If you’ve followed all of the steps in the launch process and you still aren’t seeing ads on your site, don’t panic just yet! Most of the reasons that ads aren’t displaying on your site can be resolved by taking a few troubleshooting steps. Take a look at the steps below to try to pinpoint the issue.
It's important to remember -
As the site owner, you won't often see ads the same way as your readers - and definitely not as often.
Advertisers are trying to reach your readers, not you as the site owner. As a site owner, since you're on the site more than your readers are, you may not always see ads appear on your site or they can take longer to load.
You can always add ?test=houseads to the end of a post's URL in an incognito window to test and make sure ads are loading as expected.
Note:
- If you are only missing your content and sidebar ads, then head over to this help article to learn more about ad targeting.
- Did ads go missing after a theme change? Post here!
Still not seeing ads? Here are some troubleshooting steps:
Step 1: Clear Cache
Caching allows a site to load faster, but that doesn’t always include the most up-to-date version of your site. To ensure that you and your readers are seeing the most current version of your site, you’ll want to clear out your site’s cache. Try clearing your cache out one by one in each of the areas below and checking in an incognito window to see if ads start displaying:
Caching Plugin - If you have a caching plugin installed, be sure to clear/purge your site’s cache within the plugin.
CDN - If you are using a CDN such as Cloudflare, be sure to clear the cache here as well.
Server-level caching - You should also reach out to your host to clear out any server-level caching
For more information on how to clear out your cache, check out our help article How To Clear Your Cache on WordPress Sites.
Step 2: Check to See if the Journey Script is Installed on Your Site
You’ll want to make sure that the Mediavine Journey script is installed on your site.
WordPress Sites
If you are on a WordPress site, then you’ll want to confirm that the Grow Plugin is active. If you still see the error below after clicking “Retry”, then move on to Step 3 to see if any optimizations are preventing us from seeing the script installed on your site.
Non-WordPress Sites
If you are on a non-WordPress site, you’ll want to navigate to your Grow Publisher Portal and check your Journey Settings. If we cannot see the script installed, then you’ll see the error below:
If you need further assistance getting the script installed please take a look at our help article on How To Install the Journey Script on Non-Wordpress Sites.
Step 3: Temporarily Disable Compliance Plugin
Certain compliance plugins have been known to either disable ads completely or disable ads until the reader has accepted. Try temporarily disabling your compliance plugin and clearing out your cache to see if ads appear on your site.
If ads appear, you can disable the display advertising portion of your Compliance plugin, since our Consent Management Platform covers Journey ads. If this option to disable doesn’t exist, you can reach out to their support or explore another consent option that doesn’t conflict with our ads.
Step 4: Check for Script Optimizations
If you still aren’t seeing ads on your site after checking for ad placements, then you may be running a plugin or script on your site that is conflicting with our ad script on your site.
If you are running any speed optimization or caching plugins, then we suggest making sure that you are excluding our script from being optimized in any way.
Please take a look at our help document on How To Exclude Ads From Being Optimized to make sure the script is not optimized.
Step 5: Check for other Conflicts
If you’ve checked that the script is installed correctly, and confirmed that there aren’t any script optimizations in place, then please take a look at our Conflicts and Compatibility list to see if you may be running any other plugins or scripts that are conflicting with our ads.
Step 6: Revert any Recent Changes to Your Site
If ads have recently disappeared from your site, it's likely due to a recent change that was made to your site.
Some changes to revert are:
- Plugin installs
- Plugin updates
- Script installs
- Theme changes
- Theme Updates
Reverting a recent change to your site can help pinpoint what is blocking ads from displaying on your site. You can revert plugin updates by installing a rollback plugin or by reaching out to your host to restore or roll back your site to a previous version.
Step 7: Disable Ad Blockers
If you’re not seeing ads, make sure you don’t have any Ad Blocker extensions or services installed on your browser. Here’s how to check your browser extensions on the most popular browsers:
- Google Chrome: click the three dots to the far right of the address bar, choose Extensions, then Manage Extensions.
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Firefox: click the jigsaw puzzle icon next to the address bar to see your extensions.
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Safari: click Safari, then Settings, followed by Extensions.
Step 8: Check if you’re logged into WordPress
Journey ads are not supposed to load for users logged into WordPress, so make sure that you aren’t logged into your WordPress admin when you’re checking your site for ads.
Step 9: Check in another browser or on another device
To rule out any browser or device settings preventing ads from loading, check if you see ads loading in a different browser, incognito window, or on a different device. If you see ads loading elsewhere, that would indicate a setting or extension on that specific browser or device that’s preventing ads from loading, and you can assume your ads are loading normally for your readers.