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7 Best WordPress Advertising Plugins to Manage Advertising Campaigns & Monetize Your Site

Last Updated on December 26th, 2023

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Producing content costs time and money, and owners of informational-type websites (e.g., blogs) often need sources of revenue to continue offering their services free of charge. Thankfully, advertisements – commonly known as adverts or ads ­– are the quickest and easiest means of monetizing a website. So today, we will talk about WordPress advertising plugins and explain how they can help create an income stream from pretty much any type of website.

Why Use an Ad Management Plugin in WordPress?

Placing ads into your content comes with technical and logistical challenges.

Firstly, embedding ads into a site requires coding knowledge and some messing around with HTML, CSS, and other backend stuff. Of course, the moment you start doing that, you significantly increase the risk of damaging your site, and many of us know from experience that fixing a broken website is a total nightmare.

Secondly, it is necessary to manage ads. If you have only a couple, then that’s not going to create any significant headaches. However, for a site to earn sensible revenue, it will need many advertisers, and you, as the site owner, will need to manage all of them. Some may be paying for banner ads, while others will want popups or something in the sidebar widgets area. Furthermore, don’t forget that they may only want the ads displayed for certain lengths of time or on specific dates.

Undoubtedly, you are probably now asking yourself things like “how to put ads on WordPress?“ or “how do I manage WordPress ads?” The easiest way is to use a WordPress advertising plugin on your site. So, in this article we will show you some of the best plugins available that will integrate ads effortlessly into your content and help you manage them too.

AdSanity

Adsanity wordpress advertising plugin

AdSanity is, in our opinion, one of the best WordPress advertising plugins around. Besides being highly user-friendly, this premium plugin offers total flexibility over what kinds of ads you can place and where. Those ads can be self-hosted, or you can integrate networks like Google AdSense. Furthermore, you can even add video adverts to your site.

Key features AdSanity brings to the table include:

  • Easy-to-use, intuitive user interface
  • Run custom and network ads
  • Category based ad grouping
  • Infinite or date-based ad durations
  • Customizable graphic analytics
  • Widgets, shortcodes, and template tags for placing ads precisely where you want them
  • Free add-ons for custom ad sizes, image cache buster, and ordered ad group widget
  • HTML5 ads ready
  • Custom CSS
  • Developer friendly
  • Updates and support
  • 30-day moneyback guarantee

Money-wise, AdSanity offers excellent value, with the ‘Just the Basics’ plan costing $49 per year, which covers one website and includes all the features listed above and more. Additionally, there is also the ‘All-in-One’ plan that costs $149 per year and adds several premium add-ons, plus you can use it on any number of domains.

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Advanced Ads

Advanced Ads WordPress advertising plugin

Advanced Ads is an easy-to-use advertisement manager that will help you insert, test, and optimize ads. The number of advert placements is unlimited, while the responsive design will display those correctly regardless of device type.

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Advanced Ads is a freemium plugin, with the free versions offering useful features, for example:

  • Syntax highlighting editor
  • Large choice of ad types including rotating, targeted, scheduled, etc.
  • Support for all popular affiliate and ad networks, with a range of features specifically for optimizing Google AdSense ads
  • Range of ad placement options
  • Insert ads automatically or using HTML, CSS, Javascript PHP code, or shortcode
  • Range of display and visitor conditions, e.g., hide from specific page types, display by geolocation, etc.
  • Features to prevent ads from being blocked by ad blockers
  • Device responsive

A range of add-ons is available to enhance the functionality further, including Advance Ads Pro, Tracking, Google Ads Manager, Sticky Ads, and many more. These generally cost $39 to $89 each per year and are valid for one domain. However, if you need more than one of them, purchasing the ‘All Access’ plan would be sensible because it costs $89 per year, the same price as a single add-on. Incidentally, all add-ons come with updates, support, and a 30-day moneyback guarantee.

Advanced Ads has an impressive 4.9/5.0 user score and over 100k active downloads from WordPress alone.

Get Advanced Ads

Ad Inserter

Ad Inserter WordPress advertising plugin

Next up, we have Ad Inserter, a WordPress advertising plugin that does exactly what it says on the tin – insert ads into your site. That may not sound much, but it does it so remarkably well that even Amazon suggests using it to embed Amazon Affiliates ads into your site. However, its use is not limited to them only, as it also supports self-hosted ads and all other popular ad networks.

The free version of this versatile plugin  – which has over 200k active installs from WordPress and a 4.9/5.0 star user rating – has tons of features, for example:

  • Syntax highlighting editor
  • Custom styles and alignments
  • Wide range of flexible ad insertion options
  • Automatic ad insertion on posts and pages
  • Manual insertion using widgets, shortcodes, or PHP function call
  • Disable ads on individual posts or pages
  • Generators for banners, placeholders, and AdSense code
  • Visual editor for creating ads from scratch
  • Google AdSense integration
  • Google Ad Manager support
  • HTML, CSS, Javascript or PHP code support
  • Internal ad copy and paste clipboard
  • Ad blocking detection (popup messages, page redirection)
  • Automatic device detection (responsive)
  • Code preview with visual CSS editor
  • Debugging functions for troubleshooting

The Pro version of Ad Inserter costs between $20 and $100 per year, and depending on the plan selected, expect to get some or all the following features plus plenty more:

  • Geolocation and geotargeting
  • Block or allow IP addresses, countries, or cities
  • Statistics and reports
  • Tracking using Google Analytics or Matomo
  • A/B testing
  • Frequency capping (to limit impressions or clicks)
  • Click fraud protection
  • Lazy loading (improves speed)
  • Additional ad types, including sticky, floating slide-in banner, and background (skin) ads
  • Anti-advert blocking features
  • Individual post/page exception management

Ad Inserter is a versatile WordPress advertising plugin with excellent features to help you insert ads into your site. So, why not try the free version first, and consider upgrading Pro later if you want the extra features?

