Set up interactive ads on your newsletter

Gmail and Yahoo show interactive ads only for sending addresses they have approved. The Interactive Setup page walks you through that approval. MailAdx checks each step, but only you can own the domain, send the sample and submit Google's form.

Before you start

• Your email platform can send AMP. beehiiv, Substack, Kit (ConvertKit), Ghost, Mailchimp and Brevo show no way to do this in their documentation. Your display and native tags keep working in every inbox.
• You send from a domain that has a real website and a privacy policy.

Steps

Open Interactive Setup. A step shows a tick once it is done.

1. Your email platform can send AMP. Choose your platform from the list. If yours isn't listed but can send AMP, choose Another AMP-capable platform / our own sender.
2. Your sending address and domain. Enter the address you send from and select Add address. Use a dedicated address, such as newsletter@news.yourdomain.com, because each address is approved separately. Add your privacy policy URL, then select Check domain.
3. Add the Interactive Ad Tag to your template. Create an interactive ad unit, copy its tag and paste it in your template.
4. Send yourself a test and check it. Send the newsletter from your platform to your own Gmail address. In Gmail, open it, select ⋮, then Show original, then Download original. Select Upload the .eml file and upload that file.
5. Register with Google and Yahoo. Choose the address and select Build my registration pack. Follow the checklist, add the privacy paragraph to your policy, and send your sample to both review addresses. Then select Open Google's registration form, submit it from your own account, and select I've submitted it.
6. Live. Nothing to do here. The address turns Live by itself.

For what Google and Yahoo ask for, read the sender registration guide.

What happens next

Google says it aims to reply within five working days, to the email on the form. The decision is Google's and Yahoo's, not MailAdx's.

Once a few readers have seen the interactive version in Gmail or Yahoo, the address shows Live in Gmail since or Live in Yahoo since the date. Until then it shows Gmail — waiting and Yahoo — waiting.

Until an address is approved, your readers see the static version of any ad.

What the checks mean

Each check shows as a pass, a warning, a failure or a note. None of them blocks anything. They show what Google and Yahoo will look at.

Check domain looks at your DMARC record, SPF record, website and privacy page.

The test email check looks at your From address, the AMP and HTML parts and their order, the AMP size (200,000 bytes at most), the tag and its reader id, the style rules and head scripts, the HTML fallback, Gmail's own SPF, DKIM and DMARC verdicts, one-click unsubscribe, and Google's AMP validator.

If something goes wrong

• "No text/x-amp-html part". Your platform isn't sending AMP, or the email was forwarded. Forwarding removes the AMP part. Download the original of an email sent straight to you.
• "… is not on your interactive ad units' sender list". Add the address to the ad unit.
• "eh= is empty". Your platform didn't fill the merge tag. Copy the tag again for your platform.
• "The ad template lost its {{ }} markers". Your platform treated them as its own merge tags. Copy the tag again with your platform selected, because that version wraps the template.
• "Your platform removed the tag's placeholder". Copy the tag again and paste it as raw HTML.
• Two slots share a slot number. Copy one tag again and pick a different Slot number in this email.
• "The email is larger than 2 MB". The upload limit is 2 MB. Send a smaller test.
• DMARC warns about the policy. Yahoo asks for p=quarantine or p=reject.
• "An ad unit still uses …". Remove the address from the ad unit before removing it here.
• Your platform is marked unverified. MailAdx couldn't confirm every detail of its template syntax. Run the test email check before you send to readers.