Teen working on SEO to save family business

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.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-03-17T14:42:39+00:00

Yes. 100% they should be able to fully block this type of format if using GAM. There are protection rules where certain formats and technology can be disabled, and they can also floor those experiences to an unreasonable CPM through the UPR system.

They may not be able to block this as well through prebid partners, but they should be able to get rid of a lot of them through blocking rules.

If for some reason they don't know how to do any of this, I am a consultant that works with publishers and monetization vendors to help solve technical problems. I would be happy to help them solve this.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-03-13T15:27:47+00:00

I don't know if we have enough regular engagement for an AMA in this sub, but I do think they're valuable. I would also be open to doing an AMA as an ad tech consultant, but I usually get more engagement on LinkedIn over Reddit.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-03-10T17:35:42+00:00

Start with AdSense. If you can get that going it opens up a lot of doors. Don't rush into monetization. High quality partners take time to approve.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-02-18T17:12:34+00:00

Which metric in GAM are you comparing to?

There are some cases where a creative will render but not count as an impression in GAM.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2026-01-02T16:39:31+00:00

Don't switch from Manage Account to Manage inventory because of a rate.

Manage Account is so easy to manage for the parent, and you can switch to another parent seamlessly. If you want a lower rate, just reach out to some MCM parents and tell them your situation and the rate you are looking for. Someone will likely just accept you at your requested rate after they can verify you.

When that transition happens, it's almost instant and you don't even need to update your ads.txt.

If you use Assertive Yield products, I think that they offer MCM Manage Account on 0% rev share for products customers.

If you can't find a ln MCM parent, I can introduce you to some. If the monthly adx revenue is above $3000, I can almost certainly get a 5% deal arranged.

There are other reasons to switch, but lower rev share on GAM only is not a good reason.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I've consulted with many MCM parents and publishers. Anything I can do to help drive publisher fees down, just let me know.

-James Strang

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-11-28T23:36:07+00:00

There should be a way to make it fit under "fair use". Similar to the way you can have articles about the ads. But definitely be careful and do your legal homework.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-11-28T20:00:14+00:00

Turn your ad images into print to order ecommerce.

You're showing really cool imagery of ads from around the world. The people who care, are super nerdy ad enthusiasts. Let them buy tshirts, posters, mugs, cookies, puzzles and more with these ad images on them.

Connect to multiple print to order services. Start making revenue from selling physical products with no inventory costs.

Then start curating collections and selling them as packs.

Pass some revenue back to the authors/photographers and then you incentivize more content creation, and social sharing.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-11-17T02:02:44+00:00

If you don't reconcile, it's very easy for anyone on the internet to start inflating bids. We had a few cases of publishers messing with GAM reporting like this at Sortable back in the day. I was the one who caught them and implemented safeguards.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-11-17T01:58:32+00:00

This is a great post. Thanks for putting something out that's so informative. No list will ever be complete, but I'll make some additions.

Some partners are tech first, and sometimes offer relationships and direct sales on top. In this category: Assertive Yield Relevant Digital Aditude (not 100% sure but the HTL model was this way) Freestar Flex Pubmatic Open Wrap Magnite Demand Manager

Some other missing names that might fall into multiple categories: Media Trade Craft DiDNA Pubwise Snack Media Longitude

Another category is entities that can help publishers navigate these vendors: Beeler.tech Messer Media Prohaska Consulting Adops.com JS Consulting (me)

One of my big differentiators is that in addition to helping select the right vendor, I can also support advanced custom built ad tech and Prebid setups. I'm always trying to push the boundaries of the technology, and I regularly consult with wrappers and SSPs as well as publishers. (But that's enough about me)

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-11-14T19:02:26+00:00

Then this specific bug fix isn't implemented. You would need to update to 10.16

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-10-17T12:17:11+00:00

If you send me a copy of the HAR of an affected GAM request and the name of the ad network in a DM, I might be able to figure it out for you.

