If you run display ads on your site, then you need to use AdSense plugins for WordPress to serve them.
Display Ads is one of the best ways of making money for bloggers. Publishers join ad networks such as Google AdSense and place ad codes on their websites. Native ads that match their content are then served to the readers depending on various factors such as the device they are using, and where they are located. The publishers are then paid, either per impressions or per clicks.
While you can manually place ad codes where you want your ads to be displayed, many publishers prefer using an AdSense plugin. AdSense plugins for WordPress are ad management plugins that help you to accomplish much more than just deciding where and when to place ad codes within your content.
When you are choosing an AdSense plugin for WordPress, you need to pay attention to the following features:
- Ability to serve ads from all major networks, and not just Google AdSense
- Ability to serve your own hosted ads
- Intuitive dashboard for managing ads
- Reports and statistics panel
- Ads expiration dates (Ability to schedule ads)
Best AdSense plugins for WordPress
There are different ad management plugins, each coming with distinguishing features. In this article, I’ll be discussing several of such plugins to help you make an informed decision on which one is more suitable for your blog.
1. Quick AdSense Management
This is a free ad management plugin specifically designed for AdSense. The free version helps you accomplish basic things such as auto-placing ads within your content, default ads placement as well as ability to serve ads from other ad networks.
The plugin makes you comply with AdSense policies by limiting you to only 3 AdSense Ads. You can still display up to 10 ads from other networks or your own hosted adverts.
The Pro version that starts from $19.99 contains more sophisticated features including:
- Geo targeting
- Targeting ads by device (mobile, tablet, pc)
- Targeting ads by source of the traffic
- Visitor type targeting
- Bot protection
Quick AdSense Pro also gives you detailed performance stats that can help you optimize your ads accordingly. You can also target ads based on the user status. For instance, you can choose to only display AdSense ads to non-logged in users only, or non-paying members.
2. Ads by WPQUADS
If you are looking for a more advanced, feature-rich free AdSense plugin that can sustain millions of monthly impressions, then Ads plugin by WPQUADS (Quick AdSense Reloaded) is the right option for you.
The plugin supports 8 different Ad vendors including Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager, MGID, Media.net, Taboola, Yandex and Outbrain.
The support for these networks means that you not only get to serve the ads from these networks but also manage them right from within WordPress dashboard.
Some of the notable features of this plugin include:
- Integration with AMP plugins
- Deep integration with Google AdSense
- 9 targeting conditions including device type, logged in status, user role, browser language, referral path and URL parameter.
- Geo Targeting by cities and countries
- Custom banner ads support
- Background ads
- txt support
- Notices for users using ad blockers
- Ad labels
The plugin is also developed to maintain the speed of your website thus high performing. As you continue adding ads to your site, your database can become bigger with time. The good thing with this plugin is that it uses Ajax based search. Thus you can quickly find ads as you search along without loading the page every time.
With its built-in automatic ad detection functionality it makes it easy to display the right ad sizes for different sections of your site and different devices for optimal performance.
Caching is a big issue when it comes to Display Ads. The plugin supports major Cache plugins such as W3 Total Cache and WP Rocket.
Some of these amazing features are only possible with the pro version of Ads by WPQUADS starting from $89 for a one personal website license.
3. AdSanity
AdSanity is a paid ad management plugin for WordPress that is recommended by many bloggers for good reasons.
It’s a lightweight plugin that makes it easy to insert ads anywhere within your content. You can then manage all of your ads from one single dashboard.
The plugin allows you to:
- Set the start and end (expiry) dates of you ads; a helpful feature for time-sensitive promotions
- Insert ads using widgets, shortcodes, blocks and ad-inserter button in the visual editor
- Serve both hosted and external networks ads
- Group ads together so that you can display different ad from the same group every time a page is loaded (ad rotation)
- Monitor performance with its detailed statistics dashboard
The plugin also comes with other advanced add-ons that can help you extend the functionality of the plugin to your own needs such as Google Analytics Monitoring, Advert Block Detection, Video Adverts, and Conditional Advert Look amongst others.
