Documentation

The time from registration to seeing live ads depends on several steps. Here is what to expect at each stage.

Timeline overview

Step 1–2: Registration and adding your site

Creating your account and adding your first site is immediate. After adding a site, you are taken directly to the domain verification step.

Step 3: Domain verification

Once you place the verification token (either a TXT file or a meta tag), clicking "Verify" in the dashboard triggers an immediate check. Verification succeeds in seconds if the file is in place and accessible.

Step 4–5: Site evaluation and approval

After verification, an automated evaluation runs to check your site for content compliance and traffic quality. This typically completes within a few hours. If it passes the automated check, your site enters the manual review queue. Manual review by the Advlume team takes 1–3 business days.

You will receive an email when your site is approved (or if additional information is needed).

Step 6: GAM provisioning

Once approved, Advlume's system automatically provisions ad units and line items in Google Ad Manager for your site. This is fully automatic and takes under 10 minutes. You do not need to do anything for this step.

Step 7: Installing the script and seeing ads

After provisioning, install the hb.js script tag and add your slot divs. Ads should appear within the first few page loads. If they don't, see Ads Not Showing for troubleshooting.

Why ads don't show before approval

The Advlume wrapper will load and the Prebid auction will run even before your site is formally approved — but without GAM line items provisioned, no creatives will be served. The script itself is harmless to install at any stage; it just won't serve ads until provisioning is complete.

Further reading

• Going Live Checklist — the full pre-launch checklist
• Domain Verification — step 3 in detail
• Ads Not Showing — post-approval troubleshooting

No — you do not need your own Google Ad Manager account to use Advlume. Advlume manages GAM on your behalf under a managed network arrangement.

How it works

When your site is approved, Advlume provisions ad units and header bidding line items in a shared or managed GAM network that Advlume operates. Your site's ad units are created under Advlume's network ID (/23341212234). You do not need to log in to GAM, manage line items, or configure any settings there.

What if I already have a GAM account?

If you already have your own GAM account (either a free GAM 360 account or a full GAM 360 subscription), there are two options:

• Use Advlume's managed network: The simplest path. Your existing GAM account is not used, and Advlume manages everything. Revenue flows through Advlume's GAM network.
• Integrate Advlume into your own GAM: For publishers with sophisticated GAM setups (direct sales, private marketplace deals, audience extensions), it may be preferable to have Advlume operate within your GAM account. This requires a custom onboarding process — contact your account manager to discuss.

What if I have an existing AdSense account?

AdSense and GAM are separate products. Running the Advlume wrapper alongside AdSense may cause conflicts if both are trying to serve ads in the same slots. The recommended approach is to replace AdSense with Advlume entirely — Advlume's header bidding setup typically significantly outperforms AdSense on equivalent inventory.

If you want to transition gradually, you can add Advlume slots to new placements while keeping existing AdSense placements unchanged. Contact your account manager for migration guidance.

Further reading

• How Ads Are Served — the full ad serving architecture including GAM's role
• Google AdX Integration — how AdX demand works through GAM
• How Does Advlume Compare to AdSense?

Yes — there are no upfront fees, monthly subscription costs, or setup charges to use the Advlume platform. Advlume operates on a revenue share model.

How Advlume makes money

Advlume retains a percentage of the gross revenue your inventory generates. The remainder is paid to you as your publisher share. Your specific revenue share percentage is shown in your dashboard under Settings → Revenue Share.

There is no charge unless you earn revenue. If your site earns $0 in a month, you pay nothing.

What is included at no cost

• Prebid header bidding integration with all active demand partners
• Google Ad Manager line item provisioning and management
• AdX (Google Ad Exchange) demand access
• The Advlume wrapper (hb.js) and all CDN hosting
• Consent management (CMP) setup and hosting
• Traffic quality monitoring (IVT detection)
• Real-time dashboard and revenue reporting
• Publisher support via email

Are there any fees I should know about?

• Payment processing fees: PayPal may charge a small fee to receive funds into your PayPal account. Bank transfers may incur fees depending on your bank and country. These fees are charged by the payment provider, not by Advlume.
• Currency conversion: Payments are made in USD. If your bank account is in a different currency, your bank may apply a conversion fee. Consider opening a USD account to avoid this.

Further reading

• Understanding Your Revenue Share — how the split is calculated
• Payment Schedule & Thresholds — when and how payments are made
• Available Payment Methods — PayPal and bank transfer options

Generally yes — Advlume can coexist with other ad networks, with some important caveats depending on how those networks are configured.

What works fine alongside Advlume

• Affiliate links and native ad widgets (e.g. Taboola, Outbrain, Revcontent) — these are content recommendation widgets, not display ad tags, and do not conflict with Advlume's GPT setup.
• Sponsored content and direct deals — any paid content that does not involve injecting ad code into the page.
• Email newsletters with separate ad inventory — ad placements in emails are entirely separate from web placements.