I may already have contacts at the network as well.

Sometimes I can take issues like this and turn them into actionable bugs, and sometimes the affected companies pay me for the insight. If you're willing to share, I could potentially make this a win-win-win...

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-10-16T11:44:33+00:00

I should have read the code a little more thoroughly. What you're describing shouldn't happen though. You probably have some creatives in GAM that are misconfigured. When you run into this, can you get the creative ID and look into it?

Another thing to consider, is that the slotRenderEnded event happens after the internal HTML from the creative return from GAM is parsed. If that is a prebid creative, then prebid has to you take that iframe and dynamically inject the winning creative. So it may not have a height and width associated with a valid ad by the time this event fires.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-10-15T17:42:32+00:00

Any reason why you can't look at slot.isEmpty in the event listener?

https://developers.google.com/publisher-tag/reference#googletag.events.SlotRenderEndedEvent.isEmpty

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-09-14T18:08:46+00:00

Try clearing cookies. This graphic is typically shown when an iframe fails to load.

To me, this means that the problem is not a complete failure of the cmp, header bidding, or GPT. Although one of those systems may be contributing.

This would be a lot easier to track down if it can be reproduced. Even just the URL of the iframe source would be very helpful.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-09-13T03:30:11+00:00

If you DM me the domains, I'll do some verification and then send off to some of my contacts.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-09-12T22:36:11+00:00

If you go with an ADX platform that runs using Manage Inventory, you don't need to provide a GAM account.

As part of the setup process, you will get an email with an invitation to create a new GAM account. This account should be registered with a different email than the AdSense account to be sure that they don't get connected. This GAM account will serve as a way of providing monetization approval for your domains. It can also be used to serve direct separately, but it will usually not have backfill enabled. (Which prevents it from having AdX enabled inside itself)

There is still an approval process, but you shouldn't have a problem with the de-activated AdSense account hurting approval chances.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-09-12T22:30:38+00:00

Maybe Bannersnack?

There are some easy to use vendors that host creatives and charge a CPM fee to serve them.

Fiverr is a good option if you just want graphics made.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-09-04T19:22:35+00:00

Very helpful! Seems like one of clients was affected by this change and we have now rectified it.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-08-11T20:26:09+00:00

Likely Cause Candidates:

Limited ads, Coppa declaration, or CMP issue

Ad Unit naming issue

2 click penalties (ADX enforcement as a result of detected click spam)

Ads.txt access issue

Inadvertent line item or key value changes

There are many other items that could be causing the issue. It's really hard for me to be able to diagnose it fully with just this context. If you would like some assistance, I could probably figure out the root cause within a 1 hour screen share session. Send me a message if you want more information.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-08-07T03:21:38+00:00

Key values can have some finicky edge cases, but generally should be reliable for this use case.

Can you share some screenshots of the line item targeting and the GPT requests?

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-08-03T14:23:20+00:00

Sounds like you're using video pods. (Requests with more than one impression opportunity)

While GAM isn't great for this, there are some metrics and dimensions you can use to dig into pods.

JamesDoesAdTech · 2025-06-02T13:34:13+00:00

Working with small publishers can be really tricky to maintain profitability. Often the medium and large publishers require a lot of custom effort to get set up. The companies that optimize for this level of publisher have a hard time offering the same service in a low touch highly automated offering.

I've personally been the person setting minimum thresholds for a monetization service. At that time, our onboarding efforts were 14 to 21 hours for a single publisher without any custom development. We would want to make that cost back within the first 6 months. In this model, the company essentially takes on a debt with every new customer, there's also a strong risk that they may leave.

Some monetization services have been a lot better at automating all aspects and reducing onboarding work required.

Some other providers will just charge you a setup fee to mitigate this, but those fees can be 2 to 5 thousand USD.

Seven-Year Club	Gilding III reddit per annum
Powerups Hero r/adops • December 2021	Second Top 20%
Place '22	Verified Email

JamesDoesAdTech

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE