Troubleshooting Google Ads
Table of Contents
For troubleshooting there are a couple of tools you can use depending on the ad placement in question.
Bolt Web Reader
For the vast majority of issue Bolt Web Reader should be sufficient to debug your ad issues.
All ads served by the Bolt Web Reader are Google Publisher Tag (GPT) ads. Debug information about each ad request can be found in the Google Tag Console. Some ads are shown on the top level HTML page, others on webviews/iframes within. To open the console follow these steps:
- Open the inspector and go to the console tab.
- In the drop down select top for sticky bottom banner ads, or bolt_timeline.html for all other ads.
- Type in
googletag.openConsole()
A window should pop up from the bottom of the page showing you the console.
Google Publisher Tag Console
This will give you details about each ad request made to Google Ad Manager (GAM). It includes the ad unit, slot size and targeting info for the slot. It also has helpful links to GAM to debug why Google returned a particular ad or no ad at all.

When ads do not appear as expected, a commonly seen message in the Google Ads Console is ‘Ad unit did not fill’, which means we're successfully requesting the ad but we are not receiving one back. There are many possible causes for this, all of which are to do with the way the Advert is set up in your GAM. Whilst we will try our best to help with troubleshooting, we cannot advise on how to set up the ad units or line items - in this case, support should be raised directly with Google. There are also many detailed Google Ad Manager docs which cover everything required to set up ads.
In App
Sticky bottom banner ads and prestitial ads are served using Google Ad Manager's SDK.
All other ads are served by GPT which can be tested on web. You cannot currently open the console in app but you can do the following:
iOS
- Connect your iOS device to a mac
- Open safari, got to develop tab
- Select the device and the page the advert is on
- You can see JS errors and Google flags if there are any consent issues in the console
Android
- Connect your Android device to a computer
- Accept the pop up on the device to give the computer access
- Open chrome and go to
chrome://inspect/#devicesin the address bar - Select your device and the page the advert is on. If your device is not present it could be outdated, a permission was not granted on the device or the computer, or the connecting wire may be at fault
- You can see JS errors and Google flags if there are any consent issues in the console
You can now use Google Publisher Tag Console as described above.
Ad Showcase
Bolt has a hidden Ad Showcase page where you can test all your ads are setup correctly. You can access it through the secret in app menu or at /bolt/showcase/content.html.
This page displays a Pugpig test advert at the top, then it displays all the types of adverts (Ad units and sizes) that are in the app. There is also a link to the Consent Showcase page and a link to Google test ad page both locally in app and remote. The Google test page in app, shows whether Google's Webview API SDK is connected correctly with the page.


