ad Impressions

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 Setup Guide

Line Item Priorities

High Priority

Serve based upon a defined percentage of impressions

Guaranteed 4 Sponsorship (use for a “takeover” of a page/site).
Use for direct
reservations. Serve based upon a defined impression goal (use for
6 8 10 Standard directly sold campaigns with start and end dates).

Serve based upon a defined percentage of impressions

12 Network (use for partner ad networks which don’t have an
impression goal).

Non-Guaranteed Serve based upon a defined impression goal (use for

12 Bulk partners who have ordered a maximum number of
Run ad network impressions).
competition at
Price Priority.
12 Price Priority Serve based on highest-paying line item available.
Recommended

Compete with price on other non-guaranteed line items,

12 AdSense/AdX and use dynamic allocation to automatically find the
Recommended
highest paying line item.

Serve ads that promote products and services chosen

Non-paying 16 House by you. These serve at the lowest priority.

Low Priority

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