An ad request is counted each time your site requests an ad to be served, even if no ad is returned. Unless your coverage is 100%, you will have more ad requests than matched requests (ads that are returned and displayed on your site), resulting in some unmatched requests.
Some reports have columns that are meaningful only for matched requests. For example, the Targeting type report shows how ads displayed on your site have been targeted. When an ad request is unmatched, there are no ads to consider, so the request has no targeting type. This is why unmatched requests appear in a separate row.
Example of unmatched requests in a report
- A user visits your site, which contains 3 ad units. As the page renders, it sends 3 ad requests.
- We only return 2 ads (because, in this example, you've blocked all relevant ads for 1 of the ad units).
- When viewing the ad request metric for your Targeting types report, you see:
- Contextual: 1 ad request
- Placement: 1 ad request
- (Unmatched ad requests): 1 ad requests
In this case, you’d keep the unmatched requests separate when you analyze how your site is performing for contextual versus placement ads because, again, unmatched requests cannot be categorized as either.
Which reports include the unmatched ad requests metric?
You can expect to see unmatched requests displayed in these reports:
- Ad types
- Targeting types
- Bid types
- Ad unit
- Ad size