What may conflict with Advlume

• AdSense: AdSense and Google Ad Manager (which Advlume uses) are separate products. If you have AdSense auto-ads enabled, it will attempt to inject its own ad placements into the page, potentially overlapping with Advlume's managed slots. Disable AdSense auto-ads if you use Advlume. Manual AdSense placements in different slots may coexist, but are not recommended — it creates competing auction structures that may reduce overall yield.
• Other header bidding wrappers: Running multiple header bidding wrappers (e.g. Prebid, Amazon TAM) on the same slots creates bid duplication and auction conflicts. If you have an existing Prebid setup, it should be replaced by Advlume, not run alongside it.
• Multiple GPT setups: Only one GPT setup should manage slot definitions per page. If another network loads GPT and calls googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest() or defines slots, it will interfere with Advlume's GAM line items.

Running Advlume on some pages and another network on others

This is perfectly fine. You can run Advlume on specific sections of your site (e.g. your blog) while another network runs on other sections (e.g. a tool page). The only constraint is that both should not be active on the same page simultaneously.

Further reading

• How Ads Are Served — the full auction architecture
• How Does Advlume Compare to AdSense?
• Ads Not Showing — if conflicting code is causing issues

Advlume is available to publishers in all countries. There are no geographic restrictions on where a publisher can be located to join the platform. However, ad revenue and fill rates vary significantly by the geographic distribution of your audience.

Publisher location

Publishers from any country can register and use Advlume. Payment methods available to you may vary by country:

• PayPal: Available to publishers in most countries where PayPal operates.
• Bank Transfer (ACH): For US-based publishers with a USD bank account.
• Bank Transfer (SWIFT/IBAN): For international publishers outside the US.

See Available Payment Methods for the full setup guide.

Audience geography and revenue impact

The geographic origin of your site's visitors has a large impact on your CPMs and fill rates. As a general guide:

These differences reflect advertiser demand — not any deliberate pricing decision by Advlume. Sites with predominantly Tier-1 traffic will earn significantly more per impression than equivalent sites with Tier-3 traffic.

GDPR and regional compliance

Advlume's consent management platform (InMobi Choice) handles GDPR (EEA and UK), GPP (US state laws), and CCPA/USP compliance automatically for all publishers. You do not need to configure regional settings — the CMP detects the visitor's location and presents the appropriate consent experience.

Further reading

• Available Payment Methods — payment options by location
• Consent Management (CMP) — how regional privacy laws are handled
• Understanding Bid Density — why geo affects CPMs

You can block specific ad categories, demand partners (DSPs), or advertiser domains from appearing on your site. These controls are available on a per-site basis in the Advlume dashboard.

Types of blocking

Ad category blocking

Block creatives from entire ad categories — for example, gambling, alcohol, political advertising, or competitive brand categories. Category blocking uses IAB content category codes and is applied during the Prebid bid request (eligible categories are excluded from the request) and at the GAM level for AdX demand.

Demand source (DSP) blocking

Disable a specific demand partner entirely for a site. When a DSP is blocked, they are removed from the Prebid ad unit configuration and will not receive bid requests. This is useful if you have a contractual reason to exclude a specific partner.

Advertiser domain blocking

Block creatives from specific advertiser domains (e.g. competitor.com). This prevents ads from a particular brand or company from appearing on your site. Domain blocks are applied at the GAM level and propagate to AdX demand.

How to set up block rules

1. Go to Dashboard → [site name] → Settings → Block Rules.
2. Click Add Rule.
3. Select the rule type: Ad Category, Demand Source, or Advertiser Domain.
4. Enter the value (category code, DSP name, or advertiser domain).
5. Save. The updated config is pushed to the CDN within a few minutes.

Important caveats

• Blocking reduces revenue. Every blocked category or demand source reduces competition in your auctions. Only block categories or partners that you have a genuine need to exclude.
• Category blocking is not 100% reliable. Not all creatives are accurately categorised by DSPs. Some ads may slip through if they are miscategorised at the source. For compliance-critical blocking (e.g. gambling on a children's site), contact your account manager for stricter enforcement options.
• Domain blocking does not affect Prebid demand. Prebid bidders typically don't report advertiser domains at bid request time. Domain blocking primarily works against AdX/GAM demand where creative attributes are known.

Further reading

• Our Demand Partners — list of all DSPs you can block
• Custom Bidder Configuration — enabling and disabling individual partners
• Ad Placement Policies — what ad types Advlume prohibits platform-wide

There is no hard minimum traffic threshold for applying to Advlume, but there are practical considerations for sites with very low traffic volumes.

Why traffic volume matters

Programmatic advertising revenue scales directly with traffic. Sites with fewer than approximately 20,000 monthly page views typically generate monthly earnings that fall below the $25 minimum payment threshold, meaning they would accumulate balance for many months before receiving their first payment.

