How to set up Google AdSense Auto Ads in WordPress

This page is also available in German

AdSense Auto Ads are a simple way to get started showing ads on your WordPress site. This feature allows AdSense to decide where, how many and which ad sizes to place automatically. As a publisher, you only need to set it up once and can forget about manually handling each ad individually.

In this tutorial, we show you how to set up AdSense Auto Ads on your WordPress site.

Contents

You can either read the detailed instructions on how to add AdSense Auto Ads to WordPress below or watch this short video (1:00 min).

Video: 01:01min
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Global and site-specific options are only different regarding the sites included. We are using the Global settings in this tutorial

log in to your AdSense account
navigate to My Ads > Auto ads
Auto Ads can be enabled globally for all sites in your account or only for some of them using the group option
select the ad types you want to enable with Auto Ads on the Choose global settings page

leave the Automatically get new formats option enabled if you want to use new ad formats once they become available
click Save
copy the code from the Place code on your page box and either place it manually between the <head>…</head> tags or follow the steps below if you are running a WordPress site.

The Auto Ads code is the same code you would insert into your site to verify your AdSense account or to Page-Level ads (which are now replaced by Auto Ads). There is a chance that you already have or had it on your site.

AdSenes Auto Ads on AMP

You can enable Auto ads on AMP pages in Advanced Ads > Settings > AdSense > AMP > Enable AMP Auto Ads.

There is no dedicated report for Auto ads. If you want to test the performance against manually placed ads you can use the Ad formats report and see how formats like Anchor, Vignette, etc., are doing.

Customizing AdSense Auto Ads

You can make basic settings for Auto Ads in your AdSense account. In addition, you can further customize the appearance of these ads on your website using some CSS.

Ad Label

If you want to add an individual ad label to the Auto Ads on your website, you can do that with a little bit of code.

You can find detailed instructions with code examples for such an individual label in the Ad Label manual.

Margins and Padding

Auto Ads have margins and padding to the content, creating white spaces that, in some cases, can interfere with the design of a website. You can adjust this behavior by adding some custom CSS to define, for example, fixed margins above and below the Auto Ads.

The following CSS rule causes the spacing above and below the ad to be 15px.

 div {
	overflow: auto;
}

.shcb-language {
	border: 0;
	clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);
	-webkit-clip-path: inset(50%);
	clip-path: inset(50%);
	height: 1px;
	margin: -1px;
	overflow: hidden;
	padding: 0;
	position: absolute;
	width: 1px;
	word-wrap: normal;
	word-break: normal;
}

.hljs {
	box-sizing: border-box;
}

.hljs.shcb-code-table {
	display: table;
	width: 100%;
}

.hljs.shcb-code-table > .shcb-loc {
	color: inherit;
	display: table-row;
	width: 100%;
}

.hljs.shcb-code-table .shcb-loc > span {
	display: table-cell;
}

.wp-block-code code.hljs:not(.shcb-wrap-lines) {
	white-space: pre;
}

.wp-block-code code.hljs.shcb-wrap-lines {
	white-space: pre-wrap;
}

.hljs.shcb-line-numbers {
	border-spacing: 0;
	counter-reset: line;
}

.hljs.shcb-line-numbers > .shcb-loc {
	counter-increment: line;
}

.hljs.shcb-line-numbers .shcb-loc > span {
	padding-left: 0.75em;
}

.hljs.shcb-line-numbers .shcb-loc::before {
	border-right: 1px solid #ddd;
	content: counter(line);
	display: table-cell;
	padding: 0 0.75em;
	text-align: right;
	-webkit-user-select: none;
	-moz-user-select: none;
	-ms-user-select: none;
	user-select: none;
	white-space: nowrap;
	width: 1%;
}
]]>.google-auto-placed {
margin-top:15px !important;
margin-bottom:15px !important;
}
Code language: CSS (css)

If AdSense Auto ads are not displaying then please check out AdSense Auto ads not showing up for detailed debugging information.

Thomas

Starting in 2009, Thomas’ own word game website grew to 40 MM page impressions per month. He then built Advanced Ads to help his colleagues to place ads and test different ad positions and networks tests without any coding skills. Thomas now enjoys improving the product for our more than 150,000 users worldwide.