Adding Your First Website

Step-by-step: add a domain, verify ownership, set up ads.txt, install the Advlume script, and pass admin review — usually under 24 hours end-to-end.

This guide walks you through adding your first website to Advlume — from entering the domain to getting approved for ad serving. The whole process is designed to take under 10 minutes of hands-on work; admin review usually completes in under 24 hours.

Before you start

Make sure you have:

An Advlume account (sign up at advlume.com/register)
Access to your site's <head> markup or a way to upload files to its document root
Permission to edit DNS or your reverse proxy (only needed if you want to redirect /ads.txt — manual upload also works)

You do not need a Google Ad Manager account, your own ads.txt, or any prior ad-tech experience.

Step 1 — Add the domain

From your dashboard, click Add website (or go directly to /websites/create). Enter your hostname only — no scheme, no path, no trailing slash:

example.com

Subdomains count as separate sites. Add blog.example.com and www.example.com independently if you want both monetised.

After saving, the site lands in your inventory in the Pending state and you're routed to the setup wizard.

Step 2 — Verify domain ownership

Pick one of two methods. Both prove the domain belongs to you and unlock the rest of the setup steps.

Option A — Meta tag (recommended)

Copy the snippet shown on the verification screen and paste it inside your homepage's <head>:

<meta name="advlume-verification" content="YOUR_TOKEN_HERE">

This is the easiest method for WordPress, Webflow, Framer, Shopify and most CMSes — every theme has a "Custom code in head" field.

Option B — TXT file

Upload a file to your domain root so it's reachable at:

https://yourdomain.com/YOUR_TOKEN.txt

The file's contents must be the token itself (no quotes, no extra whitespace). Use this if your CMS doesn't expose <head> editing.

Once the snippet or file is live, click Verify now. Verification typically resolves within seconds — if it fails, the error message tells you exactly what we saw (wrong token, file 404, redirect loop, etc.).

Step 3 — Set up ads.txt

Authorized-seller declarations are required by every major buyer. We host a constantly-updated ads.txt for you — you just need to point your domain at it. The setup wizard shows the exact line to use; pick the recipe for your platform:

WordPress

Install the Ads.txt Manager plugin and paste a single line:

redirect=https://advlume.com/p/YOUR_SITE_UUID/ads.txt

Apache

Add to your .htaccess:

Redirect 301 /ads.txt https://advlume.com/p/YOUR_SITE_UUID/ads.txt

Nginx

Inside your server { } block:

location = /ads.txt {
    return 301 https://advlume.com/p/YOUR_SITE_UUID/ads.txt;
}

Cloudflare

In Rules → Redirect Rules, create a rule:

When: URI Path equals /ads.txt
Then: 301 redirect to https://advlume.com/p/YOUR_SITE_UUID/ads.txt

Whichever method you use, the redirect is the right move — not a static copy. Buyers are added and rotated frequently; a redirect means you never have to touch ads.txt again.

Step 4 — Add the Advlume script

Drop a single tag into your <head>:

<script src="https://advlume.com/hb.js?site=YOUR_SITE_UUID" async></script>

The setup wizard fills in your real UUID — just copy and paste. The script is asynchronous, around 75 KB minified + gzipped, and loads everything else (Prebid.js, GPT, video module) on demand.

While your site is pending, the script does not serve ads. It only collects traffic-quality signals (visitor count, geo, device mix, basic IVT heuristics) so we have something concrete to review.

Step 5 — Admin review

As soon as steps 2–4 are complete and we've seen healthy signals from your pages, the site moves into the admin review queue. Most reviews resolve in under 24 hours. We're checking:

Content quality — is the site's content original and aligned with our content policy
Traffic quality — is the audience real (not bots, not incentivised clicks)
Technical health — does the script load cleanly, are slots reachable, is ads.txt serving correctly

You'll get an email the moment the decision lands. If approved, the wrapper switches into bidding mode automatically — no redeploy needed on your side.

What "Approved" unlocks

Once the site is live:

You can create ad units with custom slot keys and size mixes
Real-time bid data starts flowing into the Live dashboard
Daily revenue is aggregated into your reporting page
Google Ad Exchange backfill activates against any unsold inventory

Common issues

Symptom	Most likely cause
"Verification failed" with the meta-tag method	Cloudflare or another CDN is caching an old version of your homepage. Purge the cache and click Verify again.
Verification works but the site stays Pending for > 24h	The script either isn't loaded yet or our crawler can't reach the page (login wall, geo-block, robots disallow).
"You already added this domain"	The exact hostname is already in your inventory. Use a subdomain or remove the existing entry first.
ads.txt error in your dashboard	The redirect isn't returning a 301 to our URL — most often a typo in the UUID or a server-level rewrite rule overriding it.

If something else looks off, the console-errors guide walks through how to grab a diagnostic log from your live site, and our team is one click away in the dashboard chat.

Next steps

Understanding the Dashboard — get oriented before approval lands
Your First Ad Unit — define a slot and grab the placement snippet
Going Live Checklist — final sanity checks before you open the firehose

Previous Creating Your Account Next Understanding the Dashboard

Last updated 2 months ago