WordAds

Earn income by displaying high-quality ads on your site.

Jetpack allows the integration of WordAds — a unique ad program from WordPress.com — as a one-click feature designed to help you generate income from your WordPress site.

We provide more than just high-quality ads: we’ve also determined the best placements to guarantee the highest revenue and most reliable compatibility across most WordPress themes. Our experience is based on working with tens of thousands of users over the years.

For general features and FAQs, please see our information page.

Activating WordAds

WordAds is available to anyone who has purchased the Jetpack Security or Complete Plan — no approval process is required. Once you’ve purchased the plan, activate the feature in your WordPress.com dashboard under Tools → Earn → Earn Ad Revenue → Settings then click on “Join WordAds“.

You can then toggle the “Enable ads and display an ad below each post” option and save the settings to start seeing ads on your site right away. You can also tweak ad placement settings and view your earnings on WordPress.com.

Note: If your WordAds application was previously approved on a Jetpack free plan, you may continue using WordAds. However, new applications will require a Jetpack Security or Complete plan.

Controlling Ad Placement

You can control where ads are placed on your site by adjusting the settings in your site’s Dashboard, at Jetpack → Settings → Traffic.

You can also use the Ads widget to place an ad unit in any widget area on your site, from Appearance → Widgets.

Finally, you can use the [wordads] shortcode or the Ad Block to place an ad unit within the content of any post or page. If you are using [wordads] shortcode, make sure the Shortcode Embeds option is enabled otherwise the ads for the shortcode will not appear.

Earnings

You can manage your earnings on WordPress.com at https://wordpress.com/ads/earnings. You can also find this dashboard by navigating to My Sites → Tools → Earn → View Ad Dashboard → Earnings from your WordPress.com dashboard.

Customizing the ads.txt file

The ads.txt file is an optional file that, when present, tells publishers who is authorized to sell their inventory.

When WordAds is activated, an ads.txt file will be generated automatically. You can view it in the browser by appending /ads.txt to your domain name. ie: yourjetpacksite.blog/ads.txt

The ads.txt file generated by Jetpack acts as a virtual file without creating any physical file on your server or WordPress directory; however, for this to work, your site must have Pretty Permalinks enabled, there must be no ads.txt file present on your server, and the .htaccess file should contain the default WordPress rewrite rules.

You can also include custom ads.txt entries to Ads settings under Jetpack → Settings → Traffic.

FAQ

Is my site eligible for WordAds?

A Jetpack Security or Jetpack Complete plan is required in order to use WordAds on your site.

Ads are enabled. Why don’t they show up?

If you have any plugins for minifying JavaScript, try deactivating those and see if it helps.

Check that the area where you’re displaying ads is large enough. For example, if you have a very narrow sidebar that is smaller than the ads, no ads will be displayed there.

Ads are shown on my site. Why don’t I see any earnings?

Earnings are calculated daily, so if you just recently activated ads today, check tomorrow. What you see here is an estimate that will be finalized around the second week of the following month. Payments are sent on or about the last day of the following month. If you earned less than $100 in a given month, your earnings will carry over to the next month instead.

Why do I only see WordPress.com ads?

It’s normal to see only WordPress.com ads for the first 24 hours or so after activation. After a day or two, you should start to see ads from other advertisers.

Why do I see ads from Google?

We work with a wide variety of advertising partners, so it’s likely that you will see ads from various other networks.

Can I customize my ad placement beyond the settings provided?

You can control the placement of the header ad with do_action( 'wordads_header_ad' ); (generally added to theme files directly, or child themes if you are not using a custom theme on your site). Anywhere the wordads_header_ad action gets called in your theme is where the top/header ad will be displayed. If that code snippet gets added more than once to your theme, only one top header ad will be displayed. Note that at the top of each page additional ad placement option must be turned on.

You can also add custom filters to your functions.php file to disable ads in certain locations.

Disable ads from displaying at the bottom of posts using this filter.
Disable ads from displaying at the top of your site using this filter.
You can find even more filters in this WordAds.co post.

You can then combine those with conditional tags to remove ads on specific pages. You can add the code snippets above to your theme’s functions.php file or to a functionality plugin.

What format are the ads?

Ads in posts/pages are Medium Rectangle size (300×250).
The ad at the top of your site is Leaderboard size (728×90).
The ad widget lets you select Medium Rectangle (300×250), Wide Skyscraper (160×600) or Leaderboard (728×90).

If you have more questions about how ads work, you can read this document.

Note: By activating ads, you agree to the Automattic Ads Terms of Service.

Have questions? Feel free to contact support for more personalized assistance.

