Why am I seeing Grow placeholder / house ads?

Seeing placeholder ads on your own site is completely norma. It doesn’t mean anything is broken or not working correctly.

As a site owner, you visit your own site far more than your readers do, which means you exhaust available premium ad inventory much faster. When no advertiser wins the auction for your impression, a Grow placeholder ad fills the slot instead. This can even happen in an incognito window.

Common reasons you might see placeholder ads:

• Visit frequency. You browse your own site more than any reader, cycling through premium impressions quickly.
• Your location. Ad spend and auction competition vary significantly by geographic region.
• Cookies & targeting. Detected cookies and browsing history influence which ads you’re eligible to receive.
• Low ad spend periods. Seasonal dips in advertiser budgets reduce competition in the auction. Remember, January and July are historically lower spend periods. This is also true of the beginnings of new months and quarters or periods immediately following holidays.

Can I do anything to see ads instead of placeholders?

Placeholders appearing on your site let you know your site is still displaying ads; it's good to remember your experience on your site is not how your readers experience things.

While placeholder ads do not indicate anything is wrong with your Journey scripts, there are some steps you can take that could lead to seeing ads instead of placeholders.

1. Open your site in an incognito / private window to rule out browser extensions, cached data, or cookies as contributing factors. Note that placeholder ads can still appear in incognito windows.
2. Disable any ad blockers. Ad blockers can interfere with how ads are requested and displayed, making results unreliable for testing.
3. Test ad placements by appending /?test=houseads to the end of any page URL on your site.
4. Test the Universal Video Player specifically by using /?test=outstream instead.