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Elite Video Player

Elite Video Player WordPress advertising plugin

You might be wondering how a video player plugin found its way onto a list of WordPress advertising plugins. The answer is simple – Elite Video Player allows you to embed videos into your site and monetize those with ads. Nifty, right?

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This premium plugin has a sleek and fully customizable video player that supports videos from a variety of sources like Vimeo, YouTube, Dropbox, plus you can, of course, embed your own mp4 videos. Regarding ads formats, those can be VAST, VMAP, IMA, or custom self-hosted.

The main features of this plugin, which costs $59 from Code Canyon, include:

  • Mixed videos – YouTube, Vimeo, Google Drive, self-hosted
  • Google Drive videos support
  • Amazon S3 support
  • Lightbox mode
  • Hide range of video player-specific configurations and functions
  • Unlimited multiple instances of Elite video player on the same page
  • Device responsive and optimized for mobile and touchscreen devices
  • Sticky mode
  • Updates and six-months support (extendible to a year for an additional $20.25)

In our opinion, Elite Video Player is perfect for websites containing lots of video content, for example, gaming review sites with video clips of games in action, instructional-type sites, online courses, etc.

The plugin has sold over 2k licenses through Code Canyon, where users have rated it 4.72/5.00 stars.

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Meks Easy Ads Widget

Meks Easy Ads Widget WordPress advertising plugin

If you are looking for a super-simple, completely free way of injecting ads you’re your site, then Meks Easy Ads Widget might just be the plugin for you. Sure, it’s pretty basic, but it gives you the ability to embed unlimited advertisements with enough customization options to keep things interesting.

With Meks Easy Ads Widget, you get:

  • Predefined or custom ad sizes
  • Image ads and script-based ads are supported
  • Randomize ordering
  • Autoplay ad rotation
  • Ability to restrict the number of ads per view

Keeping in mind Meks Easy Ads Widget is free, you have nothing to lose by trying out this handy little WordPress advertising plugin. It has over 30k active downloads from WordPress in circulation and a user score of 4.1/5.0 stars.

Get Meks Easy Ads Widget

AdRotate

Ad Rotate

AdRotate is another freemium plugin that can help you manage your ads and affiliate marketing campaigns. With it, you can create unlimited single ads and campaigns using standard HTML and/or Javascript code, meaning you will need some knowledge of those. But don’t worry, it’s not rocket science, and besides, knowing something about coding can be helpful in the long term. You can also use the plugin with any popular ad network, including Media.net, Yahoo! ads, Bing Ads, Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager, Amazon Affiliates, and many more.

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The free version of AdRotate is an ideal place to get started with ads. This version has an excellent range of features, for example:

  • Self-hosted (including HTML5), ad network, or affiliate ads
  • Ad groups – dynamic mode, block mode, and page or post injection
  • Scheduled ads (limited)
  • Limit ads by maximum clicks or impressions
  • Statistics and monthly graphs
  • CSV ad export

Once you have mastered the free version, you might want to upgrade to AdRotate Professional. For $39 – $99 per year, depending on how many domains you need to license, that adds the following extra features:

  • Post/page injection for widgets
  • More scheduling options (unlimited)
  • Geotargeting
  • More statistics, including Google Analytics and Piwik/Matomo Analytics
  • CSV ad import
  • Updates and support

In our opinion, AdRotate is an excellent option, with the free version offering some useful features and the Professional version being excellent value for the extras it adds.

Over 40k active downloads of AdRotate are in operation, and WordPress users have given it a score of 4.3/5.0 stars.

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WPQuads Ads Plugin

WPQuads Ads Plugin will help you set up Google Adsense on your site quickly and painlessly. It does this by navigating you through the bewildering array of advertising options that Google bundles into Adsense, helping you choose the most appropriate type of ad while correctly targeting them.

The free version of WPQuads Ads Plugin comes with a bunch of useful features, for instance:

  • Place up to ten ads on a site
  • Multiple ads can be grouped and randomly rotated
  • Background ads
  • Support for custom image banner
  • Google Adsense and Google AD Manager and support.
  • Eight ad vendors support and 20 more on the development roadmap
  • Twelve ad positions
  • Sidebar widget
  • Nine targeting conditions
  • Various layout and customization options
  • AMP Web stories integration
  • Click fraud detection
  • GDPR and privacy tools
  • Lazy loading (Adsense ads)
  • Multi-language support
  • Import and export ads

That’s an impressive list for a freebie! However, if you are a feature freak and need more, upgrading to WPQuads Pro is for you. Depending on how many domains you have, that costs between $89 and $199 per year and adds extra things, for instance:

  • Place unlimited ads
  • Device responsive
  • Additional targeting conditions including geolocation
  • More layout options
  • Ad rotator
  • Insert the text “Advertisements” above or below any ad
  • Advanced AMP integration
  • Ad blocker detection
  • Caching plugin support
  • Updates and support

The free version alone has been downloaded from the WordPress plugin directory more than 60k times, and it has earned an excellent user rating of 4.9/5.0 stars.

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What’s Your Favorite WordPress Advertising Plugin?

In conclusion, there are plenty of WordPress advertising plugins available, and we have shown you some of the best and most interesting currently on the market. However, the wonderful thing about the ones we have listed is that even the premium ones are not prohibitively expensive, and you will recoup the cost of them quickly through the monetizing power they provide.

Have you monetized your site yet? If so, have you used an ad plugin to post ads into your content? We’d love to hear about how your monetization efforts are going. And if you have not yet started generating income from your site, we hope this article has given you some inspiration.

A team of WordPress experts that love to test out new WordPress related software, WordPress plugins and WordPress themes.