6 Best Ad Management Plugins for WordPress
Does your website depend on ad revenue to keep going? A lot of WordPress websites monetize their content using advertisements. There are several ways to do this, from sponsored posts and direct rental of website real estate, to ads from external networks such as Google Adsense. We will be dealing with this last option.
WordPress does not offer an easy ad management solution by default and many WordPress themes don’t even have designated spaces for ads in case you want them. With an ad management plugin, you can overcome these limitations. With so many plugins to choose from, it’s no wonder a blogger looking to monetize their content might be at a loss as to what to choose. Don’t worry, though – we got you.
Here are our top picks:
ADNING, the plugin previously known as WP Pro Advertising System, is a premium plugin focused on banner management, but works well with external ad networks, such as Google AdSense (with special settings for AdSense banners), doubleclick, AOL Advertising and others. This plugin also allows you to use any WordPress editor to create banners which look like posts.
The plugin also comes with some advanced features. Device filters, for instance, allow you to display ads on certain types of devices only, while country filters allow you to show or hide your ads for visitors from specific countries, refining and tailoring your ads. Automatic ad positioning injects ads into your content as pop-ups, interspersed through your content, in the background, or as animated attention-grabbing corner peels.
ADNING also allows you to sell your ad zones directly to advertisers and choose how they pay for advertising with you – per view, per click, or per day.
If you are looking for a user-friendly ad management plugin suitable for beginners, AdSanity may be just the plugin for you. This premium solution is really bare-bones and easy to use in its basic form, but offers a multitude of add-ons for various advanced functions. These depend on the plan you choose, but each plan comes with some advanced options: video ads, rotating ads, weighted ads, Google Analytics tracking, ad block detection, and more. You may mix and match those as you like, to suit your website’s style.
This plugin supports both externally provided ads, such as from Google AdSense, and locally hosted ads, such as banners. You can use it to show ads in your website’s widget areas, but also content areas, such as posts. And, if you are more technically adept, you can customize all your ads by adding custom CSS styles.
The developers also run a blog dealing with various issues of interest to WordPress users using advertisements to monetize their content.
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If you are focusing on locally hosted banners for your advertising income, WP Bannerize Pro might just be the thing for you. Despite the name, this ad management plugin is completely free. It works by creating a custom post type called “Banner” which you can then use through widgets or shortcodes.
The developer has provided a long list of parameters which you need to get acquainted with before you begin to exploit the plugin’s full potential, but these are all really logical and require only a little effort. You can easily add complex parameters to your ads, such as device filters and geo filters (country, region, time zone and city). You can also choose to assign categories to your banners, allowing for extra-fine targeting. While having been designed for local, Bannerize also works with remotely hosted ads.
Insert Post Ads is a free plugin specialized for in-post ads, and works with Google AdSense. This plugin allows you to automatically insert ads after a user-specified number of paragraphs, meaning you don’t have to do anything but provide the content.
It is very simple to use on the back end: all you need to do is specify the number of paragraphs before each ad (of course, you can choose to place your ads before or after the entirety of the post content), select whether to insert ads into posts, pages, or custom post types, and the plugin does the rest of the work.
The plugin also has a geo-targeting feature.
Ad Inserter is an ad management WordPress with many advanced ad management features in the free version, and many more again in the Pro version.
The free version sports an easy platform for inserting different kinds of ads, including doubleclick, Google AdSense, Amazon Native Shopping Ads and rotating banners, but the plugin actually does a lot more. You can use it for opt-in forms, analytics, and visitor tracking, too. It automatically inserts ads before or after your content, or after any number of paragraphs (including random), as well as into the headers and footers and in relation to images (so that the ad isn’t too close to images, to avoid confusion) or comments, if you so choose – or you can also insert them manually. The free version also comes with ad block detection, allowing you to ask your visitors to whitelist your website.
With the Pro version you get all of the above, plus geo targeting on country, region and city levels, IP blacklisting for countries and cities, ad statistics, animated sticky ads, skin ads, and more advanced features.
Finally, we give you Quick Adsense. Another free solution, this plugin works not only with Google Adsense, but with any ad code. You can insert the ads into your blog posts wherever you want them, at intervals, at the beginning, middle, or at the end, and you can also choose to place them randomly anywhere in your posts.
The interesting thing about this plugin is that it allows you to create really ad-heavy posts if you are so inclined. You can have up to 10 ads a page. As Google Adsense only allows up to three ads a page, you need to use other ad networks, which makes Quick Adsense great for per-view ads, maximizing your revenue.
This plugin is easy to use, and doesn’t overwhelm you with a great deal of options, making it a good choice for beginners.
In Conclusion
Art for art’s sake is a noble pursuit, but it does not pay the bills. When it comes to monetizing the content you worked hard to create, ads are as good a way as any, and you can do a lot to make them as unobtrusive or subtle as possible. If you are running a major operation, you might want to spring for a premium solution, but if you are running a blog or simply trying to see whether ads work for you or not, we suggest you begin with a versatile free plugin, such as Quick Adsense or WP Bannerize Pro. In each case, we are sure our selection of WordPress ad management plugins has something for you.
