Your ad spaces
When there's no paid ad
Sometimes no advertiser's campaign matches a space on your site. You decide what that space shows instead.
The three choices
| Choice | What visitors see |
|---|---|
| HalalSpark house ads (recommended) | An ad for HalalSpark fills the space. Your layout stays exactly the same. This is what happens unless you change it. |
| My own ads | One of your own images fills the space, linking to a page you choose. It shows without the HalalSpark label. |
| Show nothing | The space is left out and takes up no room on the page. |
Paid ads always come first. Your choice only applies when there's no paid ad for that space, and none of the three earns money — a house ad doesn't either.
Where to set it
There's one setting for the whole website, and you can give a placement or an Auto Ads profile its own.
- The whole website: open the website in your dashboard, go to Website Settings, and find "When there's no paid ad".
- One manual placement: go to Placements, open the placement, and choose from the "When there's no paid ad" menu under its script.
- One Auto Ads profile: go to Placements, open the profile, choose Manage Configuration, and use the last section.
A placement or profile set to "Use website default" follows the website's setting. A website you've never changed uses HalalSpark house ads.
Using your own images
Your images live in one library for your whole account, so you can use the same image on several websites. You'll find it behind every "Choose images" link. Each image has a link — the page someone goes to when they tap it — and an optional name to help you find it.
- Choose My own ads.
- Select Choose images next to a shape.
- Upload a JPG or PNG (up to 5 MB) and enter its link, starting with https://. Or tick images you've already uploaded.
- Select Use these images.
Each space only shows an image that fits its shape. We work out the shape when you upload:
| Shape | Width to height | Fills |
|---|---|---|
| Wide | About 2.2:1 to 12:1 — for example 728 × 90 | Header, footer and banner placements; Auto Ads banners and sticky bars |
| Rectangle | About 0.65:1 to 2.2:1, including squares — for example 300 × 250 | Inline placements; Auto Ads within your content |
| Tall | About 1:1.5 to 1:5 — for example 300 × 600 | Sidebar placements; Auto Ads side rails |
- If you tick several images of the same shape, one is picked at random each time, each with the same chance.
- If no image of the right shape is chosen, that space shows nothing. The settings warn you which shapes are missing.
- Your images show without the HalalSpark label and open your link in a new tab.
- We don't count clicks on your own images. Use your own analytics, for example by adding UTM tags to the link.
- Deleting an image from your library removes it everywhere it's used. We tell you where first.
Showing nothing
A manual placement removes itself, so the space takes no room — unless your own page styles reserve space for it. With Auto Ads, no slot is added to your content and no sticky bar or side rail opens.
When a house ad still shows
In a few cases HalalSpark shows its own ad whatever you've chosen. For example, when one visitor asks for a very large number of ads in a short time, or when our fraud checks flag a visit. Very occasionally a house ad also appears in place of a paid one.
How this affects your fill rate
Fill rate is the share of your ad spaces that showed a paid ad. Spaces that showed a house ad, your own image or nothing all count as unfilled, so your choice doesn't change the figure much. House ads and your own images are counted when they're seen. An empty space has nothing to see, so it's counted each time a page asks for an ad, even if the reader never scrolls to it. If you choose "Show nothing", your fill rate can read a little lower than it really is.