This message started appearing recently on Google AdSense dashboard: “Earnings at risk – One or more of your ads.txt files doesn’t contain your AdSense publisher ID. Fix this now to avoid severe impact to your revenue.”
For the benefit of all publishers and those who are experience the same problem, I am going to share with you all the solution to the above problem and how I fixed mine.
You are in the right place so your problem will solve as quickly as you understand this post. But before I explain further on how to solve this AdSense error, you must understand why this reflect on your website. When you added Ads.txt file to your website and didn’t enter the Google AdSense Publisher id to Ads.txt file then your ad serving will stop and revenue earning will also stop.
The primary cause of the above error message on the AdSense dashboard is, the website has implemented the “Ads.txt” file but they failed to include my AdSense pub-id in the Ads.txt file.
You may ask what is Ads.txt file?
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the international authority which defines the standards for online advertising, has defined a specification called Ads.txt. According to this specification, all websites that use advertisements should use a file called “Ads.txt” in the root of the website’s domain.
For example, if you want to find your Publisher id you can click here: Find your publisher ID
According to the specification, the Ads.txt file should define all the advertisement programs used by the websites. Each advertising program the website is participating should be defined in the Ads.txt file in a single line in the following format:
<FIELD #1>, <FIELD #2>, <FIELD #3>, <FIELD #4>
Field #1 – Domain name of the advertising system
Field #2 – Publisher’s Account ID (Required)
Field #3 – Type of Account/Relationship
Field #4 – Certification Authority ID (Optional)
Google is supporting the Ads.txt specification for their AdSense program. According to Google. Ads.txt file is not mandatory for the AdSense publishers. But however, if you are using an Ads.txt file on your website, then Google would expect you to define your AdSense pub-id in the file in the specific format and if not used correctly, Google won’t serve ads on your site.
Fix this now to avoid severe impact to your revenue
When I first encounter this error on my AdSense dashboard “Earnings at risk – One or more of your ads.txt files doesn’t contain your AdSense publisher ID. Fix this now to avoid severe impact to your revenue.”, what I did was first of all analysed my websites and I found that I was using the Ads.txt file on their site but my AdSense pub-id was not defined there.
Now here is how to fix the error?
When this error is reported on the AdSense dashboard, there will be an ACTION button provided next to the message. Click on the button to see more details. Google will show you the website on which an Ads.txt file is defined without your pub-id.
Scroll down and look below the name of the websites listed. You will see a message similar to this:
This will prevent a potentially severe impact on your earnings. Copy and paste the following code snippet into each ads.txt file:
A publisher id look like this: pub-7317001610240998, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0
If you’ve already done this, please allow our systems up to 24 hours to reflect the changes.
You can solve the error by doing one of the following options:
1. Delete the Ads.txt file from your website’s root domain (or, subdomain, if applicable)
2. Copy and paste the specific line of text from the above message to your Ads.txt file
NOTE: The AdSense pub-id shown in the above text/image is for your understanding. You must use the actual text from your own AdSense dashboard or use the correct pub-id of your account.