WordAds

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

Activate WordAds

To leverage the power of WordAds — a unique ad program from WordPress.com — please follow these steps:

1. Purchase a Jetpack Security, Complete, or Creator Plan — no approval process is required.
2. Activate the feature in your WordPress.com dashboard under Tools → Earn → Earn Ad Revenue → Settings
3. Click on Join WordAds.
4. Toggle the “Enable ads and display an ad below each post” option.
5. Save the settings to start seeing ads on your site right away.

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, Complete, or Creator plan.

Control ad placement settings

To adjust where ads show up on your website, take these steps:

1. Start at your WordPress.com dashboard.
2. Navigate to Tools → Earn → Earn Ad Revenue → Ads → Settings.
3. Specify which areas of your website you want ads to appear: front page, posts, pages, archives.
4. Select additional ad placements.
5. If you wish to, enable targeted ads in the United States.
6. Customize the Ads.txt file, if desired.
7. Enter your PayPal email address so you can receive payments.
8. Agree to Terms of Service.
9. Click Save settings.

Place ads elsewhere on your site

There are two other options for putting advertisements on your website:

1. Use the Ads widget to place an ad unit in any widget area on your site, from Appearance → Widgets.
2. Use the [wordads] shortcode to place an ad unit within the content of any post or page. Make sure the Shortcode Embeds option is enabled.
3. Use the Ad Block.

Please check our our article on Advanced ad placement customization for even more options.

Ad format

• 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).

View earnings

You can manage and view your earnings at https://wordpress.com/ads/earnings.

You can also find this dashboard by navigating to Tools → Earn → View Ad Dashboard  → Earnings from your WordPress.com dashboard.

Troubleshoot problems with WordAds

Ads not showing up

If ads are enabled but not showing, please try:

1. Disabling any plugins for minifying JavaScript.
2. Checking that the area 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.

If ads are still not showing, it may be that there are no bids for your ad spaces yet.
 
The ads on each page of the site are placed dynamically through a real-time bidding process. Advertisers bid for the ad spots on your site based on a variety of factors including — but not limited to — age of the site, content, amount of traffic, demographics of the traffic, advertiser interest, and user engagement with the ads.

Not seeing earnings

Earnings are calculated daily, so you may need to wait to check the following day. The earnings are 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.

Unexpected 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.

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

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

Privacy Information

WordAds is deactivated by default, and unlocking/activating it requires an upgrade to the Security, Complete, or Creator 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 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 US privacy laws. 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 successfully to 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 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.