Don’t let Cloudflare Accidentally Block your Ads.txt

Paul Stanisci

March 13th, 2025

SSPs must have uninhibited access to your site’s Ads.txt.  Inability to access ads.txt can compromise earnings if demand partners cannot verify your site’s supply paths. 

A common problem with accessing /adst.xt is that certain CDNs like CloudFlare can sometimes challenge incoming requests from crawlers which then cannot access the required contents. 

This can be avoided by adding a custom Configuration Rule in the CloudFlare Rules section. 

1. Browse to Rules > Configuration Rules

2. Create a new Configuration Rule, call it something like “Don’t Block Ads.txt”

3. Set the “filter” to URI equals “/ads.txt”

4. Click “+ Add” button next to “Browser Integrity Check” and leave this option disabled

5. Click “+ Add” button next to “Security Level” and set to “Essentially Off”

6. Save and Deploy the rule

This will prevent CloudFlare from blocking crawlers trying to access /ads.txt