Content monetization has become one of the most profitable and successful online businesses for anyone to start. It offers a great way to share your knowledge and get handsome payment through display advertisements. Decades back, many small companies sell display ads with low quality and low price. Later with Google taken over the advertisement world, online content publishing started to pay great revenues. As a WordPress website owner, you have many ways to showcase display advertisements on your site. However, showcasing ad in your sidebar as a sticky widget can increase the revenue and we will explain how to do that in this article.
Sticky Ad and Advantages
Sticky ad on the sidebar will float in the visible area when user scrolls the content down. This will help to earn higher revenue with ad technologies like auto refresh. Since the ad will show in the visible area, it will automatically rotate and increase the ad impression for you. This in turn will increase the revenue since many ad programs pay based on RPM. In addition, floating ad in the visible area also increase your click through rate.
Before Using Check your Ad Program Policy
Sticky ad will attract user’s attention and encourage them to see or click. Due to this fact, advertising programs like Google AdSense do not allow publishers to show ads in sticky floating widget. You have options to use built-in AdSense Auto Ads to show anchor ad which will stick on top or bottom of mobile and desktop devices.
However, if you are using Google certified partner or any other ad agency, then you can use sticky ads on the sidebar. This is because you will be using Google AdX which is generally available for large scale publishers. Your ad agency will help to get the approval for your website for using AdX network. This will open the way for using all available options for making more revenue.
Therefore, make sure your advertising program allows using sticky ads before trying to implement it on your site. Otherwise, you may be banned from using the program due to violation of policies.
Add Sticky Ad in WordPress Sidebar
WordPress offers many free and premium plugins for implementing sticky floating widget. The best option is to use the free version of Ad Inserter plugin. It offers easy way to use your WordPress site as an ad server and generate money from display advertisements and affiliate programs.
Creating Fixed Sticky Ad Using Ad Inserter
Go to your WordPress dashboard and install Ad Inserter plugin by going to “Plugins > Add New” section. The free version of the plugin offers 16 ad blocks which you can access under “Settings > Ad Inserter” menu. You can use any one of the blocks for creating your stick fixed widget and paste your ad code in the block area.
Click on the “Manual” button to open additional options. By default, the ad block will be enabled for “Widgets” option, if not enable it for your blog. Since this is a fixed sticky ad on the sidebar, make sure it is in “Disabled” insertion status.
Click “Save Settings 1 – 16” button to save your changes. This will save any changes made in all the 16 ad blocks.
Inserting Sidebar Ad
Ad Inserter plugin offers a special widget for you to insert ads on sidebar. You can optionally make the sidebar ads sticky using the option in the widget. Go to “Appearance > Widgets” section and add “Ad Inserter” widget. Remember, it will be a widget for old classic editor and a block for new Gutenberg block editor. Fill the following details in the widget:
- Leave the title as blank or fill a text like advertisement if you want to show to your users.
- Select the block which you have created in the above step.
- Enable “Sticky” checkbox.
- Save your changes.
The above screen shows using widget area in classic editor. If you are using Gutenberg block editor, then the block will similar and you can publish the changes after inserting Ad Inserter block.
Testing Your Fixed Sticky Ad
As the widget will be floating when user scrolls the content, make sure to place as a last widget in your sidebar. Now, open your page and test whether the widget works as expected. Also, you can check the ad block code has the following changes:
- The block number will show you in blue color that the ad is in use.
- Check the “Manual” button, it will also now show in blue color.
- You will see the name of the sidebar in which you added the ad block against “Widget” option.
Troubleshooting Sticky Fixed Ad
If the widget is not sticking or partially hiding on the top, here is how to fix the issues.
- Not sticky – go to your Ad Inserter ad block and click on the small gear icon at the right end of the ad blocks. It will show “Ad Inserter General Settings” when you hover on the button.
- This will open additional options which are hidden on the primary interface. Now, go to “General” tab and check the “Sticky widget mode” option. By default, Ad Inserter uses CSS mode for fixing the widget. However, it does not work on jQuery based themes and change that option to “JavaScript”.
- Save your settings and test it helps to fix your widget floating sticky on the sidebar.
- Similarly, you can adjust the “Sticky widget top margin” to move the widget down and make it clearly visible when users scrolling the content.
Now, test your ad placement and check if it shows fixed sticky with correct margin. Remember, the additional settings common and will be applied for all blocks.
Thanks this really helped!