Google AdSense Auto ads are making it easy to implement ads on your site without taking care of ad placements and sizes. Since they work fully automatical, it is not simple to debug them when AdSense Auto ads are not showing up.
Most common reasons
In a vast majority of cases, it comes down to a short list of simple issues and solutions for AdSense Auto ads not showing up.
Disable your ad blocker
Please disable your ad blocker before checking for ads on your site. Make sure that your anti-virus software does not have such a feature enabled and test a different browser or even computer if you are not sure.
Wait a few days
Especially new AdSense accounts, websites with only little traffic and those only recently added to the AdSense account, AdSense simply needs some time to scan your site and learn about the best positions for Auto ads. Very often, Auto ads show up for mobile traffic days before showing up on desktop.
Test manually placed ads
You can test if your AdSense account is working well by placing AdSense ads manually. If they show up then it might just be a matter of time for Auto ads to show up as well. If they don’t show up then the issue is often with your AdSense account.
Check if the Auto ads code exists
Look for the code
If you are not using Advanced Ads, then open the code view in your browser and search for the AdSense Auto ads code. It should look like the example below. I usually search for the stringenable_page_level_ads.
<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<script>
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({
google_ad_client: "ca-pub-1234567890",
enable_page_level_ads: true
});
</script>How to add the Auto ads code
If the Auto ads code is missing then go to Advanced Ads > Settings > AdSense, connect to AdSense or enter your publisher ID and enabled the Verification code & Auto ads option.
Auto ads stay blank
It is a known problem with AdSense Auto ads that it might inject ad units correctly but they only show as blank white space on your site.
You can see what I am referring to in the video below. Unfortunately, this is not an issue related to Advanced Ads or the Auto ads code on your site. We mostly see it happening with new accounts and websites or newly published codes.
Check if Auto ads don’t show up somewhere else
AdSense Auto ads continuously optimize their setup. This includes not only testing different placements and ad types but also not showing up at all. They might just think that a specific user is unlikely to click on an ad, so they don’t show one.
Check the following things if Auto ads are not showing up even though the code exists:
- open different pages
- use a different browser
- log out of your backend and test again
- open your site on a mobile device
I have found that most of the time, the Auto ads show up as a sticky top banner on a mobile device while Auto ads are not showing up on a desktop device. This is typical behavior. At least it tells you that Auto ads are working. They might start appearing on desktop later.
Check your AdSense account
Auto ads might also not show up if there are issues in your Google AdSense account. There are different things you would need to check here.
Please notice that all changes made in your AdSense account might need at least 30 minutes to result in changes on your site.
Is your site added?
Google AdSense needs to approve every site manually. Please go to your AdSense account > Sites > Overview.
Are there any policy violations?
Please go to your AdSense account > Account > Policy center.
Does AdSense list any violations here?
Invalid traffic
AdSense confirmed to us that many sites stopped showing Auto ads because they detected invalid traffic. At the time I am writing this, there is no warning in your account if this happens.
Did you enable Optimizations?
Google AdSense allows you to test different options in your account to see if your revenue can benefit from them. You can find them under the Optimizations item in your account. Just go through the various options and make sure that you didn’t accidentally enable anything that could prevent Auto ads from showing.
Check your ads.txt file
The ads.txt file authorizes AdSense to place ads on your site. They might stop showing ads if this file is missing.
Luckily, Advanced Ads creates that file automatically with the correct values for AdSense when you entered your publisher ID or connected with your AdSense account under Advanced Ads > Settings > AdSense.
There are cases in which the plugin cannot enable the file. Please find them in Troubleshooting ads.txt.
Already too many ads
AdSense recommends sites not to place too many ads, and the Google search engine might even penalize you for that. So it makes sense that Auto ads consider the number of ads they place on a site, too.
While you can run manually placed (AdSense) ads and AdSense Auto ads at the same time, Auto ads would not inject anything next to the already existing codes. So if you already placed a lot of ads on your site, then, likely, Auto ads are not showing at the same time.