Advertise your content across WordPress.com and Tumblr from as little as $5 per day. This guide will show you how to attract high-quality traffic to your website using Blaze.
In this guide
Create a Blaze campaign to advertise a post or page on some of the millions of pages across WordPress.com and Tumblr. Follow these steps to set up your Blaze campaign:
- From your site’s dashboard, visit Tools → Advertising to view a list of your site’s posts and pages:
- Locate the page or post you want to promote. At the top of the list, you can search by title, filter to only show posts or only pages, and sort your content by different criteria like recently updated or most viewed.
- Click the Promote button to start creating your ad campaign.
- If you’re happy with the default campaign created, click the “Submit campaign” button. Alternatively, click the “Make changes” button to configure your campaign’s Appearance, Audience, Budget, Duration, and Payment. Each option is explained in detail below.
The Appearance section asks for three pieces of information to determine how your ad will look:
- Ad creative: Upload an image to represent your page or post. You can use the crop tool to adjust your image’s appearance in the ad.
- There is no recommended image size because the image’s appearance changes based on where the ad appears. We recommend using a picture containing no words because the image may be cropped as it adapts to different devices. Use the ad preview on the right side as a guide.
- Title: This appears above your image as bolded text. You can write a maximum of 80 characters here. Use them wisely to capture the viewer’s attention.
- Snippet: A short text description that appears underneath your image. You can write a maximum of 160 characters here. We recommend using this text to support your headline and give viewers more context about what they will see when they click the ad and arrive at your content.
For the Audience section, you can choose who will see your ad by selecting from the following dropdowns:
- Language: Choose from 15 languages your content appeals to. You can select multiple languages here.
- Location: Choose geographic areas where your campaign will be displayed. You can narrow down your audience by entering your desired location(s). You can enter regions, countries, and cities, or leave the field blank to show your post to all potential viewers, regardless of location.
- Interests: Choose the interests of your intended audience. Select All topics to show your post to all potential viewers regardless of their interests. You can select multiple interests here.
As you adjust your settings on this screen, your ad summary will reflect your choices and provide you with estimated impressions for your campaign, which is the number of times your ad will be shown.
In the “Budget and duration” section, you can control how much you would like to spend on your campaign:
- Daily budget: Drag the slider up or down to choose from a minimum of US$5 per day up to a maximum of $50. USD is the only currency supported at this time.
- Start date: Select when you would like your campaign to start running.
- Duration: Choose the number of days you would like your campaign to run, between 1 and 28 days.
Estimated Impressions
In advertising, an “impression” refers to each time your ad is displayed to visitors on a given webpage. As you adjust your budget and targeting choices, you will see an estimate of how many people you will reach with your ad. This is shown in the Estimated impressions section on the right side.
Campaigns are paid on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis. CPM is an acronym for cost per mille (mille is a Latin/French word for thousand). This means your campaign will be charged for every 1,000 times your ad is displayed.
However, it’s worth understanding that these impressions do not guarantee visitors will click on your ad. As with most forms of marketing, the best results will depend on capturing your target audience’s interest in the moment. Take care to craft an ad that resonates with the audience you are trying to reach.
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It’s common to test two adverts at once, each with different text and/or images. After some time, see which ad performs better. Cancel the less successful ad and increase the budget on your more successful ad.
It’s important to balance your reach with how relevant your content is to your audience. This will help maximize the number of clicks your ad receives and, ultimately, how much traffic the ad produces for your site. If you’re unsure what to select for your budget, we suggest starting at $5 per day over 7 days, then growing from there based on your results.
Max Budget
The “Max Budget” section on the right sidebar displays your maximum budget based on your chosen daily budget and duration.
Setting a budget of $5 per day, for 7 days, does not mean your campaign will cost $35. Instead, the budget sets a maximum cost that you’ll spend for your particular campaign based on your estimated impressions. The actual spending may be less than your budget as it depend on the number of impressions that were actually served rather than the initial estimate.
Under Advanced Settings, you will find the following options:
- Targeted Devices: Choose if you want your post to be seen by viewers on desktop computers or mobile devices. Select “All devices” to show your post to all potential viewers regardless of their device.
- Destination URL: Choose where the viewer arrives upon clicking the ad: either to the original post or page you selected, or to your website’s homepage.
In the Payment section, fill out your card details and click the “Submit” button. You won’t be charged until after the ad has been approved and starts running on our network of sites.
Payments will be made automatically weekly, based on delivered impressions over that period (i.e., how many times your ad was served). You will be charged weekly for ads served across all of your promotions. If you have Blaze Credits, they will always be used first before charging your card.
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Even if your campaign exceeds your estimated impressions, your charges will never exceed your set budget.
When a payment is made, you will receive an email receipt to the email address associated with your WordPress.com account.
You can cancel your campaigns at any time. You will only be charged for the portion of your campaign that has already been served up until that point. It is not possible to refund any charges for ads that have already been displayed, so make sure to set your budget to an amount you are willing to pay.
You can remove a credit card from Blaze in the Payment Methods section of your WordPress.com account. For further assistance with Blaze payments, contact support.
We review all Blaze campaigns for compliance with our Advertising Policy before others see them.
To ensure your ad is approved, please also ensure that:
- You have added a domain to your site.
- Your website is publicly accessible.
We try to moderate ads as soon as possible, but ads take at least 24 hours to be reviewed. This timeline may change depending on how much content we need to review.
If your post has been approved, you will receive an email saying that your post was approved and will be put online.
Your post will be rejected if it does not conform to our Advertising Policy. You will not be charged if your post is rejected.
From your site’s dashboard, visit Tools → Advertising and click on the Campaigns tab to access your running campaigns. You will see the details of your live ads and any ads awaiting moderation.
Click on any campaign to view information including:
- Impressions, clicks, and the click-through rate on your ad.
- The duration and budget, including how much has been spent so far and how much money is left on your budget.
- A comparison of how much traffic was driven by the ad compared to organic traffic to the page that did not come from the ad.
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All analytics tools work a little differently, so you may see clicks on your campaign that don’t appear in your site stats or preferred analytics tool for a few hours or maybe even the following day.
If you wish to stop a campaign, follow the steps below:
- From your site’s dashboard, go to Tools → Advertising and click on the “Campaigns” tab.
- Click on the campaign you’d like to stop.
- Click on the “Stop campaign” link.
Once a campaign has been canceled, it will stop running, with no option to restart.
If you need to edit a campaign that’s already submitted, you must cancel that campaign and create a new one with the necessary updates, then submit that for approval.
Your ad campaign will appear across the network of Tumblr and free WordPress.com sites with an ‘Advertisement’ label.
For more information, please review our Advertising Policy and Terms of Service.
