Google Ad Manager - Getting started - How to show your first ad

About

A page on how to start with Google Ad Manager for a publisher.

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Steps

Go to ad Manager

Got to Ad Manager
Create an account if you don't have one (You need to have at minimal an adsense account)

Create a ad unit

A ad unit represents a location on a page where an ad will be shown.

Example: Two ad units representing two sidebar slot

For this getting started page, we created an ad unit just called Getting Started with a size of 300×250

The physical location is called a slot as you may have several slot on the same page for the same ad unit but as the relationship is mostly one on one, they are really synonym
To enhance targeting (ie selection of the best placement) you can:
- create a ad unit hierarchical structure mirroring the web site structure (for hierarchical grouping)
- add a placement (for transversal grouping)

Create a page with the ad unit tag

The ad is shown thanks to a tag (A javascript snippet).

To get the tag for the ad unit, go to the third tab called tag, click continue until you get to the tag results

In the tag results screen, you will have:

a head snippet
a body snippet

Example of a minimal page splits by parts.

The start of the HTML page

<html>
<head>

Then the head tag snippet

<script async src="https://securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/tag/js/gpt.js"></script>
<script>
  window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []};
  googletag.cmd.push(function() {
	googletag.defineSlot('/xxxxxxxxx/0', [300, 250], 'div-gpt-ad-1590311928751-0').addService(googletag.pubads());
	googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest();
	googletag.enableServices();
  });
</script>

Then the content of the page

</head>
<body>
<h1>AdManager template</h1>

<h2>The first ad below</h2>

Then the body tag snippet (ie where the ad should be shown)

<!-- /21796740876/0 -->
<div id='div-gpt-ad-1590311928751-0' style='width: 300px; height: 250px;'>
    <script>
    googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1590311928751-0'); });
  </script>
</div>

And we close the document

</body>
</html>

Create an order

An ad is shown if there is an active order.

Even if this is a house ad, you need to create a order.

An order groups all ad by advertiser.

Go to the Delivery menu
Click Order and create a new one. Create also an InHouse Advertiser

Create a line item for the order

A line item groups:

a ad unit
to a creative
for a certain period of time or quantity
with a certain compensation

In the order, create a new line item

Example with a line item with :

a size that match the size of the ad unit (ie 300×250)
in-house type because we are going to show an house ad. The line item type defines the serving priority
that starts immediately

Add a creative to the line item

After saving the line item, ad manager shows the following message because we need to attach a creative to the line item

You can start creating a creative:

by clicking on the manage creative link from the message
or by going to the creative tab of the line item as shown below

Example: the below creative:

is just an image of a card puncher with the size 300×250
redirect when clicked to https://gerardnico.com/data/processing

Line item and order activation

To be able to serve an ad:

the line item
and the order

must be activated

Activation:

By default, line items are automatically activated when you add at least one creative. You can check it in the status of a line item.
For an order, you need to click on the activate button.

Open your page

Opening the previously created html page admanager.html locally should be enough to show the ad.

It may take some times (a couple of minute before AdManager is internally able to serve the ad)

Diagnostic - Delivery tool

To diagnose ad serving (delivery) problem, ad manager provides the delivery tool that will show:

the page
and overlay diagnostic information

Steps:

Start a local web server to server your page locally
- On Linux: you can use the python built-in
- On Windows and everywhere else, I like a lot browser-sync
Go to the delivery tool

And enter the local address. Example for my web server setup http://localhost:3002/admanager.html

You will see the creative, the line item, the order item and a lot of other information.

Support

My ad is not showing

See the Delivery tool section