WordAds in 2013

By James Huff | | 42

Coming up in February, we will celebrate the 2nd anniversary of WordAds. Based on the feedback we get from advertisers and publishers, we’re calling the program a success. We now have more than 10 thousand sites running WordAds with around 1 billion ad impressions per month, and we will be paying out around $1 million to WordAds publishers in 2013.

For most publishers, earnings are steady with their traffic, but we have some notable success stories where publishers have over-night viral posts that bring in tens of millions of page views over a few days.

For 2014, WordAds’ product roadmap calls for:

  • More ad types to chose from.
  • Improved reporting.
  • As always, higher earnings and improved ad creative.

To learn more about WordAds, please feel free to stop by Why WordAds? and our FAQ page.

If you have a WordPress.com blog, request an invitation today! If you have a self-hosted WordPress.org blog, we plan to expand our service to you eventually, or you could easily move to WordPress.com if you just can’t wait to be a part of the WordAds family.

2013 was a great year for WordAds. Let’s make 2014 even better!

The WordAds Team

rads2013

Comments

    1. A lot of bloggers want to pick the ads. I’m afraid, however, that online advertising today doesn’t work that way. WordPress.com is a top 10 global site and for the most part we don’t get to pick ads, rather the advertisers pick us. We do have a process where we pick ad partners and we have screened out a number whose quality standards are not up to our standards and we can block offensive ads, but currently it’s not possible for us to give each blogger the ability to pick ads.

      As for ad placement, that cannot currently be changed. All blogs in the WordAds program feature at least one ad below the post content, and some themes offer additional header or sidebar ad placements (and sometimes both header and sidebar).

      1. Thanks for the quick reply, James! If and when I make up my mind about upgrading, getting my own domain, etc., I will definitely apply to be considered for WordAds. And then, I may still be denied, no? Not sure what the criteria are to be accepted into the WordAds program. 🙂

              1. Ah, therein lies the problem. I find it strangely liberating that only a handful of friends and family know of my blog.That’s precisely why I had not turned on publicize. Maybe that makes me a less-than-ideal blogger. 🙂 But thanks for the suggestions. You’ve been very gracious and extremely helpful!

  2. “1 billion ad impressions per month, and we will be paying out around $1 million … in 2013.”

    That’s less than 100k per month. Does that mean 1 billion ad impressions can only get about 100k revenue? That means, on average, 1 million ad impressions can only get about 100 dollars in revenue. But it seems I get much higher impression/income rate that that (from one month data).

    1. The rate varies depending on where the impressions come from, and plenty of folks can earn much more than $100 from far less than 1 million impressions.

      North American ad placements currently pay-out at a much greater level than international ads. We are negotiating deals with some partners, particularly in Europe that will see higher rates there, but generally we are not compensated well for traffic in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

  3. I use WordAds since 5 months now and I am pretty happy so far. But I also would like to add a point of criticism or let me say so… see it as a suggestion…

    It´s pretty hard to find out how much impressions have shown in relation to the overall “monthly” traffic. Why? Because the wordpress.com stats are reseted every first day of a month and WordAds has a different cycle which ends in the middle of a month. This is in my opinion a big issue.

    While I do not monitor my stats everyday, it would be at least interesting to check once in a month. I mean the rleation Ad impression versus full blog traffic.

    My suggestion…

    Either….

    1. Set the payout date to the first day of the month like the wordpress monthly stats.

    or

    2. Show us at least how often our blog has been loaded from the 15th to the 15th.

    Sure, I can find it out on my own with help of the daily stats in the dashboard but it´s a load of work you know?

    What is your opinion on that?

    1. Though we don’t post total impressions until the second or third week of the following month, your total monthly impressions are indeed from the first day of the listed month to the last day of that month.

      To see your site’s monthly stats history, just hit the Monthly tab above the views graph. You can hover your mouse over each bar to see the total, or click the bar for more details.

      1. I know that but what I mean….

        WordAds statistics cycle seems to end around the middle of a month. That means it tracks ad impressions of two half months. Example November 13 to December 13 ad impressions. While the monthly traffic statistics of wordpress show me every month from the first to the last day as you said.

        I want to see both in relation which is not possible as my WordAds stats get always updated on the 13th of a month or so.

        I do not want to see it because I don´t trust you… it´s rather because it would be interesting to see. I could create a file with open office to calculate the average or potential ad impression per month. I could also create a formula to show me the difference between monthly blog traffic and monthly ad impressions. That woudl give some hints what to expect for a particular amount of traffic.

        Basically I want to compare both but it is not possible because it seems that WordAds ends a month in the middle of a month. It shows me ad impression from the middle of the month to the middle of the next month. 🙂

        You know what I mean? 🙂

        1. Oh it seems that I didn´t get what you mean. Did you mean the latest ad impression update of WordAds are always the full ad impressions of the last month?

