There are many ways to make money from blogging, but one of the most common methods is to display ads on your website.
When you're just starting out, it's pretty simple to display and manage ads on your website. But as your traffic and potential advertisers grow, you may need a tool to help you better manage those ads, including their targeting.
WP Advanced Ads does exactly that . It’s a tool we use on our website to manage which ads appear (and where), collect statistics, and more. In this Advanced Ads review, I’ll show you how this free/paid plugin can help you do the same on your blog.
What does the WordPress Advanced Ads plugin actually do?
Advanced Ads is a free WordPress plugin (pro options are also available) available at WordPress.org, with a variety of premium extensions available to add additional functionality.
It is compatible with all major ad networks, including AdSense and Amazon . You can also use it to manage your own ads (affiliate marketing or direct ad sales).
Advanced Ads is also quite popular. It’s active on over 50,000 WordPress sites and maintains a 4.9-star rating from 450 votes, which is pretty impressive for a WordPress plugin.
Are you using WordPress and want to go premium ad free?
Enter the URL of your WordPress website and install Advanced Ads.
In the free version , you can:
- Create and display unlimited ad units
- Automatically inject these ads into specific areas of your website (such as your posts and pages)
- Rotate ads to show different offers
- Schedule ads and/or set expiration dates for ads
- Serving ads to specific types of users (based on device or login status)
If you use the Pro version/add-ons you can also:
- Selling ads directly to people
- Geographically targeting ads
- Adding ads to Google AMP pages
- Collect statistics to analyze your advertising effectiveness
- There are many more.
Basically, if display ads are part of your monetization strategy, Advanced Ads can help you do that better.
Advanced Ads Review: How the Plugin Works
First, I’ll show you how the free version of the plugin works. Then, I’ll walk you through some of the paid plugins we use at ShoutMeLoud so you can use more of the features.
When you first install the plugin, you’ll see a new Advanced Ads tab where you can manage:
- advertise
- Placement
- Rotation
Create a new ad
Creating a new ad is easy. Just go to Advanced Advertising → Ads.
First, you can choose the type of ad you want to create. Advanced ads allow you to create ads using:
- Plain Text and Code: General purpose text/code editor. Works well with most ads from external services (eg Amazon, BuySellAds, etc.), as well as custom AdSense ads.
- AdSense Ads : This makes it easy to insert standard AdSense ads.
- Rich content: This gives you access to the full WordPress editor, which includes shortcodes, image uploads, and more.
- Image Ads: This helps you insert standard image ads.
- Ad Groups : This helps you group different ads together and display them in the same place.
In this example, I will show you plain text and code ads, as this is probably what you will use most often.
On the next page, paste the ad snippet into the box ( most advertisers will provide an HTML snippet ):
You can also choose whether to reserve a certain space and execute PHP/shortcode.
Then, you set:
- Show conditions : This determines which pages you want your ad to appear on. You can show your ad site-wide or target specific pages/types of pages. In the example below, I’ve set it to only appear on actual blog post pages.
- Visitor conditions : These conditions allow you to exclude certain types of visitors from seeing your ad. For example, you can exclude mobile visitors, which I have done in the example below.
Select New Placement
Next, you'll need to choose where you want your ad to appear . Placement is basically where your ad actually appears on the page:
Advanced Ads allows you to manually select a location using a PHP function or shortcode. Alternatively, you can choose from predefined locations such as:
- Below the post title
- In the post content (after a certain paragraph)
- After publishing content
- As a widget
- More Premium Add-ons
You can use these placements to automatically insert ads in your posts, like we do at ShoutMeLoud:
For this example, I’ll choose to automatically insert the ad just below the post title .
Now, when I go to the frontend of the site, I can see the ad below the title:
Add Group Rotation
This is where advanced advertising starts to become more powerful.
Go to the Ad groups and rotation page to create a new ad group. Ad groups can:
- Rotate multiple ads based on the weights you specify
- Choose the number of ads to show at a time
- Choose how to order ads
Now, instead of showing the exact same ad below your post title, Advanced Ads will rotate between different ads based on the weights you assign.
This is great because:
- It allows you to easily test different offers
- It eliminates “banner blindness” (visitors get used to seeing the same ad and start ignoring it)
Set timelines/due dates
Timetable/Due Dates is another powerful free feature that allows you to:
- Start showing ads on a specific date
- Stop showing ads on a specific date
This is useful if you are promoting a sale or other limited-time offer. No need to remember…
- Manually start the ad when the promotion starts
- Manually stop when the ad ends
...you can set up your ad as soon as a merchant notifies you of a promotion and let Advanced Ads automatically do all the work for you.
Explore advanced features in Advanced Ads
The free version of Advanced Ads is already a very useful tool for bloggers. But with the Pro version of the plugin, you can use even more useful features.
View your advertising statistics
Using a tracking plugin , you can understand how your ads are performing by tracking clicks and impressions.
This is crucial because it lets you know which ads are performing best. By having this information, you can focus on the best offers for specific audiences .
Insert AdSense ads in Google AMP pages
If you use Google AMP , the Responsive Ads plugin allows you to easily display ads on your Google AMP pages.
You can automatically convert AdSense ads to Google AMP ads. Alternatively, you can create separate ads and show them only on AMP pages:
Get more placement options
Advanced Ads Pro gives you a ton of new placement options. You can insert ads:
- As a background for your website
- In a random paragraph
- Above the post title
- Middle of content (based on number of paragraphs per article)
- On archive pages, such as your blog post list
Sell advertising space directly through WooCommerce
If you want to sell ads directly to third-party advertisers without a middleman like BuySellAds , the Selling Ads plugin lets users buy ads from the front end of your website ( via WooCommerce integration ).
Visitor targeting criteria
If you want more control over which ads are shown to which visitors, you can use the Geo-Targeting plugin and/or Advanced Ads Pro to target:
- Location
- Previous impressions/clicks per user
- Browser language
- New or returning visitors only
- Paid Memberships Pro membership level ( *great for *membership sites )
Flip ads:
Page stripping ads used to be a common way for online marketers to monetize their blogs. Around August 2022, the Wp Advanced Ads team rewrote the code for page stripping ads, and now it works perfectly.
WordPress Advanced Ads is an excellent plugin for all bloggers
If you display ads on your WordPress blog or website, Advanced Ads is a great plugin that makes it easier for you to manage ads, display ads in the right places, and target users with precision. The free version is enough to give you a basic understanding of its features, and if you already make a decent income from your blog, then using the pro version of the plugin will further optimize your income.
Even if you just use the free version, I think it will give you more functionality and save you time.
However, with the pro version/add-ons, you can access more useful features that allow you to understand how your ads are performing and have more control over where they appear on your site.
Do you have any questions about advanced ads? Feel free to leave them in the comments section!
Here are some selected articles for you to read:
- Can bloggers make money without Google AdSense?
- Affiliate or AdSense: Which is More Profitable?
- 8 Best WordPress AdSense Plugins to Integrate AdSense with WordPress
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