Ad Management Plug-Ins And Tutorials For Your Website

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Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience. She writes for a number of blogs and is the author of The Smashing … More about Cameron ↬

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Almost everyone out there who runs a website has toyed with the idea of selling ads on their website. So many options are available. Dozens of ad and affiliate networks exist, and you have different ad formats to consider. Should you sell text ads or banner ads? Should you allow Flash ads? What about ads with sound, pop-ups or floating ads? People have so many decisions to make that they often just end up slapping on some AdSense code and calling it a day. And that’s fine.

But you have a ton of other options for displaying ads on your website, from using other ad networks to selling and managing banner ads yourself. There are plug-ins for virtually every CMS and blogging platform out there that allow you to rotate banner ads or insert blocks of ad code.

This post is a collection of ad management plug-ins for WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal and Joomla! to get your started. At the end are a few tutorials for creating your own banner ad rotation scripts in PHP and ASP (so that even if a plug-in is not available for your CMS of choice, you’ll likely be able to build your own).

You might also want to check out our article on AdSense, 100% Google AdSense: Tools, Tips and Resources.

1. Plug-Ins For WordPress

Who Sees Ads? Control which visitors see ads on your website, based on where they came from, whether they’re logged in, how old the post is and more.

AdRotate A simple tool that lets you manage banner ads (even for multiple sizes and different placement) on your website.

Ads For Old Posts This plug-in automatically inserts an ad block in your posts once they’re past a certain age.

OIO Publisher An ad manager that focuses on maximising your revenue, saving you time, and keeping you in complete control of your ad space. The php-script can be used to sell and serve ads and it is also available as a ready-to-be-used Wordpress plugin.

OpenX Manager Lets you integrate the open-source ad server OpenX, along with the ability to import data from an existing OpenX server.

WP125 Manage 125x125 pixel ads without having to edit your template or keep track of when advertisements need to be removed.

All in One AdSense and YPN A plug-in to integrate AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network ads into your blog.

WordPress Classifieds Plug-In Another plug-in to create a classifieds section on your blog.

OmniAds - WordPress Ads Plug-In An ad plug-in that allows you to post HTML or PHP units within your code.

Smart Ads WordPress Plug-In A plug-in to automatically insert ads at the beginning and/or end of each post, depending on the post’s length, age or category or the blog member’s status.

Another WordPress Classifieds Plug-In An easy-to-use plug-in for creating a classifieds ad page on your blog.

AdSense Revenue Sharing A great plug-in if you want to share your AdSense revenue with multiple authors on a single blog.

WP-banner A plug-in that allows you to put banner ads in a widget or a DIV anywhere on your website.

Random/Rotating Ads Show any kind of ad on your website, either in widgets or in your template.

Clickbank Hop Ad Plug-In for WordPress Lets you add Clickbank ads to your website through a configurable widget.

2. Plug-Ins For Joomla!

MultiAds Lets you insert any type of ad in your website’s articles.

Adsense and YPN Inserter A plug-in to insert your Google AdSense or Yahoo! Publisher Networks ads into your website automatically, with full control over position and display.

YOS Ads with pop-in and inject features Lets you insert ads on your website via either a pop-in (separate window) or inject page (between two other pages).

Text Link Ads Module An easy-to-use plug-in that handles all the technical aspects of managing Text Link Ads.

Phoca - Google AdSense Easy A very quick and easy plug-in for adding AdSense ads to your website by just copying and pasting in your AdSense code.

Page Peel Banner A plug-in that manages page peel banner ads for your website, including impression and click statistics. It supports JPG and Flash ads.

AdSense Deluxe Module AdSense management plug-in that includes a complete set of ad formats.

AdSense Easy Insert Allows insertion of two AdSense ads around your content (one before and one after).

3. Plug-Ins For Drupal

Advertisement Module A module for displaying ads (graphical or text) in a random order anywhere on your website. Ads can be automatically or manually inserted into your website.

ad_flash An add-on that allows Flash advertisements to be displayed with the Drupal ad module.

Affiliate Allows you to set up your own affiliate network and issue affiliate links to partners.

Classified Ads A module that allows you to create a text-based classified ads section on your website.

Click-Thru Tracking Allows website owners and admins to track click-through rates on their websites, for ads or any other links.

Pay2Publish Allow visitors to your website to publish free listings (content) on your website and then upgrade to paid versions at any time.

Rotor Banner A plug-in for creating blocks of rotating content on your website, where you can place banner ads or anything else you want.

Slidebox Create ad boxes of any size that float into your page from above.

Simple Ad Block A very simple ad management plug-in that places an ad block onto your website in which you can paste code from AdSense or any other ad network.

4. Plug-Ins For Movable Type

Page Layout Plug-In Allows you to create and use page layout templates, which facilitate the hiding and showing of ads and other content on certain pages.

5. Ad Management Tutorials And Articles

Which Ad Manager Plug-In Makes Managing Ads Easiest? This article provides a great comparison of ad management plug-ins for WordPress, listing the pros and cons of each.

Blogtalks.net A collection of articles about managing ads on your blog, including “How to track clicks” and “Tips for using OpenAds with WordPress.”

How to Integrate Advertising into Your Blog A great overview of things to consider when integrating advertising in your blog, as well as some practical how-to information.

How to Set Up Google Ad Manager on Your Blog/Website Comprehensive overview and set-up instructions for using Google Ad Manager on your website or blog.

Banner Rotator Another PHP tutorial on showing rotating banner ads on your website. This one stores information about the ads and the views that each ad gets in a MySQL database.

Rotating Banner Ads Using a Database An ASP tutorial on creating a database-driven banner-ad rotation script.

Dynamic Banner Administration A comprehensive ASP tutorial on putting rotating banner ads on your website.

Related posts

• 100% Google AdSense: Tools, Tips and Resources
• Online Advertising And Its Impact On Web Design
• Optimizing Conversion Rates: Less Effort, More Customers
• Optimizing Conversion Rates: It’s All About Usability
• Use Conversions To Generate More Conversions

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