Ads is still the main revenue source for the vast majority of websites. If you have a large website with millions of monthly visitors then you need an ads manager to manage your ads. Advanced Ads is an ads manager plugin for WordPress.
Just like the name suggests, Advanced Ads is an advanced ads manager. You can use this plugin if you run several ads on your website and want certain ads unit to be displayed on certain categories or tags. Advanced Ads supports a wide range of ad types. You can use it to display ads from Google AdSense, Amazon Affiliate or other advertising programs you are joining.
Advanced Ads Overview
Advanced Ads is a WordPress plugin developed by a German developer named Thomas Maier. By the time this article is written, this plugin already has over 100,000 active installations. Following is a brief overview about this plugin.
- Author: Thomas Maier
- Active installation: 100,000+
- WordPress version: 4.6 or higher
Advanced Ads itself is a freemium plugin. You can use it for free but with fewer features. Free version is enough if you just want to use Advanced Ads to set the location on the ad unit. With the free version of Advanced Ads, you can set whether you want to display an ad unit on the sidebar or on the content (before, after and inside the content). Free version also allows you to set the display conditions. You can, for instance, display the ads only on articles under a specific category or tag.
Ease of use
At first, it might take time for you to learn how to use this plugin. After you have mastered how to use it, you will find this plugin is really powerful to manage ads. Advanced Ads is technically easy enough to use. Ad codes and placement settings are located on the different menus. This will make it easy for you to change the location of the ads in the future. For example, you are installing an ads unit (say AdSense) and you want the ads to displayed in the middle of the content on a single post.
4 months later, you want to test a new strategy by placing the ads right after the content. For such case, you don’t need to install a new ads unit. You can go to the Placements setting, choose a new location and select the ads unit you want to change the location of.
Installing a new ads unit is also quite easy. As easy as creating a new post in WordPress. However, you need to be a little thorough. Advanced Ads provides a setup wizard, but you don’t always run this wizard to install a new ads unit. Basically, all you need to do is paste the ad code, set the display conditions or visitor conditions and click the Publish button. Placement can be set later on the Placements setting.
There are 6 sections you need to notice on the ads editor page, as shown on the screenshot below.
- Ad Type: The type of the ads you want to display. There are 6 ad types supported by Advanced Ads. If you want to display ads from services like AdSense or Amazon Affiliate, you can select the top option (Plain Text and Code).
- Ad Parameter: A place where you paste the ads code. Be it in JavaScript, HTML or PHP.
- Layout/Output: To set the position of the ads (alignment)
- Display Conditions: To set the display conditions. For instance, you can set an ads unit to only appear on the articles under a specific category or tag.
- Visitor Conditions: To set the visitor conditions. For instance, you can set your ads to appear on a specific geo location, browser language, new visitors, user agent so on.
- Ad Stats: To check the performance of your ads
Once done setting the ads, you can click the Publish/Update button on the right panel.
Notable features
In addition to the basic features, Advanced Ads also offers advanced features which you can get via add-ons. Providing add-on is how Advanced Ads generates money. All add-ons offered by the developer are paid add-ons. Following are some of the notable add-ons offered by Advanced Ads.
- Advanced Ads Pro: Allows you to set more display and visitor conditions and supports more placements
- Selling Ads: Allows you to earn money by selling ad space. Advertisers pay for ad space directly on the frontend of your site.
- Geo targeting: Allows you to set the ads to appear only on specific geo location. I.e country
- Responsive, AMP and Mobile ads: Allows you to display ads based on the device or the size of visitor’s browser.
Technical support
Advanced Ads is a personal project from Thomas Maier. Even so, the technical support is excellent enough. You can see all of the technical issues submitted by the Advanced Ads users on the Support page of the plugin on the WordPress site (wordpress.org).
The developer answers every single question from the users. If you are a paying customer and want to get priority and private email support you can also open a ticket support. You can visit the official technical support page of Advanced Ads to open a ticket support.
The Verdict
Advanced Ads is a great ad manager plugin for WordPress. If you have a WordPress site with millions of monthly visitors then this plugin is great tool to optimize the ads on your website. You can use this plugin to display ads based on certain conditions.
You can, for instance, set an ads unit to appear only on articles under a specific category or tag. Or, you can also set an ads unit to appear only on a specific country, which is pretty useful to promote tangible products.
This plugin also allows you to display ads on a specific location on the content (article). Like before the content, in the middle of the content, after certain paragraph, or after the content. Advanced Ads is easy enough to use. It is arguably one of the best ads manager plugins for WordPress.
