While there are many reasons to build a website, most people do it to make money. There are several ways to monetize your website, however, one of the most common is through advertisement. There are several WordPress advertising plugins that can help.
These plugins allow you to better manage your ad space to see what ads are getting the most clicks. As you see, just displaying ads is not enough, you also need users to click on them to get the most money.
For this reason, it is important for websites to understand what kind of audience they have. Being able to display ads that your visitors are interested in is a surefire way to improve ad clickthrough rates. Luckily, Google Adsense has made this much easier.
You see Google uses the information it knows about your website to deliver the ads that are most likely to succeed. This is just one reason why it is the most popular option for displaying ads in WordPress.
Today I will share the most popular WordPress advertising plugins you can use to maximize your profit.
1. Ads Pro
Ads Pro is one of the most comprehensive advertising plugins available in WordPress. With it, you can easily manage your website’s ad space and sell it in the most profitable manner possible. It comes with a variety of unique features that make it one of the best.
One such is the ability to target users with ads based on their location. This can help improve the click-through rate exponentially.
One of the most difficult aspects is actually placing the ads on your website. Some themes provide dedicated ad space that you can use, while others don’t, but this plugin fixes that.
It provides 25 templates that you can use to place ads and add them to your website’s posts and pages. This gives you more control over where you display ads and what ads are being displayed in what areas of your website.
Benefits of Using Ads Pro:
- Provides options to show ads after a certain amount of time has passed
- Give users the option to skip ads or close ads
- Display ads as a popup when users are trying to leave a page
- Includes Adblocker detection that can be used to block access to content
- Dictate what ads are shown based on the user’s geolocation
2. Advanced Ads
Advanced Ads is compatible with a variety of popular ad networks like Google, Amazon, and more. As such, it works well on any website that works with these ad networks and has a great selection of tools to help you increase profits.
It even includes a dedicated Gutenberg block that you can use to inject ads into your content directly.
Anyone who has actually tried to run ads on their website should know that it is surprisingly complicated to do so
The truth is that ad networks like Google, Amazon, and more all have a laundry list of rules and regulations that you must adhere to. Failure to do so will mean your website cannot earn ad revenue from that network.
The Advanced Ads plugin understands these rules and checks to see if your website is making any violations and tells you exactly what is wrong to quickly resolve the problem.
Benefits of Using Advanced Ads:
- See how many clicks your ads are getting in real time
- Schedule how long an ad will appear on your website to ensure that advertisers are getting exactly what they paid for
- Display ads between random paragraphs on longer content to ensure users regularly see ads
- Integrates with membership plugins to disable or reduce ads for members
- No coding skills are required, the plugin does all of the work
3. Easy Google AdSense
Over the years, multiple ad networks and programs have risen up. Yet, Google AdSense remains the most important for many. To put this into perspective, Google AdSense has a dominant 86.40% market share. It’s massive, to say the least.
As such, it is quite common for websites to only utilize Google AdSense, and the Easy Google AdSense plugin can help you do that.
So, what makes this the best free Google AdSense plugin for WordPress? Well, it would have to be how easy it is to use. Most plugins require a lengthy setup, but that’s not the case here. Instead, you just install the plugin, connect to AdSense, and that’s it.
All you actually need to do is tell AdSense what kind of ads to display. After that, the plugin’s AI will determine what ads to display from a pool of ads in an appropriate location on your website using machine learning algorithms. It makes ad integration effortless.
Benefits of Using Easy Google AdSense:
- Google handles ad placement and adds terms and conditions automatically
- Includes a GDPR consent message to ensure compliance
- Automatically implements optimizations to ensure fast ad delivery
- Supports in-page ads, matched content, anchor ads, vignette ads, and wide-screen ads
- The plugin adds Google AdSense code for you
4. Ad Inserter
It’s no secret that advertising generates income for most websites, which is why most of the best tools are premium. However, there is a great selection of free tools to choose from and the Ad Inserter plugin is among them.
It supports some of the most popular ad networks like Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager, Amazon Native Shopping, and more.
