Increasingly Frequent questions surrounding Ads.txt
Hello,
Due to a fairly recent announcement by Google surrounding the use of ads.txt on root domains we are likely seeing an uptick in the number of questions from clients that use ads in their communities about this feature. So far the only two clients I've been asked about (Polycount and Brickset) do you use us as a Top level domain. The vast majority of our clients do use subdomains and I've been told that if the ads.txt file exists in the root domain it will apply to the subdomain.
@Adrian indicated to me that this likely won't always be the case and we will increasingly see more and more questions regarding this.
I didn't make this an "idea" because it felt more like a conversation that needs to be had.
Will we create a plugin of some sort to help clients deal with this? It seems like something we probably need to be pro-active about. Some of our VIPs are media companies that rely on ad revenue and I imagine it won't be that long before they begin asking as well.
Comments
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There's a related Teamwork task, FYI: https://vanillaforums.teamwork.com/#tasks/7430204 (pls don't put extra info there since we're ditching that system soon - add it here).
I've asked @DaazKu to scope out what would be required of such an addon this sprint so we can get a handle on what's needed and how long it will take.
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Documentation from Google. Wondering if this changes our position on adding the ads.txt file. My reading of this is that the ads.txt file can indeed be hosted on a subdomain and there's reasoning for that.
The last time i talked to a client about this, I advised them that since the forum is a subdomain they don't need to add the ads.txt file.
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buncha thoughts here https://github.com/vanilla/cloud-docs/issues/4#issuecomment-577376544
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a couple of thoughts - things moved quick on this, at the time - when ads.txt was released subdomain was not needed, but they noted at the time things would change. I guess that happened. Be careful though - as Google noted, the issue is having to do with how they sell inventory. Ads.txt is used to reduce Ad fraud so as they (Google) note
”You only need to do this if the authorized seller or your publisher ID are different for the subdomain when compared to the root domain.”
most times it should be same. That’s the main question ?
if different subdomain was different then they would need the file at the subdomain level.
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