As a beginner blogger or online marketer, you may be tempted to place ads in headers and sidebars. While these locations can yield some decent results, advertising platforms typically recommend learning how to add inline content ads to WordPress. An inline advertisement is shown in your post or page content, so it may be right below the first or second paragraph or scattered throughout a blog post to improve conversions. However, it’s important to use them sparingly and somewhere toward the top and bottom of your post or page to ensure that you’re getting enough clicks, as inline ads can be seen as somewhat distracting to users.
Adding inline content ads to WordPress may sound like a complicated task, but several plugins allow for this functionality, most of which cut out the majority of coding that you would have to complete otherwise. One of the most feature-filled and easy-to-use plugins for this purpose is Ad Inserter. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to add inline content ads to WordPress using the Google AdSense network.
Step 1: Create an AdSense Account (Or Any Other Ad Network Account)
Go to the AdSense website and either create an account or log in with one of your previously created Google accounts. Once you create your automatic advertisements, it provides the code needed for dynamic ads based on what your users have searched for in the past.
Step 2: Install and Activate the Ad Inserter WordPress Plugin
Install the Ad Inserter plugin, then go ahead and activate it. Most of the default settings are fine right out of the box, but you will have to go in and specify how and where you would like the ads to show up.
Step 3: Set an Advertisement to Show Up Below the First Paragraph on Every Blog Post
To find the Ad Inserter plugin settings, go to the WordPress dashboard menu and click on Settings > Ad Inserter. The numbers at the top of the module represent different blocks you can create to add inline content ads to WordPress. Take the Auto Ad code or the Ad Unit code from your Google AdSense page and copy it to your clipboard. This would usually be the code that you manually paste into the body of your page, but with the Ad Inserter plugin, you only need to do it once – in Ad Block 1, or whichever you would like to use.
By default, the Automatic Insertion area is set to disabled, but you want to adjust that to place the advertisement after a certain paragraph, between comments, or wherever you find it suitable. For this tutorial, we’re selecting the After Paragraph option. Once you select the After Paragraph field, you have the option to type in how many paragraphs. So, if you’d like this particular advertisement to appear after the first paragraph, you’d type in the number 1.
Step 4: Copy AdSense Code Into the Head Area of Your Website
There’s also a piece of AdSense code that has to be placed in the
area of your website. This area is found in the header.php file. Search for the tag and place the required code in right below that, even if you already have some other bits of code below the tag.Step 5: Test the Code on the Frontend of Your Website
Ensure that there are enough paragraphs in the article for the advertisement to be displayed. For this tutorial, all you need is two paragraphs, since the plugin recognizes that first click of the Enter key as the end of the first paragraph. The backend of your post won’t display any of the ads implemented. However, you can then click on the Preview or Publish button to see how they show up on the frontend. The frontend display needs a little formatting to make them more visible and appealing, but that can all be done through the Ad Inserter Settings page.
In addition, there’s a module in every post that gives you some manual power over inline ads. So, if you added some exceptions to the Ad Inserter plugin, you might have a checkbox to remove or include an ad in this particular post.
The goal with your inline content ads is to make the advertisements look as natural as possible. This way, people are more likely to click on them and not be annoyed by the disruption. If you have any questions about how to add inline content ads to WordPress, let us know in the comments section below.