One of the key features that this plugin brings to the table is the ability to create a rotating ad carousel. This gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to displaying multiple ads at once. And when it comes to ad management, this plugin is one of the best.
You’ll be able to add the ad code to the plugin and use a drop-down menu to decide what content it can appear on. For example, perhaps you only show an ad for a new video game in articles related to video games. It’s simple but highly effective.
Benefits of Using Ad Inserter:
- Utilizes lazy loading for ads to ensure your pages load fast
- Geotargeting on a country, state, or city level is possible
- Utilizes reCAPTCHAv3 to avoid delivering ads to bots
- Utilize A/B testing to find out what ads work best on different types of visitors
- Create sicky floating ads that can be displayed anywhere on a page
5. AdRotate Banner Manager
Managing your website’s ads can be difficult if done manually, luckily, with plugins like AdRotate Banner Manager, it has become a trivial task. This plugin offers a free and premium version that can work wonders.
The free version simply aims at helping you manage and place ads, which is what most sites look for in advertising management plugins.
And it really is easy. All you’ll need to do is go through an initial setup where you choose your ad network (Google AdSense, Amazon, etc.) and the plugin will generate a shortcode for you to use.
Afterward, it is as easy as placing the shortcode in the desired location. The plugin will even rotate the ads on display after a certain amount of time has passed to help you maximize your user’s ad exposure when they remain on one page for an extended period.
Benefits of Using AdRotate Banner Manager:
- Supports ad placements inside page builder blocks from Elementor and WP Bakery
- Includes dedicated blocks for Gutenberg to place ads
- View previews of the ad before they go live
- Track how many clicks your adverts are getting
- Also great for placing affiliate banners from Amazon and other companies
6. WP-Insert
When it comes to the best advertising plugins for WordPress, it would be hard to not mention WP-Insert. This plugin makes it a breeze to insert ads into WordPress with just a few easy steps.
And the best part of this plugin is that it’s completely free to use, which makes it one of the best advertising plugins to start with.
So, where can you insert ads in WordPress? Anywhere. You can place ads in the sidebar, header, or footer areas on your site. Alternatively, you can place ads directly in your content and even between paragraphs in text.
You can insert the ads into widget areas using a dedicated widget, or alternatively, use shortcodes to add them to the post content. Overall, the plugin is simple to use and highly effective at inserting ads in WordPress.
Benefits of Using WP-Insert:
- Includes support for Google AdSense Auto Ads
- Built-in support for AMP
- Easily place analytical tracking codes like Google Analytics of Facebook Pixel
- Perform A/B testing to better understand what ads work and don’t for your userbase
- Includes access to free geotargeting
7. Corner Ad
One of the biggest problems with running advertising on a website is making sure that it does not negatively impact the user experience. We’ve probably all seen cases where the ads get in the way of the content or make it hard to pay attention.
The Corner Ad plugin fixes this by making it easy to add unintrusive ads in WordPress in the form of corner ads.
So, what is a corner ad? Well instead of having an ad take up valuable space within your content or getting in the way of your sidebar, a corner ad lives up to its name and appears in the corner of the screen.
When it comes to placing ads, this plugin makes it easy with a dedicated Gutenberg block. And don’t worry about mobile users. The plugin is responsive and compatible with all web browsers and their mobile versions.
Benefits of Using Corner Ad:
- Name your ads to keep track of each one from a list view
- Change the ad background color to match the rest of your site
- Place corner ads with shortcodes that can store multiple ads
- Integrates with page builder plugins like Elementor or Beaver Builder
- Schedule ads to be displayed on specific dates
8. Adning Advertising
Adning Advertising was formerly known as WP PRO Advertising System and has a great reputation when it comes to managing ads in WordPress. It is highly customizable with compatibility with major page builders like Elementor and WPBakery.
While it offers a lot of customization, you can rest easy that the tool manages to stay simple for beginners.