          1. Yes, for example, the listed November impressions are from November 1 to November 30, the listed October impressions are from October 1 to October 31, and so on. 🙂

            1. Cool Jamens. Thanks. Looks like I just misunderstood the whole. I think the date when it gets updates confused me. Now I do understand .And my suggestions are now obsolete. Thanks for the clarification. 🙂

  4. Hi James, most of the views on my site are made on pages with information that I update regularly (maybe 85% on 2 of them) rather than on posts, but now (without adwords) I only see ads on posts, not on pages. Does Wordads show ads on pages as well or only on posts like wordpress.com regular ads?

    1. It certainly is! We can’t promise that we’ll have something by the end of the year, as the main issue is that we’re dealing with multiple ad networks who all report impressions at different intervals, but we’re always looking for a way to reliably report impressions in real time.

  8. The little I get from the ads is very disappointing indeed. I run three ads on my site, and can barely make a 100 dollars in 4 months. Cannot say its a success for bloggers.

    1. We have several WordAds bloggers bringing in thousands and tens of thousands of dollars in earnings each month, but what you make can very greatly depending on the amount of legitimate human views vs. bot views and the geographic location of the majority of your audience.

      North American WordAds placements currently pay-out at a much greater level than international ads. We are negotiating deals with some partners, particularly in Europe that will see higher rates there but generally we are not compensated well for traffic in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

      1. Thanks for your reply James, that answers a few questions. I thought I was doing well with a 94 % seo on who is. A move to pr3. And 14098 shares on 364 posts, But traffic and revenue are still very difficult. Does earnings have anything to do with the page rank of the site ? And taking into account that my content just may not be good enough, is there something I am missing ?

        1. Page rank has nothing to do with earnings, except that it may bring in more legitimate human visits. We pay per impression only. An impression is whenever an ad is visible in the viewer’s browser window. For example, for the below-post ad units, the viewer would have to scroll down far enough to reveal the ad in their browser window before it counts as an impression. Also, the viewer can’t be running any ad blockers, which account for the majority of non-impressions.

          The best thing to do now if to spread your blog around to increase your legitimate human audience. Don’t purchase traffic, that would be a violation of our terms of service, and you wouldn’t earn much extra anyway.

          I want to strongly emphasize sharing your blog with your friends and family. If they like it, they’ll share it with their friends, and so on.

          1. Thanks James, that explains a lot. The link in your message sends me to a page where it states, pay for traffic, which is true james ? do word ads have different rules ?

            1. Sorry, I should have clarified above. There are two ways to pay for traffic:

              1. The legitimate and allowed way is to pay to make your blog more visible on trafficked networks, like StumbleUpon, as mentioned in the article. This is simply making your blog more visible and therefore bringing in more legitimate human visitors.

              2. There are many illegitimate paid traffic “shops” out there who offer thousands of guaranteed views in exchange for money. What they do is then set an automated program (a bot) to visit your blog 10,000 times (for example). What you see is 10,000 views, but it’s hardly any good to you because you know they aren’t real. What our advertisers see is that one “individual” visited your blog 10,000 times in one day, so it’s pretty obvious to them that the traffic is illegitimate, and they pull the plug.

              1. Great thanks for the clarification, James. You have been extremely helpful. Page rank not making a difference is sad, this is what advertisers look at in making a decision to or not to be on your site. Oh well rewards are very little I guess, on the net.

              2. You’re welcome! Though our advertisers are not concerned with page rank, don’t entirely discount it’s importance. The better your search placement is, the more likely you are to draw in more legitimate human visitors and therefore more impressions.

    1. When your application was approved for WordAds, we sent you an invitation to the private WordAds blog, which is where we post Earnings announcements along with other important announcements.

      You can subscribe to that like any WordPress.com blog, including by email.

      If you didn’t receive the invitation, please let us know!

  10. As a user of WordAds, I would like to see the option for an ad be be imbedded in email posts that go to subscribers. I’ve worked hard to build a big subscriber base (8000+) who never get to see the ads (so I don’t get credit for an impression either). I think one ad at the end of an email would be unobtrusive and hit a much broader audience.

    1. We’re always looking for new ad types, and email ads are indeed one type that we’re currently investigating.

      For now, you could adjust “For each article in a feed, show” at Settings -> Reading in your blog’s Dashboard to “Summary.” This will ensure that only a portion of your post is sent via email, leaving the reader to visit the post itself if they want to continue reading it.

  11. We are users of WordAds since May 2014 and so far, we are happy. Our readers are not bothered by the Ads. At first, we complained that our Audience (French for 99%) did not get French Ads, but now it seems to be fixed. As stated above, advanced reports will be a nice feature.

    Regards

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