Publisher Portal Guide

How newsletter publishers use the MailAdx dashboard: ad units and the ad tag, Tag Health, direct-sold sponsors, programmatic demand, audience data and the wallet.

Who this guide is for

Newsletter publishers and ad ops teams selling inbox inventory. If you are buying ads instead, see the Advertiser Dashboard guide. For product positioning, see For Publishers.

1. How publisher monetisation works

You paste an image ad tag into your ESP template once. When a subscriber opens the email, their mail client requests the image and MailAdx chooses an ad for that open: your own direct-sold campaigns, MailAdx network campaigns, and — if you enable it — OpenRTB exchanges. You earn only on opens where an ad is delivered, never on unopened sends.

  • Impression — counted when the ad image is delivered to an opened email (see Impression & Click Tracking).
  • Fill — whether an open got an ad. When nothing is eligible, the reader sees nothing: the image is a transparent pixel and your layout is unaffected.
  • Fees — direct-sold impressions carry a flat serving fee from your wallet; network and OpenRTB impressions credit your wallet after MailAdx's share. Your rates are under Account → Platform Fee Schedule (Billing).

2. Account setup and going live

  1. Sign up as a Publisher. You can set everything up immediately; serving starts once the team approves the account.
  2. Complete your profile under Account: website, newsletter size, subscriber count, sending frequency, average open rate and ESP. Advertisers browsing the publisher directory see these. Under Content & Demand, pick your newsletter's topics and enter roughly where your readers are (country and share).
  3. Create an ad unit (section 3).
  4. Add the ad tag to your template from Delivery → Ad Tags, replacing the {{EMAIL_SHA256}} placeholder with your ESP's value — see the integration guide for your ESP.
  5. Send a test and check Tag Health (section 4). There is no publish step — changes reach the ad server within seconds.

3. Ad units

An ad unit is one slot in your newsletter, identified by a placement key (for example header). Create it under Inventory → Ad Units with its allowed formats and sizes and an optional floor CPM — the minimum CPM a campaign must pay to win that slot. Each ad unit has its own tag; you can pause a unit at any time.

  • Image banners — static image creatives at the sizes you allow.
  • Native — a composite image built at open time from the advertiser's headline, body and thumbnail in your chosen layout (Native Ads).
  • Custom domain — under Ad Tags you can serve the tag from your own subdomain; the tag switches to it automatically once its certificate is live.

4. Tag Health

Delivery → Tag Health lists every ad request your newsletters sent — today, yesterday, 7 or 28 days — and how each one ended: an ad shown, no eligible campaign, or a problem with the tag (subscriber value missing or unfilled, unknown placement key, paused ad unit) with the fix. Check it after your first send and whenever revenue looks low. If 20% or more of your requests fail because of the tag, you also get an alert. Requests from your email platform's editor preview, or from a web copy of the newsletter, are shown separately and never count as problems — merge tags are only filled when the email is sent, so to test the tag, send a test email and open it in your mail app.

5. Selling sponsors yourself (direct-sold)

Under Demand → Orders you create a direct-sold order for your sponsor, a line item with its dates, caps and targeting, and the creative. MailAdx reviews the creative; once it is approved and the line item is active, it serves. You keep the sponsor fee — MailAdx charges only the per-impression serving fee.

  • Share a report — Orders → Share report creates a read-only link for the sponsor (revocable, 90 days by default).
  • Sponsor login — invite the sponsor under Team with the SPONSOR permission to give them their own login that shows only the campaigns you share.
  • Direct-sold only — turn off Show MailAdx network campaigns under Account → Content & Demand (account owner or admin); your own campaigns keep serving.

6. Programmatic demand and brand safety

Network demand is on by default. OpenRTB is opt-in per ad unit and only fills when exchanges are connected (OpenRTB). Every network creative is reviewed by MailAdx against the Advertising Policy before it can serve. Blocked content categories and advertiser domains for your account are set by the MailAdx team on request. Your own newsletter's topics are yours to set under Account → Content & Demand.

7. Audience data

Under Account → Audience Demographics you can upload gender, age, income group and interest tags for your subscribers so advertisers can target them. Plain email addresses are fine — each is converted to a SHA-256 hash on arrival and never stored. Large files are processed in the background and the account owners get an email with the result. Only include subscribers who have agreed to this use.

8. Reports and money

  • Delivery → Reports — impressions, clicks and CTR by ad unit, line item, creative and date (Reporting).
  • Portals → Wallet — balance and every transaction; top-ups fund direct-sold serving fees, network earnings are credited here. You get an email when the balance falls below $10.
  • Statements — CSV or JSON for any date range (Billing). Payouts are arranged with MailAdx directly; there is no self-service withdrawal yet.

Checklist before a send

  • Ad tag present in the live template, with every {{EMAIL_SHA256}} placeholder replaced
  • Test send opened on mobile and desktop; Tag Health shows the requests
  • Direct-sold line item dates and caps match the sponsor agreement, creative approved
  • Wallet funded if you run direct-sold campaigns

Related documentation