Are you looking for the best ad management plugins and tools for WordPress? Many WordPress site owners rely on advertisements to monetize their websites. In this article, we will share the best ad management plugins and solutions for WordPress to optimize your advertising revenue.
Why Use an Ad Management Plugin in WordPress?
Many websites and blogs rely heavily on advertisements to make money online with their content. By default, WordPress does not come with an easy mechanism to manage your ads.
Most WordPress themes don’t even have dedicated spots to display ads. This means you often have to edit theme files to insert ad code into your website.
A proper WordPress ad management plugin allows you to easily insert ads anywhere on your website. This helps you optimize ad placement and make most out of your advertising real estate.
That being said, let’s take a look at some of the top ad management WordPress plugins and how they can help you boost your earnings.
1. AdSanity
AdSanity is a beginner friendly WordPress ad management plugin. It allows you to easily insert ads anywhere on your website using widgets and ad inserter button in the visual editor.
It supports both hosted ads (banner ads managed and sold directly by you) as well as external ad networks like Google Adsense. It also comes with powerful features like ad scheduling, ad groups, insert single ad or ad group, monitor views/stats, and more.
You can create as many ads as you want and easily add them with custom widgets, shortcodes, or using the button on the post editor. You can also insert ad blocks in specific posts in WordPress. This allows you optimize ad performance without editing your WordPress theme files.
To learn more, see our article on how to manage ads in WordPress with AdSanity.
2. AdRotate
AdRotate is another powerful WordPress ad management plugin suitable for beginners as well as advanced users. It supports both hosted ads with rotating banner ads and network ads.
It allows you to easily create ads and ad groups and insert them into your WordPress posts using shortcodes. You can also insert ads into sidebars using custom widgets. It offers basic stats to monitor ad impressions, which is particularly helpful if you are directly selling advertisements on your website.
It is available as a free plugin, which works fine for most small blogs and websites. You will need their pro version if you want to use advanced features like scheduling, geo targeting, Adblock disguise, mobile adverts, media/asset management, and more.
For details, see our article on managing ads in WordPress with AdRotate.
3. OIO Publisher
OIO Publisher is an ad manager tool available as a plugin for WordPress powered websites. It is particularly great for growing websites that want to directly sell ad spots to advertisers. OIO Publisher will eliminate the middleman by directly selling ads through your website.
It handles reporting, payments, and tracking. You can create ad zones of different sizes and types on your website. You can choose how many ads to display in each zone, select a price, rotation factor, targeting, and more.
As a plugin, OIO Publisher is pretty straight-forward to use. It comes with a custom widget to display ads in widget ready areas of your website. However, for some placements you may need to edit WordPress theme files to place the ad zone code.
For more details, take a look at our article on how to manage WordPress ads with OIO Publisher.
4. Insert Post Ads
Do you need a plugin that will help you automatically insert ads into your posts? Check out Insert Post Ads. It allows you to automatically display ads in your post content.
You can create different ads of any size and then choose after which paragraph you want to display the ad. You can also display multiple ads in the same article after different number of paragraphs.
It is really simple to use. You just need to create an ad with the ad code and then ad the paragraph number. You can add third-party ad code as well as custom HTML for your own hosted ads.
For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to insert ads within your post content in WordPress
5. DoubleClick by Google
DoubleClick by Google is a web based ad selling and serving platform for publishers. Powered by Google, DoubleClick gets an edge over other platforms in terms of reliability and cost effectiveness.
It also allows you to sell your ads and run competition for the same ad spots on Adsense or other third party advertisement networks. DoubleClick will automatically choose the best paying ad for the spot and serve it.
DoubleClick also includes great reporting tools that allow you to measure ad performance more accurately than other solutions. Despite its effectiveness, it’s a bit complicated to get started with.
6. Ad Inserter
Ad Inserter is a WordPress ad management plugin available in free and paid versions. The free version is good enough to be used as your primary ad management tool but for advanced features you would want to upgrade to their paid version.
It allows you to create multiple ad blocks and choose how you want to auto-insert each block. There are a number of options to insert your ad. You can add it inside post content, before and after post content, between posts, before or after post excerpt, and more.
You can also individually disable automatic ad insertion in posts and pages, home, categories, and archive pages. It is fairly easy to use and can be used for both hosted and third-party ad networks.
7. Quick Adsense
Quick Adsense is a popular free WordPress ad management plugin. Despite its name, the plugin can be used to display any kind of ads including hosted ads, third-party ad networks including Google Adsense.
It comes with an easy to setup settings page where you can manage your ad codes and select how and where you want to display them. The plugin can automatically display ads before or after articles, inside post content, after the excerpt, and more.
It has custom ad widgets to display ads in sidebars and other widget ready areas.
It does not have many advanced features part of some other plugins on this list. Another limitation is that you can only save up to 10 ad codes at a time.
We hope this article helped you find the best ad management plugins and solutions for WordPress. You may also want to see our list of the best affiliate marketing tools and plugins for WordPress.
