Add child publisher sites to Ad Manager

This article explains how to add child publisher sites in Google Ad Manager 360 to manage and monetize your inventory, a feature for publishers with the Manage Inventory delegation type. It includes instructions for adding sites and verifying site ownership, moving or deleting child sites, and checking site status. You can also find answers to common questions about site availability and subdomains.

On this page:

• Technical prerequisites for site reviews
• Add a child publisher site
• Verify child site ownership
• Bulk upload option: Add multiple child sites with a CSV file 
• Request batch review
• Track child site approval statuses
• Troubleshooting stuck or failed reviews
• Move or delete child sites
• Frequently asked questions

Technical prerequisites for site reviews 

Before submitting your child publisher's site for approval, ensure that Multiple Customer Management (MCM) parent publishers with manage inventory delegation are ready to register and verify partner domains (child publisher sites) and that the sites meet the following quality, crawlability, and Ad Exchange prerequisites:

1. Site quality and content policies

• High-quality, original content: Make sure the site's content is high-quality, original, and attracts an audience.
• Great user experience: The site should have unique content that's relevant to its visitors and provides a great user experience in line with Ad Manager policies.
• Account-level risk: If your child publishers' sites repeatedly violate our policies, we may need to move beyond action at the individual page or site level, and take action at the account level.

2. Crawlability

• robots.txt configuration: The site must be crawlable by Google robots. If you have a disallow in robots.txt for all agents or just Google crawlers, the site review will fail.
• Silent crawl failures: Site status in Ad Manager does not explicitly specify a failure to crawl the site.

3. Ad Exchange setup statuses

To serve ads, MCM manage account child publisher partners must have either of the following Ad Exchange setup statuses:

• Without Ad Exchange enabled: A child publisher partner without Ad Exchange enabled (or that has had Ad Exchange enabled before) can serve ads without extra setup.
• Self-signup Ad Exchange: A child publisher partner that enrolled for self-signup Ad Exchange must include all domains that they would like to serve ads on in the inventory list. These domains must be approved by the Trust and Safety team.

Add a child publisher site

To add a child site: 

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Inventory, then Sites, and then Child sites.
3. Click New child site.
4. Under "Site URL," enter your top-level domain without any prefixes, such as example.com.

   Tip: If the site has already been added in Ad Manager, you will be shown a warning that you've already added the site. This may disrupt ad serving and require retagging your website.

5. Under "Child publisher," enter the child publisher’s name.
   As you type, a list of child publishers appears.
6. Select the child publisher from the list and click Save and continue.
7. We automatically run a check for site ownership. 
   • If an ads.txt file with your publisher ID is found on the site, you can submit your site for review.
   • If an ads.txt file isn’t found on your site, or your publisher ID is missing, complete the following steps to verify site ownership. 
     Note: You’re not required to pass this automated check in order to submit a site for review.
8. To verify site ownership, you and your child publisher must complete one of the verification options detailed in the Verify child site ownership section below. Alternatively, you can use the bulk upload option to add multiple child sites at once.
9. When ready, click Request review. 

Verify child site ownership

To verify site ownership, you and your child publisher must complete one of the following three options:

Bulk upload option: Add multiple child sites with a CSV file

Because MCM parent publishers manage many child publishers, parent publishers can bulk upload child sites in CSV format and submit them for review.

To upload and add multiple child sites:

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Inventory, then Sites, and then Child sites.
3. Click Bulk upload child sites.
4. Upload a CSV file containing the site URL and the child network code.

5. Click Save and continue.
6. If the sites are successfully created, a checkmark or success indicator displays next to "Add child sites" and the "Review your sites" panel expands. If there is an error, a warning icon displays with an error message.
7. Click Review later or Request review.
   • Review later: You'll need to submit the sites individually later. The site(s) status will be "Needs review" and they won't be able to serve ads. You can find these sites under the "Requires review" filter.
   • Request review: You start the review process of your uploaded sites. The site(s) status becomes "Getting ready." You can find these sites under the "Getting ready" filter.

Request a batch review of your sites

Once the batch upload is successful, and you click Request review, you can submit multiple sites for review.

If the batch upload isn't successful, use the following table to review your error messages:

Track child site approval statuses

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Inventory, then Sites, and then Child sites.
3. In the list of sites, find the child site and check its status.
   You can enter your own search term to quickly find child sites
4. To understand the status of the child site, review the following table:
    

   Status	What it means
   Requires review	The child site hasn't been checked yet. Click Review site to start the review process.
   Needs attention	You need to fix some issues before the child site is ready to show ads.
   Getting ready	We're running some checks on the child site. This usually takes a few days, but in some cases can take up to 2 weeks.  Make sure you don't remove the site and resubmit it because this can delay the process. We'll notify you when the site is ready to show ads.
   Ready	The site is ready to show ads. Learn how to create new ad units. Make sure you follow the Google Ad Manager Partner Guidelines at all times to continue showing ads. You'll find detailed information about policy violations in the Policy center. Learn how to resolve policy violations in your Policy center.

    

Troubleshooting stuck or failed reviews

If your domain review fails or gets stuck in "Getting ready" or "Needs attention," use the following diagnostic steps:

• Check crawler access: Verify your robots.txt file to ensure Google's crawlers are not blocked.
• Resolve content violations: If the site was rejected due to quality or policy violations, view the Policy center and consult Fix policy issues that affect ad serving to resolve the issues. Once resolved, request another review.
• Completion signal: When a site is approved and marked “Ready,” the domain registration and verification are successfully completed.
  • Important: The parent publisher must wait at least 2 hours after the site status becomes Ready before updating the GPT tags on the child publisher's live site.

Move or delete child sites

Multiple Customer Management parent publishers can move child publisher sites from "Sites you own" to "Child sites" for Privacy & messaging. Sites can also be moved between child publishers.

1. Click Inventory and then Sites.
2. Navigate to the site you want to move to Child sites and then click .
3. Select the child publisher associated with your site.
4. Click Move site to confirm.

You can now view and manage this domain, along with its subsites, under "Child sites."

Delete a child site

1. Click Inventory, then Sites, and then Child sites.
2. In the row for the child site, under "Actions," click .
3. Click Continue to confirm you want to delete that site.

Frequently asked questions

Here are some answers to questions you may have about adding child sites in Google Ad Manager 360.

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