Having good web traffic, you might want to sell ads on your blog or website. That’s, getting paid for displaying ads. While there are many options regarding web ads, the story with WordPress.com is a little different. If you’re not hosting on WordPress.com (up to premium plan), please refer to “Web Developing Issues” from my old post “How to leave Google” for some alternatives.
Now, let’s talk about WordPress.com…
Sell ads on your blog directly
Simple, effective, and it doesn’t affect performance of your site/blog. You can sell link advertising such as side banners or links/banners at the end of posts. Or, you can sell promotional or marketing posts such as reviewing products or services.
WordAds
WordAds is managed by WordPress itself. They are banners in header, sidebar, and below or in between posts. These positions vary from theme to theme, e.g., some themes don’t support top banners. Videos are another type of ads that are being served below or in between posts (I haven’t noticed any video ads lately). As a premium user, you have the option to hide those ads or to get paid for keeping them displayed. Upgrading to Business Plan, you have more tools to manipulate this.
Yet I believe that I optimized my WordPress to the max, PageSpeed Insights analysis shows a decrease of speed and thus performance when ads are on. The good news is that logged-in users may not notice this as they already have some components cached locally on their computers.
Google AdSense
My tests showed generally better performance scores when I used Google AdSense instead of WordAds. To use Adsense with WordPress.com, you have to be on their Business Plan.
The issue is that to comply with laws and privacy policies regarding advertising (and statistics), extra setups might be needed such as consent messages. Showing these messages involves extra scripts which affect the site’s performance negatively. While you can delay executions of scripts related to ads to enhance site’s speed, the revenue might be affected. In WordAds, these messages are part of the system and its effect is almost included.
Summary
Displaying third-parties ads is actually affecting the performance of the site. To minimize effects, avoid ads on homepage and on top of the pages. Further, use only one advertising system. If you’re able, use one unified consent messages system. Try to have the scripts at the footer of your pages; some might argue this is similar to deferring the script, but personally, it worked fine with Adsense/WordAds.
Should we scarify the ads’ revenue for better performance? And the important question is: Do you sell ads on your blog other than Google’s or the ones provided by WordPress? Let’s know.
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