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I am using Insert Post Ads. While it’s easy to use, it does not offer much. Which plugins will enable me to create Advert A, Advert B and Advert C. Then I get to choose for each post, which or combination of Advert A,B,C shall be displayed?
Currently, Insert Post Ads allow me to create a few advert, eg; Advert 1 to be displayed after paragraph 3, the Advert 2 to be display after paragraph 10. But not all my articles have paragraph 10, so they will appear right at the bottom of the article (not what I want). I can only disable none or all adverts with Insert Post Ads.
Thanks.
i am adding google adsense in wordpress,
but not found option in word press widget,in appearance list have a widget but not have main widgest area….for coding adsense HTML….
Is there such a thing as a wp (.com, not org) theme (free) that will allow me to display sponsor logos on a left or right hand side column?
Getting a headache just trying to wrap my head around how to drive a wp blog, much less sorting out columns and sponsor logos…*groan*
I tried a lot of plugins. I tried adSanity, quick adsense and alot more.
My latest purchase was easier custom blocks.. Easier blocks by far the most user friendly and flexible plugin for ads. Weird that nobody know about it.
I wanted to use AdRotate in my blog to rotate some ads, and so I purchased the paid version, also because it allows you to mask the ads from adblockers.
Alas I discovered that Adrotate uses AJAX calls continously to rotate the ads (i.e. each new view of an ad makes a new call to our server).
This strained my allotted resources on the server, and soon my hosting provider had to block my blog because I was using too many resources. As soon I uninstalled the plugin the problem went away.
I have a SiteGround plan, the most expensive one for a shared hosting (not the cheapest one), but I do not have the money to invest in a single server hosting.
When I asked the developer of AdRotate if he planned to resolve the issue, his response was that it was my problem and he didn’t plan to do anything (not the best customer service answer to give to someone who paid for your product, IMHO). Between the lines I understood that it’s not his fault if I’m too poor to afford my own server…
So I had to uninstall AdRotate.
It’s a shame because it was a good plugin. My advice is to use the free version and to verify your hosting plan before parting from your hard earned cash!
you are not alone. i have sitegrounds cloud vps, but i have had to turn off much of the functionality in adrotate as it is just too resource heavy.
i am reading this for an alternative – i like the look of wp-pro advertising manager. it doesn’t have a direct selling option (though the one in ad-rotate is pretty basic anyway), but it does have an inbuilt html5 animated ad creator.
note to reviewer – it would be great if plug in reviews included info on their resource load, and other important considerations like how well they clean up after themselves on removal. I am sure many of us running blogs would rate these factors at least equally to the actual functionality of the plug in itself.
I have a website and upload movies to a lot of servers and I am aware of the pop-up ads from the video playback Is there any way to prevent these ads on my site. These ads come from other sites
I have a 6-month aged blog in blogger.com, can I transfer it to wordpress costom domain. If can, Have I get paid ads automatically and I earn?
Hi Bablu,
Yes, you can transfer your website to self hosted WordPress.org.
No. Ads will not automatically start appearing on your website. You will have to join an advertising program that works for you and then insert their ads into your website.
Is there an ad solution that will insert ads (with tracking) into a photo gallery. So after the 7th image, for example, an ad would be shown. Thanks.
I want to use wordpress plugin that allow me to insert two different Ad sizes e.g 336*280 with responsive ad unit, and I want the plugin to show 336*280 only on desktop and show the responsive ad unit for mobile visitors.
Is that possible ??
Thanks for post. Ad rotate is the one I was looking for. Thank again
That’s not accurate. The plugins above are well coded and are being updated constantly except for WP125 and Simple Ads Manager being partially deprecated. Labeling this post as a disappointment is not good.
What program can accommodate 50 ads in rotation at one time? 700 x 100 plus 240 x 140 combinations. Of course that you are aware of.
Thank you.
Great article.
I have a site. Is there a way that we can manage these ads page wise. I want to display only specific ads for a given page. Please let me know.
Heyy there, I have signed up for dfp some days ago.
I have not created any ad unit there, But from 2 to 3 days my site is showing blank ads only on the homepage or landing page.. If i browse my site with any backstring than it will show the ads..
for example .
http://www.example.com/ is showing blank ads on homepage..
and http://example.com/page/2 is showing adsense ads..
please help me to sort this out.. and I am using Adsense WP plugin by google for ad placement
I have a blog on wordpress.com and I understood from them that I couldn’t post a sponsor’s ad on my blog. Is that correct? Do I need to have my blog on wordpress.org to include ads of my choosing?
Yes, you are right. Third party advertising programs are not allowed on WordPress.com. On the other hand, using a self hosted WordPress.org website you can display any advertisement on your website. Please see our guide on the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
Can I place my own sourced ads or banners on my WordPress site?
Yes you can.
I am looking for an ad management plugin that lets me place an ad(s) ONLY within specific custom taxonomies, categories, etc… It appears these plugins only let you display ads globally on all pages/posts.
