If you want to make money with advertisements on your WordPress.com site, WordAds is our official advertising program for site owners. This guide will show you how to start earning an income from ads with WordAds.
In this guide
Enable WordAds on your site to start showing ads throughout your content. We do all the hard work for you — including placing the ads, negotiating with advertisers, tracking views, and issuing your earnings — all you need to do is activate WordAds on your site.
WordAds displays ads on tens of millions of websites, reaching over one billion people a month. Over 50 internet advertisers — including Google AdSense & Adx, AppNexus, Amazon A9, AOL Marketplace, Yahoo, Criteo, and more — bid to display their clients’ ads in WordAds spots.
While you can run WordAds and other ad programs (such as Google AdSense) at the same time, we recommend that you run only one ad program simultaneously. Running multiple ad sources will not necessarily result in more earnings. You are likely to make more money if you choose one preferred ad program.
To enable WordAds on your site, you will need the following:
- A site set to public.
- A WordPress.com Premium plan or higher.
- A domain registered and set as the primary domain (for example,
yourgroovydomain.cominstead ofyourgroovysite.wordpress.com). - A free PayPal account to receive your earnings.
WordAds will not be available if your site is marked mature.
To opt into WordAds, take the following steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Tools → Monetize (or Jetpack → Monetize if using WP-Admin).
- Click the “Earn ad revenue” button.
- Click the “Join WordAds” button on the Settings tab:
WordAds includes a variety of ad types, including display, video, native, and sticky. We occasionally test other types of ads for brief periods. Here are a few examples of what ads look like on different websites:
Ads will match your visitor’s location and language. While the ad placements and layouts are the same globally, most countries have their own advertisers. This means that only the advertisers and their creatives themselves differ.
Ads will appear in different places on your site depending on the visibility options you choose in your settings. Please note that ad placement is determined by each theme, and not every theme may have the same ad spaces.
You can insert an Ad block into any spot you wish to place an additional ad. Please note that inserting too many ads on your site can negatively impact your earning. More ad blocks do not equal more earnings.
We continuously optimize ads for performance, and placements are subject to change.
Ads are served from our ad network and based on the browser history of that particular visitor. The ads you see may differ from those another visitor to your site will see.
It is not possible to choose the advertisers or types of ads displayed on your site.
We do our best to maintain the highest standards for ads we display through WordAds. We have the ability to block specific ads network-wide, so if you see an ad featuring inappropriate content (like sex, drugs, or violence), here’s what you can do:
- Click where it says “Report this Ad” near the bottom of the ad to report this directly.
- Optionally, take a screenshot and right-click the ad to copy the linked URL. Don’t click the ad directly, as it will probably redirect to a different URL. Once you have this information, please contact us, and we’ll investigate the issue.
There can be various reasons for ads not showing up on your site. Some common reasons are:
- You’ve recently enabled WordAds for the first time (give it time for ads to appear).
- Your site is brand new or doesn’t have a lot of content.
- Ads are turned off in your ads settings.
- Ads are turned on, but the ad placements are turned off/unchecked.
- Your browser has ad blocker extensions enabled.
- Your site’s ads.txt file is not correctly configured for WordAds (plugin-enabled sites only.)
- Your site does not adhere to our brand safety guidelines.
