Templates
Templates let you define an ad slot, layout, or wrapper configuration once and reuse it across many instances. When you change a template, you can apply the change to every instance built from it — except fields you've deliberately overridden on an individual instance.
Where it lives
Ad Manager (main) mode → Templates. This section is permission-gated — it appears (and is only usable) if your account has template permissions; without them the sidebar entry is disabled. Templates are scoped to your customer and each template's name is unique within the customer.
What you can templatize
| Template type | Creates | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Ad slot template | Ad slots that share sizes, refresh, floors, and other settings | Rolling out the same slot design across many pages/domains |
| Layout template | Layouts with a common slot set and scope pattern | Standardizing page types (article, homepage) across domains |
| Config template | Wrapper configurations | A house baseline for timeouts, bidders, and wrapper settings |
How templates and instances relate
- Create a template with the settings you want as the baseline.
- Create instances from it — for example an ad slot built from an ad-slot template.
- Override per instance where a specific slot needs to differ; overridden fields are tracked on the instance.
- Edit the template, and choose whether to apply the change to existing instances. Applying propagates the edit to every linked instance — for all fields they haven't overridden. If you don't apply, the template is updated but existing instances are left unchanged.
Applying template edits is the point of templates at scale: fix a floor or a size once, apply it, and every non-overridden instance picks it up — no bulk editing.
The more fields you override on an instance, the less a template edit can do for it. Override only where a slot genuinely needs to differ, so template propagation keeps doing the heavy lifting.
Applying a template edit changes every non-overridden instance at once — potentially slots across many pages and domains. There's no "un-apply": to reverse it you edit the template back and apply again, or fix instances individually. So before applying a change to a live template, check how many instances it touches, and remember the propagated edits still only reach your site once you ship a release. Treat a template change like a wide-blast-radius release: apply it, verify on a representative page, then deploy.