Google AdSense Ad serving has been a hot topic since like forever, as lots of bloggers and webmasters use AdSense to make money online. Many people have asked questions regarding errors associated with Google Ads. And indeed, the rejected Ad request errors are quite common. These occur majorly when the ads on your site are not properly set up, and hence they can't crawl the correct URL. In such cases, an error occurs, and 'blank ads' might be served as a result. These errors have become quite common. But if you are encountering them, there's nothing to worry about. In this post, we will show you what causes such errors, and how to remove them.
What are Ad requests?
An Ad request is counted whenever a site requests ads from Google to be displayed. For example, suppose there are three ad blocks on a page. When that page is loaded, all the three blocks request ads from Google, and the ads are then displayed. Even if there is some error in displaying, it is still counted as an ad request.
Ad request errors basically occur when the requests are rejected, or could not be fetched. In that case, backup, or blank ads are displayed. This gives the first heads-up that something is wrong with your ad units.
Reasons for errors
The most common reason for such errors is that, your ad blocks are located within one or multiple iframes. This causes problems for the unit, because it crawls and targets the wrong URL. It becomes isolated, and hence cannot access and determine what sort of content you have, hence contextual ads become useless. And when Google can't determine your site's correct information, blank or backup ads might be served.
You might also be getting errors because you are using an SSP (Supply-Side Platform). SSPs include yield managers or ad servers that are used for ad optimization. You need to contact them and notify them of the issue you are having.
Fixing ad request errors
To fix these errors in AdSense and Ad Exchange, you generally need to pass to them the URL of the page that displays the ads.
DoubleClick for Publishers
For DoubleClick for Publishers users, if you are using the Google Ad Manager, then in your ad call, you can try adding this line of code to make your ads work properly
GA_googleAddAdSensePageAttr("google_page_url", "URL");
For Google Publisher Tags, you can try adding the following line of code to your ad call.
googletag.pubads().set("page_url", "URL");
For DART, in AdSense or Ad Exchange, you can pass the correct URL by using the dc_ref parameter in conjunction with the google_page_url parameter.
Other domains
For tag.admeld.com errors within your report, you need to contact your Admeld representative and ask for JavaScript tags instead of iframes. This should take care of most errors caused by nested iframes.
For other domains, to target correct URLs, you will need to use google_page_url. here's a demonstration. Below is a code which contains a typical ad code
Typical ad code
<script type="text/javascript">google_ad_client = "ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXX";/* 728x90, creado 14/04/08 */google_ad_slot = "XXXXXXXXXXXX";google_ad_width = 728;google_ad_height = 90;</script><script type="text/javascript" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>
And below is a code with the google_page_url added. Notice the line with bolded text.
Ad code with google_page_url
<script type="text/javascript">google_ad_client = "ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXX";/* 728x90, creado 14/04/08 */google_ad_slot = "XXXXXXXXXXXX";google_ad_width = 728;google_ad_height = 90;google_page_url = "http://myurl.com/fullpath";</script><script type="text/javascript" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>
You need to update code for all ad units that are showing problems. I know this might be a bit too much to grasp, especially for beginners. But you can contact us and ask questions anytime using the comment section below. All the best with your errors :)