Additionally, some demand partners have minimum traffic requirements before they will accept a publisher's inventory. Very low-traffic sites may have fewer active bidders initially, resulting in lower CPMs and fill rates than the platform average until sufficient traffic data is available for demand partners to calibrate their bids.

There is no blanket rejection for low traffic

Advlume evaluates each site on its merits. A site with 10,000 monthly page views but strong audience quality (high-value geo, engaged readership, premium content category) may be accepted and perform well. A site with 500,000 page views of low-quality arbitrage traffic will not be accepted.

If your site is in early growth, you are welcome to apply. If the current traffic level is too low for a sustainable partnership, we will tell you and you can reapply once your traffic has grown.

Practical expectations at different traffic levels

These are illustrative ranges based on typical US/UK audience CPMs of $2–$5 eCPM. Actual earnings depend heavily on your specific geo mix, content category, ad unit configuration, and consent rates.

Further reading

• Site Eligibility Requirements — the full approval criteria
• Payment Schedule & Thresholds — minimum payment thresholds
• Improving Your CPMs — maximising revenue at any traffic level

Yes — you have full control over where ads appear on your pages. Advlume never places ads automatically. Every ad placement requires an explicit slot div that you add to your HTML.

How ad placement works

Ads only appear in locations where you have explicitly placed a <div data-advlume-slot> element. The wrapper does not scan the page for suitable positions or inject ads anywhere automatically (unlike some older ad platforms and AdSense's auto ads mode).

This means:

• Ads appear exactly where you place the div.
• If you remove a div, the ad disappears from that position.
• You can add or remove placements at any time by editing your HTML.
• Different pages can have different ad configurations — add a mid-article unit to blog posts but not to your homepage, for example.

Per-page and conditional placement

Use your CMS's template or conditional logic to show ad slots only on certain page types:

<!-- WordPress: show a mid-content ad only on single posts -->
<?php if (is_single()): ?>
<div
  data-advlume-site="YOUR-SITE-UUID"
  data-advlume-slot="mid-content"
></div>
<?php endif; ?>

Excluding specific pages

To prevent ads from appearing on specific pages (e.g. your contact page, your terms of service, your checkout), simply do not add slot divs to those page templates. The Advlume script can load on all pages without consequence — it will not serve ads if no slot divs are present.

Managing ad units in the dashboard

Ad unit names (slot keys) are created and managed in the dashboard under Website → [site name] → Ad Units. Each ad unit has a configured size set and a slot key. To add a new placement, create the ad unit in the dashboard first, then add the corresponding div to your HTML.

Further reading

• Adding Ad Unit Divs — full snippet reference
• Your First Ad Unit — creating an ad unit in the dashboard
• Best Practices for Ad Placement — where to place units for maximum yield

AdSense is the most widely-known publisher monetisation product, but it is designed for small publishers and operates as a single demand source. Advlume is a managed header bidding platform that creates competition across multiple demand sources simultaneously. Here is how they compare.

Key differences

Which earns more?

For sites with meaningful traffic (>50K monthly page views), header bidding with multiple demand partners consistently outperforms AdSense — often by 30–100% or more. The reason is simple: more demand sources competing in parallel for the same impression yields a higher clearing price than Google's internal auction alone.

For sites with very low traffic (<10K monthly page views), the difference may be smaller because demand partners have less data to optimise their bids against your audience.

Migrating from AdSense

The main consideration when migrating is avoiding running both platforms simultaneously on the same slots (see Can I Use Advlume Alongside Other Ad Networks?). A clean migration — replacing AdSense slots with Advlume slots — is typically straightforward and can be done page by page.

Further reading

• Our Demand Partners — the 12+ DSPs competing for your inventory
• How Header Bidding Works — why competing demand sources earn more
• Can I Use Advlume Alongside Other Ad Networks?

Advlume support is available via email. This article tells you who to contact for different types of requests, and what information to include to get a fast resolution.

Contact channels

Getting a faster resolution

When emailing support, include the following information to avoid back-and-forth:

• Your account email address — so support can locate your account immediately
• The site URL — if your question is site-specific
• The date range — for revenue questions, specify the period you are asking about
• Browser and OS — for technical issues with the dashboard or ad rendering
• Console output — if ads are not showing, paste the [advlume] log lines from the browser console (see Console Errors & Debugging)
• Screenshots — attach a screenshot if you are reporting a visual issue

Response times

Support emails are typically answered within 1–2 business days. Complex technical investigations or account reviews may take longer. If your issue is urgent (e.g. ads have stopped serving entirely on a high-traffic site), say so clearly in the subject line: "URGENT: ads not serving on example.com".

Self-service resources

Many common questions are answered in this documentation. Before emailing support, try:

• Searching the docs using the search bar at the top of the page
• Reading the relevant troubleshooting article:
  • Ads Not Showing
  • Low Fill Rate
  • Low CPMs
  • Console Errors & Debugging

Further reading

• Account Suspension & Appeals — for suspended accounts
• Console Errors & Debugging — self-diagnose technical issues