Ads and promotions

The Ads & Promotions plugin earns money from the site in three ways: your own ads, Google AdSense, and members who pay to promote their posts or run their own campaigns.

Where ads appear

Profiles, hashtag pages, saved posts and memories stay free of ads. The watch page and single posts always carry player ads when there are any.

Settings

Admin → Plugin pages → Ads & Promotions.

• Show advertising: the main switch. Off means no ad, no boosted post and no AdSense anywhere.
• In the feed: one ad after every … posts and One boosted post after every … posts.
• Visitors who are not signed in see ads.
• Ad-free for Pro members: Pro members see no ads, no boosted posts and no player ads.
• Player ads on videos in the feed and Player ads in Shorts. "Skip" appears after (seconds) and A picture ad stays (seconds) shape the video ads.

Your own ads (Site ads)

Site ads → New site ad. Every ad has:

• a name only you see, and where it appears: the feed, the side column or the video player;
• its kind: a picture, a video (MP4, for the player), a text link with a headline and a button, or HTML from an ad network;
• the web address it opens;
• who sees it and when: start and end date, countries, gender, youngest and oldest age;
• a weight from 1 to 10: an ad with weight 4 is drawn four times as often as one with weight 1.

Pause stops an ad without losing its numbers. Each ad shows its views, clicks and click rate.

Clicks go through the site, so they are counted even when the ad opens another website. A visitor's clicks on the same ad are counted at most five times an hour.

Google AdSense

1. Use AdSense and your Publisher ID (it reads like ca-pub-1234567890123456).
2. Either Auto ads, where Google places ads by itself (switch Auto ads on in your AdSense account too), or your own ad units: the slot ID of an in-feed unit (with its optional layout key) and of a side column unit.
3. AdSense also wants an ads.txt file at the top of the site with your publisher line in it.

AdSense fills a place only when none of your own ads fits there. Your own ads always win.

Members promote their posts (Boost)

With Members can boost their posts on, members find Boost post in the menu of their own public posts. They choose for how many days and a budget; the least budget for those days is shown.

A boosted post appears, marked Sponsored, in the feeds of members who do not follow its author. Start boosts without checking them off (the safer choice) means each boost waits under Boosted posts until you approve it.

Members run their own campaigns

With Members can create campaigns on, members open /ads to create campaigns with the same kinds and choices as site ads, and a budget. They see their own views, clicks and spending.

• Price of one view, Price of one click and Price of one day, with your Currency symbol and Show the prices.
• Start campaigns without checking them off (the safer choice): each campaign waits under Campaigns by members until you approve it. The member gets a notification when it starts.
• The budget is a plain number: a campaign stops when its views or clicks have used it up. Collect the money the way you already do, and approve the campaign when it is paid.

Numbers

Reports shows views and clicks of the last 30 days, the numbers by place, the best ads of the month, what campaigns have spent and the budgets of approved boosts.

The list of running ads is kept for a minute between checks, so a campaign can go slightly over its budget on a busy site.

Ad blockers

The ads of the site are served from the site's own addresses, so most ad blockers leave them alone. AdSense ads can still be hidden by a blocker; that is between the visitor and Google.