When it comes to creating ads, this plugin can make pretty much anything. More importantly, you can display the ads to the customers that they are most relevant to with geotargeting with country filters.
Instead of requiring users to manually place the ads, this plugin does that for you. You simply need to instruct it where you want the ad by selecting the position from a list of options.
Benefits of Using Adning:
- Compatible with all of the major ad networks like Google AdSense
- Utilizes AMP for faster mobile delivery
- Integrates with Google Analytics for analytic options
- Gain access to animations when transitioning between ads
- Enable parallax scrolling ads to appear on your website when users are scrolling
9. Ads by WPQuads
Closing out this list of the best advertising plugins for WordPress is Ads by WPQuads. This is a free plugin that makes it easy to place a variety of advertisements from Google AdSense in the most effective ways.
Most importantly, it follows all of the guidelines Google AdSense requires to avoid any headaches.
One of the big focuses of this plugin is on-site performance. Loading ads use resources that can lead to slower load times. This plugin helps solve this problem by introducing lazy loading onto your website for your ads.
This just means the ads will not load until they are viewable by the user. Another way this plugin avoids site slowdown is by offering AMP integration to ensure mobile users get the best experience. If you want to avoid site slowdown, this plugin is for you.
Benefits of Using Ads by WPQuads:
- Provides nine ad targeting conditions you can choose to implement
- Supports displaying ads in multiple languages with WPML integration
- Detects Adblockers and displays a message asking users to disable them
- Compatible with most major caching plugins to ensure fast load times
- Place your ads in twelve locations to give you total control
Should Ads Be Your Only Income Source?
While advertising continues to be the main source of income for most websites, it’s not the only option. This raises the question, should ads be your website’s only source of income?
The short answer is no. For the long answer, keep reading.
While advertising can be extremely profitable for not much work, it takes an incredible amount of time to actually make money with this method. In fact, the average amount of time it takes to earn money from ads is 20 months!
Considering that running a website is not free, relying exclusively on ads is not really feasible. Instead, you need to diversify.
One of the easiest ways you can start earning money on a website of any size would be through affiliate marketing. This is a simple technique where you promote a product to your audience, and if they use your link to purchase it, you will receive a small commission.
Luckily, platforms like Amazon have made affiliate marketing very simple and, more importantly, profitable for websites of any size.
This is just one avenue you could explore. Another approach is getting support from your audience. It’s quite common for websites to accept donations or even start their own Patreon accounts to collect monthly donations from dedicated fans.
Even something as simple as a Buy Me A Coffee button can go a long way. Don’t just rely on ads – make sure to diversify.
Is Adblocker a Problem?
Advertisements can be extremely intrusive, and while that has gotten better over the years, a lot of users opt to install an Adblocker extension. In fact, some web browsers have them built in.
So, as a WordPress website that might rely on advertising plugins to make money, what should you do?
Let me start off by saying that there is no correct answer. This really does come down to your preference.
Most websites will simply alert the user that they are able to make content thanks to ad revenue and ask the user to disable their ad blocker. In some cases, they even advertise an ad-free membership.
This is where things get tricky. Some website owners allow the users to continue to the content even if they do not disable the adblocker, while others block you from viewing the content until it is disabled.
There are pros and cons to both methods. If you allow a user to still view the content, they might like it enough to decide that they will share it with friends and family on social media. They may even follow you on social networks.
However, they are essentially viewing the content for free. If you block them out, well they just go find that info elsewhere.
Personally, I don’t recommend blocking users as they will actively avoid your brand and it can also negatively impact your bounce rate.
Make Money With Advertising Plugins In WordPress
Running a successful website can be an extremely lucrative career choice if you can properly monetize it. While there are several ways to do this, the most common method is running ads.
Ads allow most websites to provide their content at no cost to users. Instead, the advertisers pay the website for a chance to connect with their audience. While ads can be intrusive at times, this can be completely avoided with the right plugin.
This list represents some of the best advertising plugins in WordPress and can help you make money today.
Do you consider Adblocker to be a problem for your website? What advertising plugins do you use?