The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) developed ads.txt in 2017. Ads.txt is a framework that defines how publishers should list their authorized monetization partners. Using this file, the buy-side can identify which sellers the publisher has authorized to sell their inventory.
The IAB released the app version for ads.txt called app-ads.txt. The specification is an extension of ads.txt.
The simple app-ads.txt standard helps prevent the unauthorized selling of in-app inventory and app domain spoofing.
A ready to use file that includes settings for all networks:
app-ads.txt
Separated settings for each network:
Networks
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It is important to pay attention to the instructions below before beginning the app-ads.txt process.
- You must list your Developer Website URL in the iTunes and GooglePlay app stores, as relevant.
- There must be a valid developer website URL in all app stores hosting your apps.
- This app-ads.txt guide only addresses Apple's App Store and Google Play stores, with both you can fully comply with the specs of app-ads.txt.
- The Developer Website URL is used by advertising platforms to locate the app-ads.txt file.
Listing developer websites and completing every step for the AppStore or GooglePlay operating system is mandatory to complete app-ads.txt implementation.
Developer page is listed under Developer Website:
Follow these instructions to either update or add a developer website to the App Store page:
- On the Apple Developer Program page, click App Store Connect.
- Select the app for which you want to add a new version.
- Inside the app, click + for Version or Platform
- In the new version add the Marketing URL
- Post the
/app-ads.txtfile on the root folder of your developer website, listing all authorized sellers of their app inventory.
Contact your internal webmaster to post the .txt file on your developer website including all direct and indirect authorized sellers of your inventory.
The developer page is listed under Visit Website:
Follow these instructions to either update or add a developer website to Google Play:
- On the Google Play Console select the game for which you want to add a website
- On the left menu bar click Store Presence >> Store Listing
- Enter the details of your app
- Enter your contact details including the Website.
- Post the
/app-ads.txtfile on the root folder of your developer website, listing all authorized sellers of their app inventory.
Contact your internal webmaster to post the .txt file on your developer website including all direct and indirect authorized sellers of your inventory.
To ensure your app-ads.txt file can be crawled, we recommend working through the following troubleshooting steps.
The following information was taken from a Google Support resource.
Redirects from domain.com/app-ads.txt to www.domain.com/app-ads.txt are fairly common. App-ads.txt crawling will start at the root domain. The root domain needs to return from, or redirect to, the app-ads.txt file.
www.domain.com/app-ads.txt will only be crawled if domain.com/app-ads.txt redirects to it.
If a previously seen app-ads.txt file is unavailable on a subsequent re-crawl, the previously seen entries will be:
- Purged if the response is a hard 404 error (page that actually doesn’t exist; HTTP 404 status).
- Retained for up to five days if the response is a soft 404 error (a real page returned for a URL that doesn't actually exist; HTTP 200 status) or a 500 server error.
While a request for an app-ads.txt file may return the contents of the file in the response body, if the status code in the response header indicates the file was not found (e.g., status code 404):
- The response will be ignored.
- The file will be considered non-existent.
Make sure the file has an HTTP 200 OK status code.
Formatting errors, such as invalid whitespace characters, may be difficult to detect but can make an app-ads.txt file difficult to parse by a crawler, and may therefore result in a file being ignored. Avoid copying and pasting app-ads.txt entries from a rich text editor; we recommend a plain text editor. You can also check for invalid UTF-8 characters in your app-ads.txt file using a HEX editor.
The Google crawler attempts to crawl all app-ads.txt files on both HTTP and HTTPS. However, a 404 (or 40X) response causes previously crawled entries to be purged, even though an app-ads.txt file is crawled via HTTP. Therefore, if crawling via HTTPS returns a 404 (or 40X):
The previously crawled entry will be purged.
Please ensure the app-ads.txt is accessible via both HTTP and HTTPS.
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