For example, I need the option of saying – Here is 1 ad, ONLY display it in New York. Here is another ad, ONLY display it in California. That way, I can now offer advertising blocks to people that want to target specific states, not nationwide by default.
OIO Publisher allows you to display specific ads for specific categories. Google DFP goes above and beyond as it can do URL level targeting.
Thanks for the fast response! I will look into both; however, I don’t want to have AdSense related ads, I want to only have/accept “Sponsorship” type advertisements, not competition or relevant keyword-based ads.
We have a Google DFP for Small Business Account. I am not comfortable because of its complexity. We are looking at a plugin that can integrate Google DFP or for some one who can help us do that. Can you help me with this,
I relly wanted an advertisement plugin for my blog and now I got one!! Thanks…!!
Hello,
Currently using one of the solutions mentioned above on 2 different client sites.
Issues are:
1. CPU intensive.
2. Database tables grow quickly and occasionally causes problems.
Leaning towards OIO Publisher. Anyone using OIO Publisher and noticed any performance problems with it?
Thanks!
Craig,
I have the same problem. I asked for OIO Publisher explanations about those potential issues. We use banner rotator : it’s a good tool,easy to set up, but we have the issues you mentioned.
Does OIO support video pre-roll ads?
Hello. We bought ad sanity but it does not let the banners rotate on their own. We are looking for a program that rotates all banners on their own so you can see the banners move. Any advice. GREATLY APPRECIATED.
Hi,
I use Adrotae Pro, and am very happy with it.
I am at the point where I will redesign the site I’m using it on, and need to decide whether I will continue.
ONE feature I need is: To display adds which is on the main site on another site ( complete separate WordPress install ) like a rss feed.
Is there a plugin that can do that?
Thank you,
Schalk
hello. Good review. However i’m looking for some plugin that insert banner ads between posts on blog page. Do you recommend any?
No sitemap_index.xml has links to posts and category xml files as well so you don’t need to resubmit them individually. Adding a sitemap doesn’t mean that Google will immediately index all your pages in their search results.
Hi,
I want to set some ads with WP125, at the bottom of the wp website I making. However I am unable to do this …. any ideas or help pls.
Be careful with AdRotate: the IP-based feature only works if your visitor has an IPv4 address, not IPv6.
Amy, I’m considering AdRotate for my multi-site. Could you explain the above restriction in layman terms? Thanks. Any other opines you’d like to share about AdRotate that might be helpful?
Is there a wp ad manager plugin which is geo compatible. Adrotate gives the ability to target ads via cities and countries. Any one which can target counties and states? Appreciate a reply.
Is there any WordPress plugin that shows advertisements/ad banner based on category. For example, if the category is dog then I would like to show a banner related to dog food. If the category is cat then I would like to show a banner related to cat food etc. Is there any plugin that could do the same?
Its quite late but,
OIO Publisher can do category targeting.
Great overview! AdSanity looks especially fascinating for our application — which is to serve banner ads only. Although, we would have to add some code to drive some of these based on cookies.
My immediate concern would be that AdSanity’s forum seems to be filled with spam and their latest blog post is over a year old. Is this product still supported ?
Is there a way to deploy more than 1 set of four ad blocks using wp125?
like one in right sidebar and the second in the left?
http://www.howtech.ga
I’m new to WordPress, and every time I need to know how to do something WP Beginner steers me in the right direction. I’ve learned a lot from your articles. This site has been very helpful for me and I really appreciate it!
Hi,
Can you help me to find an Ad plugin for wordpress Multi site.
Thanks for the guide. I had gotten lost in all the options. I think I will go with Simple Ads manager for a start.
Love your honest review. Thank you.
Hi,
I use Asrotate plugin but I feel like it slows down the site. What plugin do you reccomend that does not slow down the site.
I just need the option of having 2 ads on one slot that hade 50 % SOV each.
Thanks,
Erik
We are using OIO Publisher.
Do you still use it ? Does it slow down the site ? What about the database growth (with the plugin we use right now, database often crashes due to the plugin). How does it manage the cache server ? Thanks for your feedback !
Can OIO Publisher be used to sell ads in a directory format. I am building a real estate site and would like to dedicate one page for use as a directory of real estate services. If OIO Publisher is not suitable can you recommend a plugin that is more suitable for this purpose?
Many thanks
Reg
It cannot be used as that out of the box. There are other directory plugins, but we haven’t tested any to recommend it.
Thanks for the timely article, I look forward to your updates everyday. Any experience with Max Banner Ads? I’m just starting to use the free version for a couple of ads on a new site. I wanted a simple ad rotator for ads I sell to some sponsors of our non-profit car club and didn’t find many options. I see a couple here that I should look at and evaluate if they might be a better fit than Max Banner Ads. Thanks again for your site, you’re helping out this noob.
There are a lot of ad plugins out there. We only wrote about the ones we have tried in the past.
Very useful post. I need a plugin for banner ads management site. I want my entire website categories to be filled with ads spaces for e-commerce and internet marketers to advertise. Can you recomment and plugin or theme that can do the work for me?