You may be an experienced publisher using advanced ads and ad unit rotators or new to the publishing world. Regardless of your experience level, here are answers to six important questions.
1. Why aren’t my ads appearing?
2. I started getting ads, but why are they not relevant?
3. Why are ads not being served on my sub domains?
4. What if there is a system wide problem?
5. How do I remove the Sponsored Links?
6. What do I do if I still have questions?
1. Why aren’t my ads appearing?
Make sure you have created a web property and your property has been approved in the system, as the approval process can take up to 1 business day. Next you will want to confirm you have correctly copied/pasted your ad unit code from Publisher to your web property. These may seem basic, but they are the first things you will want to confirm.
2. I started getting ads, but why are they not relevant?
Microsoft pubCenter will serve general ads to your property as the system gathers information about your property. At this point you want to make sure MSN crawlers have access to your robots.txt file, so pubCenter can better match ads to your site content.
General ads will be served to your property until 60 ad impressions are generated or 1 ad click is received. After this point, you should begin to see an increase in ad relevancy.
3. Why are ads not being served on my sub domains?
Although your top level domain (TLD) is approved, you will need to submit sub domains for approval before sub domains begin showing ads. Pages within an approved site (www.adventure-works.com/trips) will serve ads, but sub domains (trips.adventure-works.com) will not. TLD and sub domains need to be submitted for property approval.
4. What if there is a system wide problem?
If you believe everything is set up properly, it is possible pubCenter is experiencing a system wide issue. You will want to check the pubCenter Community Forum for news and messaging affecting all publishers.
In the case of a system wide issue affecting ads being served, your specified fallback option will be served. Publishers have two Fallback ad options:
1. Select a solid color to replace the ad unit space
2. Paste an Image URL into the pubCenter tool when setting up your ad unit
Note: The fallback option provides a placeholder for the non-displayed ad unit and no revenue will be generated while fallbacks options are in place.
Here is how to set up your fallback ad options.
Log into your account and navigate to the Set up—Ad units Page
In step 1 of the Create Content Ad unit click on the Fallback options and choose color or enter an image URL.
Click Continue to move to Step 2.
5. How do I remove the Sponsored Links text?
Publishers cannot remove the Sponsored Links text from the ad unit. However, publishers do have the ability to modify the Sponsored Links text color in both Simple and Advanced ads.
Log into your account and navigate to the Set up—Ad units Page
In step 2 of Create Content Ad unit you can modify the color of the Sponsored Link.
Simple ad style
Advanced ad style
Click Save and Generate Code to move to Step 2.
6. What do I do if I still have questions?
If the above answers leave you with a few questions, be sure to check the Publisher Forum or drop us a note at Publisher support.
Return to pubCenter Community Support Center