Another ad management
4. WP AdCenter
Ths is a powerful plugin that allows you to control every aspect of advertising on your website.
WP AdCenter is one of the few WordPress AdSense plugins that is actually compatible with the WordPress Block editor (Gutenberg.) It also seamlessly integrates with popular page builders such as Elementor and Beaver builder.
Some of the other notable features of the plugin include:
- Ad zoning: group ads together for easy automated ad rotation
- User friendly ad management interface
- Support for selling hosted ads. Advertisers can sign up on your website get charged either based on impressions or per duration eg. 30 days of ad placement and pay via PayPal (No need for WooCommerce)
- Detailed reporting. The built in statistics help you analzyze impressions and clicks on your ads
- Geotargeting
- Google AdSense Importer
- Auto-refresh ads without reloading the page
The plugin does not limit you when it comes to the number of ads. You can have as many adzones as you need on your site.
WP AdCenter Pro costs $49 per year for a single-site license
5. WP-Insert
Wp-Insert is another plugin that offers support for Gutenberg. One notable feature about Wp-Insert is its built in support for Google auto ads. This means you can install the plugin, connect your AdSense account and your ads will start getting served in no time.
This is a feature-rich ad management plugin that offers the following functionalities:
- Ability to hide ads for logged in and mobile users
- Woo Commerce aware
- Support for Google AMP
- Styling of ads to your liking
- Support of shortcodes from any other plugin.
- Templates for your legal pages such as Privacy policy page
- Ad rotation and A/B testing for ad revenue maximization
- txt
Just like most AdSense plugins discussed herein, WP-inserter allows for Geo targeting, ad rotation and ad scheduling, except that all these features are available for free since the plugin doesn’t have a pro version as yet.
6. Advanced Ads
This freemium ad management plugin is a great way of managing AdSense ads for beginners. It has a friendly user-interface. Individual ads are added separately on an interface that borrows from the WordPress visual editor, thus providing you with lots of freedom when creating and designing your ads. The plugin allows you to:
- Design unlimited ads
- Schedule and expire adverts by setting the running dates
- Auto-display ads inside content based on set rules and conditions
- Set ads to only display on certain pages and posts based on Display filters
The pro version of the plugin (starting from €49) allows you to integrate AdSense ads, support other Ad types as well as show notices whenever Ad Blockers are used. The plugin also has AdSense violation checker that warns you whenever you have a problem with your AdSense account.
7. AdRotate
Last on my list is an easy to use ad management plugin, AdRotate, that makes it easy to quickly import ads from major ad networks such as Media.net, Google AdSense, Bing Ads, Amazon Associates, Chitika etc.
Some of the useful features of the plugin are:
- Assets and media management
- Ads scheduling
- Display ads using shortcodes, widgets and PHP snippets
- Track metrics such as impressions, clicks and CTR
- Group ads and display them in grids, columns or rows
- Stats export feature
- Geo targeting
With AdRotate, you can preview ads while editing them, expire them, analyze ads stats as well as allow advertisers to add and edit their own ads on a clean interface.
Features such as Geo targeting, ads scheduling, mobile adverts, notifications, advertiser campaigns, and detailed reporting are only available in the Professional plan of the plugin starting from € 39 for a single site.
Why Use AdSense plugins for WordPress?
There are three main reasons why you should consider using an AdSense plugin instead of placing your ads manually on your website:
Compliance-ready: A good AdSense plugin is designed with Google AdSense policies in mind. For instance, some plugins will limit you to only 3 AdSense ads per post, but still allow you serve other non-AdSense ads.
Easy Ads Management: Most ad management plugins make it easy to create, manage and serve your ads all from one dashboard. You can manage all ads from different networks thus saving you time of having to work from different dashboards each time.
Easily-optimize your ads: With Display ads, every click counts. AdSense plugins allow you to tweak your ads while tracking performance. This way, by changing aspects such as ad placements, colours, ad types or even the number of ads you serve per post, you can optimize them for more revenue.
