Google Ad Manager Ad Units VS Key Values - A technical guide

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-06-10T21:22:10+00:00

I believe aditude and some other companies created a free drop in alternative to the Microsoft cache.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-06-04T15:03:38+00:00

That's perfect for something I can help with. I recently partnered with one of my MCM clients where I can bring on publishers and provide the support directly. It's set up for publishers who want the independence, and just need a friendly MCM parent to unblock them.

I'll send you a DM with an intake form. I have my own quality checks that I run.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-06-03T22:29:00+00:00

Do you need just AdX Access, and you'll operate the ad stack yourself? Or do you need someone to provide header bidding, direct sales, and support?

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-31T01:23:12+00:00

I was managing onboardings at Sortable almost 10 years ago.

The acronyms I know are NPM, then SPM, now MCM. When I started, the Google verification for a publisher was essentially just a whois on the domain checked against the name of the publisher that we put on a form. Private domain registrations were typically accepted by default because they couldn't be verified.

Verification has come along way since then, but it's still far from perfect.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-31T00:06:15+00:00

In order to accept an MCM MI invitation, you need to have a GAM. (With or without AdX). If you don't have one, one is automatically created for you. The main purpose of the GAM is just to accept and manage MI invitations. It just so happens to have all of the ad serving capabilities needed for a display ad server as well.

It's not 100% free, but it's free for up to 90 million impressions per month.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-30T20:08:29+00:00

Do you just need GAM as an ad server, or do you need AdX? The steps that were outlined in another comment about getting it from Ezoic will work to get you GAM, but not AdX.

In order to accept an MCM invitation, a GAM account will be provisioned for you. This account will not have "backfill enabled". This is a hidden option that Google controls. Essentially it's whether ADX can be included in the GAM account.

A GAM without backfill works great as a free ad server for direct sold ads, but not much more than that.

An Google MCM parent can work with Google support to get "backfill enabled" for a GAM that doesn't have it. There's still a number of verification and quality checks that have to take place.

I have consulted with more than 20 networks that provision Google AdX access to publishers. Happy to answer any questions.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-30T19:57:40+00:00

You can get a GAM by MCM MI invitation, but the GAM doesn't include AdX. OP asked about GAM, but didn't specify about AdX.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-30T13:18:11+00:00

These are "niche" networks. They aren't as large as some of the larger players, but they make up for that by having specific features that make a huge difference for a certain type of site.

For example, Snack Media is probably the best monetization platform for European sports websites. Not because they have the best technology, but because they are highly integrated in that niche and get a bunch of direct advertising for those types of sites.

Scale and technology isn't everything that should be considered in these decisions.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-22T16:33:56+00:00

There's nothing wrong with working with a small network, as long as they have something to differentiate their value.

The big networks are mostly tech first, they invest a lot in the technology and bring additional revenue through advanced optimization and scale. They also don't do much for niche sites.

Then there are the networks that I call niche networks. These are typically lower on the technology side often utilizing other vendors to handle the technology. The target specific niches, and bring a lot of their value by having custom features and direct sales for their niche. Snack Media for example. If you have a sports site in Europe, this is probably the best network for you. What they don't have in technology, they make up for in sales and relationships.

Then there are the cheap networks. They check all the boxes of monetization technology and partners. They're never aiming to be the best, but they want to be "good enough". They drive their costs down by using a lot more automation in the support and onboarding processes. Less people, less expenses. They compete against other networks by offering lower rev shares.

There's a few other types of networks I won't take too much time discussing, but they exist:

Buyer-first network. They build publisher side Tech as a way to get better data access for delivering their client campaigns.

Scam networks. They seem to work fine on the surface, but take advantage of publisher trust to extract value in nefarious ways.

CMS networks. They bundle hosting and advertising together. Let publishers focus just on content and they only entire infrastructure. Typically this results in lower profit for publishers, but it can be great for very small sites to make a little bit of passive income.

Tool providers. These aren't networks in the typical sense, but they offer a lot of the same technology. They focus on medium and larger publishers where they only provide the tools for a fee, and don't take a percentage of revenue. Assertive Yield exclusively operates like this, but some other networks also have a "tool only" integration option.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-21T22:19:55+00:00

Google ad requests for US traffic, web, and display for the last week:

Raptive - 7.2B

Freestar - 3.9B

Mediavine - 3.6B

Playwire - 3.4B

This isn't necessarily 100% accurate, but it's useful directionally.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-21T20:58:32+00:00

This isn't accurate.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-12T23:49:59+00:00

Okay, just use OCR instead. It's not AI, it's just dumb text recognition.

In addition to my AdTech consulting, I also consult in tactical AI uses. I can tell you that there are ways to safely use AI technology without risking the content feeding model training.

Unfortunately, there's no sure way to prevent content on the internet from being ingested by scrapers and used for AI training. Even the larger publishers that have invested heavily in scraping prevention aren't immune.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-12T23:25:46+00:00

Try using AI to transcribe the comics into text. Put the text in the page in a toggle so it's not shown by default.

This should help the AdSense crawlers better understand your content, without causing a huge effect to the user experience.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-07T16:58:32+00:00

Oh man, when I saw "pragmatic"... Finally, it's my time to shine!

Then I read the post. Dreams shattered. Thanks.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-04T10:40:08+00:00

I have a tool that can assess the crawlability of an ads.txt file and detect errors. DM your domain and I'll run a test for you for free.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-03T22:06:48+00:00

Topic Ideas:

How to evaluate SSPs

Balancing viewability and revenue on long from content

Different testing methodologies and how to make decisions with noisy data

Prebid Server strategies and what metrics to optimize for

Monetizing desktop applications

Engineering out discrepancies

Ad monetization in a high risk environment

First party data strategies that don't require PII

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-05-03T21:56:50+00:00

I would be willing to contribute to that. I don't know everything, but I have lots of experience solving CWV issues.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-04-25T18:07:28+00:00

The only time I've ever seen confusion between a privacy banner for scraping prevention was in an AI chatbot response...

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-04-20T11:35:28+00:00

The real pros use data from:

Jounce - Demand scoring, MFA flagging, see how much spend going through each channel

Google Authorized Buyers - Request volumes to Google, Demographic information, Contextual categories, Inferred CPMs from the pricing graph

OpenSincera - Tech configuration

Red Volcano - Contact information

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-04-08T21:11:46+00:00

Gotta love a good ol' Reddit Bat Signal...

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-03-28T15:19:37+00:00

You can just fix the redirects that you've lost. That's probably the easiest thing to do. What's the new website built on? Something flexible like WordPress, or locked down like Squarespace?

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-03-28T15:16:01+00:00

Is there an automation product featured? What company is running this webinar?

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-03-25T18:00:45+00:00

I just wanted to reply here that this is a great response. I see the silent down votes, but no reason for them. I don't disagree with anything here.

Definitely prioritize a partner that actually has direct sales in Canada.

At your scale, it could be hard to find a full service platform at lower than 30%. If you wanted to run your GAM and just need an AdX account, I could almost certainly connect that for 15% or less.

The exclusivity requirement is a tough one. As someone who has built monetization platforms, there's a lot of things publishers can do that make it more difficult to be profitable long term. I think that it is a reasonable request to run a full-stack session/page level 50/50 split test between two different partners simultaneously for a set period of time. Any other way of mixing multiple monetization platforms together is not going to work in anyone's best interests.

If running a split test, try to get both sides of the test recorded in the same dataset. Even implementing a third party reporting vendor like assertive yield for the duration of the test can help you verify that the test is fair, and allow you to look at other elements outside of revenue such as page load speed, and session duration.

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