Fill sitting at zero has about six causes, and they belong to different people. This
page is arranged so you find out whose problem it is quickly.
Note
An empty slot is not an error. A slot with no winning bid shows your own content instead, which is exactly what it is meant to do. The question is only whether it should have filled.
What it meansUnder Review everything — the default policy — a new advertiser cannot play until you have approved it. Bids exist and are being held back.
What to doWork through the review queue, or set a category policy so the queue holds only what the policy cannot decide. This is the first thing to check and the most common answer.
The no-fill reason says “category refused”
What it meansThe account policy — or this slot's own rule, which outranks it — refuses the category the bids declare. Nothing is waiting for you; this is a setting, not a queue.
What to doCheck the policy at the top of the Review queue page and Who may buy this slot in the slot's settings. If the refusal is right, so is the zero.
The location has no venue type
What it meansVenue type is how buyers target. A screen without one is invisible to most targeted buying, so it receives few bids or none.
What to doSet the closest honest match on the location. Locations.
The screen has no audience figure
What it meansWith no impressions estimate, a buyer cannot price the play, so many will not bid at all.
What to doSet an hourly average at minimum. Hour-by-hour detail earns materially more. Screens.
There is no ad slot in the playlist
What it meansFill can only happen where a slot exists. A loop of your own content will report high Fill and zero RTB, correctly.
What to doAdd an ad slot item to the playlist at the position you are willing to sell. Playlists.
What it meansBuyers are bidding with creatives that have not been through review. Each auction returns a different creative, so this clears as the queue is worked.
What to doApprove what you are willing to run. The queue fills itself from the auctions that failed, so it is self-correcting once you engage with it.
Genuinely no demand at this hour
What it meansDemand for out-of-home is uneven by hour, day and season. A screen that fills at lunchtime and not at 05:00 is behaving normally.
What to doCompare across a week rather than an hour. A whole week at zero is a configuration problem; a quiet dawn is a market.
Switch on the diagnostics overlay for that screen. Its Demand section counts this session's auctions and, crucially, groups the misses by reason:
Diagnostics → Demand
ad slots 48 requests · 12 filled · 25%
no fill nothing approved ×31 · no bid ×5
last won — deliveroo.co.uk · 12s ago
1Auctions asked for and how many produced a creative.
2Why the rest did not fill, counted. This is the line that names the owner of the problem.
“Nothing approved ×31” is your review queue. “Category refused” is your policy. “No bid ×31” is the market. They look identical from the Revenue page and completely different here. Reading the diagnostics panel.