Publishers can no longer use AdSense as a “House” line item

This post was most recently updated on July 20th, 2020

Google has updated the limits for the use of line items. Starting May 1st, 2020, Google will consider any impression using their tag as ‘House’ to be invalid activity. This is a recent update, and many publishers do not know what to do.

This certainly takes away some control that publishers had over the bidding process. Publishers used to use AdSense as a house line item, because this allowed them to avoid the unified price rules of Google. But now, Google is making sure that publishers abide by their rules with this update.

What it really means for publishers?

-Price Priority line items with Google creatives set to $0 CPM rate will be treated as “House” which is still invalid.

-House line item is the lowest priority line item in GAM.

-House is usually used as a ‘safety net’ that would catch any unsold impressions in GAM.

What can be done?

Your options, instead of running Google tags as House, can be:

1) Run your own in-house ads: (upload your own image or creative) and set landing page to a product you sell or another page on your site to increase page views

2) Sign up with as many Ad Networks as possible. More demand means less unfilled impressions.

3) Diversify your ad stack – run Ad Exchange on Dynamic Allocation, run Header Bidding and Managed Demand.

4) Check CPM floors or Pricing Rules – if floors are too high, advertisers are restricted from bidding on your traffic.

5) Run a 3rd party demand partner willing to buy impressions even at the lowest priority. E.g. native ads from Taboola, RevContent

6) Last resort – run Google tags as Price Priority but set the CPM rate @ $0.01 → downside of this, if you have Unified Pricing Rules, this line item will be affected, and you might see blank ads because the floor in UPR also applies to this line item.

-If you have Google tags currently running as ‘House’ line items in GAM, simply pause them > change it to Price Priority > set CPM rate to $0.01 > save > resume line item.

*Note: UPR sets a floor across the board, running on your inventory except for line items set as ‘House’ or any line item set to zero CPM rate.

For MonetizeMore Publishers

Publishers working with MonetizeMore can take advantage of our proprietary technology called AdSense Re-Render. It minimizes your unfilled impressions by using AdSense as a fallback in your ad stack.

There are numerous reasons why an impression could come back from GAM as unfilled, and this makes sure publishers are still monetizing that inventory. It is a simple implementation with  no additional line items needed, and only requires a few AdSense ad units & tags created.

If you are not yet a MonetizeMore premium publisher, join now and take advantage of our technology and Ad Ops team, to increase your revenue potential exponentially.

Kean Graham

Kean Graham is the CEO and founder of MonetizeMore & a pioneer in the Adtech Industry. He is the resident expert in Ad Optimization, covering areas like Adsense Optimization,GAM Management, and third-party ad network partnerships. Kean believes in the supremacy of direct publisher deals and holistic optimization as keys to effective and consistent ad revenue increases.