6 Free Advertising Server Plugins for WordPress — Setup, Manage and Track Banner Ads
Selling advertising space is one of the most favorite monetization models for blogs. Over the years, interested parties have developed plugins related to managing ads on your blog pages.
While none of the free plugins are currently available to accept payments from the advertisers directly, some of them are really powerful, including the capability to rotate ads, add credits based on different parameters (impressions, clicks, date, or all of them), widget enabled, user-friendly stats and more.
The list is sorted alphabetically.
1. Ad-minister
Upon testingAd-minister (Plugin’s page), I immediately know this is a neat and powerful plug-in. It allows you to insert most types of content, including but not limited to, banner ads, Google AdSense code, graphics, and text.
You have the option to add the content to your template immediately or use the widgets. What I like about this plugin is the capability to create a statistics page for advertisers so they know how their ads are doing on your blog.
You can add credits for the ads based on impressions, clicks, or date.
2. Ad Rotator
This plugin is a simple widget that rotates two or more block of ads (or any code) with ease. If all you need a direct and easy to use tool, Ad Rotator is definitely worth a try.
3. AdServe
AdServe is still a powerful advertising server for WordPress, despite the lack of widget support. That means you have to roll up your sleeve and mess with the code a bit. (Follow the instructions and you will be just fine, or ask a friend to do this for you!)
Ad credits are available based on impressions, although it also tracks clicks.
4. UBD Block Ad Plugin
UBD Block Ad Plugin allows you to manage block advertising (125×125 ads) on your sidebar easily. Options are available to let you determine the number of ads and columns.
The plugin automatically rotates the advertisements to make sure the ad buyers don’t feel any bias regarding ad positions.
Ads are available within the widget page or you can also manually add it to your sidebar.
5. WordPress Banner
This plugin (WordPress Banner), as the name implies, manages banners for WordPress blog. It is widget enabled, although you have to edit the code to change the title that defaults to Advert.
You can set credit of the ads based on impressions or date.
6. WPAds
WPAds manages banners and other ad codes independently. You need to add the code to the right section of your blog theme / template manually.
Setting the weight to different number other than the default causes the banner to be displayed based on a different frequency in relationship with other banners in the same zone.
Review of Ad Manager for WordPress
Your choice of ad manager plugin should depend on your needs. For simplicity Ad Rotator may be the way to go. UBD Block Ad Plugin provides a clean and easy to use interface. It was created with the 125×125 ads in mind, although you can use it for other image sizes as well.
Of those plugins above, Ad-minister is the most full-featured, if that affects your decision.
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