Similar to the infamous Robots.txt file, it’s a “plain text” file that is hosted on your root domain, at the top level of your website, and it contains a list of authorized sellers of your advertising inventory.

The Ads.txt initiative was started to combat ad fraud and in particular, two main types – unauthorized reselling of your ad inventory through arbitration, and more importantly, ad fraud through misrepresentation or counterfeit ad impressions.

For more information and explanation about what this is and why it is important, please see this blog post.

We recommend you install and use the Mediavine Control Panel plugin. The Control Panel will either setup and host your ads.txt file or allow you to update it with the push of a button.

If you are already running MCP, please check and make sure it is the most recent version.

If you see this label in the plugin's settings, then this means your /ads.txt url should be automatically redirecting to the ads.txt file hosted on our server. In this case, there's nothing you need to do!

Alternatively, if you do not see that label and see the Update Ads.txt button, click the button and clear your site's caching:

If you're not running Wordpress, you can download your site's specific ads.txt in your Dashboard under Settings > Ad Set Up and you should see a button that says Download Ads.txt.

You'll need to take this file and upload it to the root directory of your site so it's accessible when you visit this page of your site:

You may need to get File Transfer Protocol (FTP) access in order to upload a file to your root directory, so please check with your hosting company or your CMS's support portal.

Squarespace sites don't allow for the direct upload of files to your root directory, but we came up with a custom solution for this that you can read about here. Please email publishers@mediavine.com for help implementing this solution.

​BLOGGER ADS.TXT 

Blogger implemented a solution that allows you to copy and paste your ads.txt file directly into your backend. You can follow those instructions here. 

1. Verify the installed version of Mediavine Control Panel is 2.6.0 or higher.

2. Check your Mediavine Control Panel settings.

If you see the "Update Ads.txt" button, click it:

If you get an error message after clicking "Update Ads.txt", then it is likely that there are settings on the server level that are preventing us from properly writing that file. You'll need to contact your host to see if they can change that setting, or the file will need to be manually added via FTP to ensure it is up-to-date. For instructions on that, please see this help page.

If you are running Sucuri, please follow these instructions in Sucuri to set ads.txt as a non-cache URL.

Otherwise, if you don't see that button then it means your server and WordPress installation is configured in a manner that would allow our plugin to automatically handle a redirect to an updated ads.txt file on our server.

3. Clear your site's cache.

If you have any caching plugins installed, you'll want to clear their caching. The option to clear cache can be found along the top menu bar in your WordPress Admin:

4. Check your dashboard's ADS.TXT site health check to make sure it is teal. The status should update near 5pm EST.

5. If your Ads.txt file updates successfully... 

Then you're all set. If you have any questions or if the site health check doesn't update by the following day, please email publishers@mediavine.com.
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Let us know if you have any questions! We're available via the blue chat bubble in the bottom right of your screen, or via publishers@mediavine.com.