Google Ad Manager is a real-time marketplace partnered with the Google Display Network for buying and selling advertising. It represents another market for advertisers to bid on display advertising across the Internet. When you have a campaign that targets the Display Network, you automatically have access to Ad Manager publisher sites that follow Google Ads guidelines.
If you go butterfly hunting during the height of summer, the bigger your butterfly net, the more butterflies you'll be able to catch. The same goes for your customers: if you use a wider net, you might be able to capture customers from high-traffic parts of the web that weren't previously available to you. That's why showing your ads on Ad Manager publisher sites can help you bring in new customers that you weren't able to reach before.
Here's how it works:
- As long as you've targeted the Display Network for your campaign, your ads can appear on Ad Manager publisher sites, in addition to those available through Google AdSense .
- While your potential reach on additional publisher sites expands, the Google Ads targeting, reporting, and other account processes you're already familiar with remain the same.
- Ad Manager publishers who want to display Google ads must adhere to the Google AdSense program policies.
About the auction process
Google takes several steps to ensure a consistent auction process so Google Ads bids can be compared fairly with bids from other ad networks.
- When a publisher offers inventory to Ad Manager, Google Ads runs its own auction and composes the best ad unit, like a full slot ad or a group of text ads. Google Ads will then calculate the appropriate Ad Manager bid for the ad unit by taking the ads' bids and applying the Google Ads revenue share.
- This bid is compared with other Ad Manager advertiser bids and any controls set by publishers, such as minimum CPMs. Bids that don't meet these publisher controls are ignored.
- Ad Manager will then take all eligible bids and run an auction. If Google Ads wins the auction, the advertiser(s) in the winning ad unit will pay no more than what is required to rank higher than the next advertiser, on a CPC basis, when a user clicks on the ad or completes another valid event in connection with the ad. The publisher will be paid the higher of the highest net bid value in the Ad Manager auction or the minimum CPM.
When an ad unit is de-identified, the advertiser may not (either directly or through a third party) attempt to determine the identity of the publisher, the site name, or any other related identifying information via any means, even if they aren't identifying the seller intentionally.
Next step
- Learn more about the Display Network ad auction.