WordAds and the CCPA

The information we share includes online identifiers; internet or other network or device activity, and geolocation data, but never a name or contact information. The sharing of this information with our advertising partners may be considered a “sale” of the information under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). We have provided the following opt-out tools to help you comply with CCPA requirements.

We have introduced a toggle in the settings page in the dashboard that allows you to enable targeted advertising in California. You can choose whether or not you want to enable this on your site. If you choose not to enable targeted advertising, then generic ads will be displayed for any of your visitors who come from California IP addresses.

Enabling targeted ads in California for sites on a paid plan is a two-step process:

You enable the targeted advertising toggle on the settings page (via Jetpack → Settings → Traffic → Ads)
You enable the CCPA Consent Widget or use the [ccpa-do-not-sell-link] shortcode to add the “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link to your site. It is mandatory to add this link if you want to show targeted ads in California.

When you add the “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link to a site, any visitor who clicks on the link will get a pop-up modal that allows them to opt out of ads being personalized to them based on their visits to your site. When you enable the toggle on the settings page, you have the option of providing a link to your site’s privacy policy. If you choose to do so, the link you provide will be included as part of the pop-up modal text.

The “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” links only display to California IP addresses. You will also be able to see the link when you are logged in regardless of your geolocation so that you can test and preview the position of the link.

Privacy Information

This feature is deactivated by default, and unlocking/activating it requires an upgrade to the Security or Complete plan. It can be deactivated at any time by toggling the Enable ads and displaying an ad below each post in the Ads section from Jetpack → Settings → Traffic in your dashboard.

Data Used
Site Owners / Users In order to process payments via PayPal, the following site owner-related information is utilized: site owner’s email address, physical address, site URL, and WordPress.com-connected site ID. For compliance with US tax regulations, we also collect whether the site owner is a US Resident (or based in the US), and if so, we collect tax reporting information including Social Security Number or US Tax ID, Full Name or Business Name, and physical address.	Site Visitors We collect and send the following information (made available from the visitor’s browser) to our Demand Partners: IP address, geographical data (derived from the IP address), user agent, operating system, device type, unique user ID (randomly generated identifier), current URL, and IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) interest category. The advertising partners may use that information to display personalized ads to those visitors. The sharing of this information with our advertising partners may be considered a “sale” of information under the CCPA. Data Retention: Log data (IP address, geographical data, user agent, operating system, device type) is stored for 30 days. The unique user ID is stored in cookies and is retained for 1 year.
Activity Tracked
Site Owners / Users We track when, and by which user, the feature is activated and deactivated. We also track updates to the user’s Paypal email address (so that we can continue to successfully process any payments).	Site Visitors We track ad impressions, video-related events (i.e. pause, mute, 100% plays, etc.) or errors, and ad click events. Various cookies are used for the following purposes: delivering targeted advertisements to specific visitors, storing user identifiers, and collecting anonymous ad platform stats.
Data Synced (Read More)
Site Owners / Users We sync options that identify whether or not the feature is activated, as well as the site’s current approval status (i.e. is this site approved to participate in the WordAds program?).	Site Visitors None.

Data Used

Site Owners / Users

In order to process payments via PayPal, the following site owner-related information is utilized: site owner’s email address, physical address, site URL, and WordPress.com-connected site ID.

For compliance with US tax regulations, we also collect whether the site owner is a US Resident (or based in the US), and if so, we collect tax reporting information including Social Security Number or US Tax ID, Full Name or Business Name, and physical address.

Site Visitors

We collect and send the following information (made available from the visitor’s browser) to our Demand Partners: IP address, geographical data (derived from the IP address), user agent, operating system, device type, unique user ID (randomly generated identifier), current URL, and IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) interest category. The advertising partners may use that information to display personalized ads to those visitors. The sharing of this information with our advertising partners may be considered a “sale” of information under the CCPA.

Data Retention: Log data (IP address, geographical data, user agent, operating system, device type) is stored for 30 days. The unique user ID is stored in cookies and is retained for 1 year.

Activity Tracked

Site Owners / Users

We track when, and by which user, the feature is activated and deactivated.

We also track updates to the user’s Paypal email address (so that we can continue to successfully process any payments).

Site Visitors

We track ad impressions, video-related events (i.e. pause, mute, 100% plays, etc.) or errors, and ad click events.

Various cookies are used for the following purposes: delivering targeted advertisements to specific visitors, storing user identifiers, and collecting anonymous ad platform stats.

Data Synced (Read More)

Site Owners / Users

We sync options that identify whether or not the feature is activated, as well as the site’s current approval status (i.e. is this site approved to participate in the WordAds program?).

Site Visitors

None.