Need help? Check out our Support site, then


WordPress.com Forums » Support

Placement of Ads on the page

  1. malvedos
    Member

    Hi. I have read all I could find about adverts - so my impression is, they are supposed to appear at the bottom of a post. Not in the middle, right? I happened to look at one of our articles whilst not logged in, and lo and behold the Google ad link and text was all tangled up in the middle of our photos and text space. Granted, something seems to have gone wrong with the formatting of the post, which I need to address, but I thought adverts were restricted to a zone below the text space. Is that assumption true or false? I just want to know if the rules of advertising placement on the page have changed. I have a screen shot I can send if someone wants it.

    The blog I need help with is malvedos.wordpress.com.

  2. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    For the most part, they should usually display below the post.

    Please contact us via http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ and we'll get this sorted out for you.

  3. timethief
    Member

    I have seen this on some blogs as well. I have nothing more to say on the advertising issue. I will flagged this thread and hopefully we will be able to secure a clear cut and definitive statement about ad - placement on our blogs in terms of positioning and frequency of appearance.

  4. timethief
    Member

    @macmanx
    "For the most part ..."
    Please expand. It seems reasonable to me that we bloggers ought to be able to secure a clear cut statement about exactly which kinds of advertising our visitors are viewing on our blogs, exactly where these advertisements are being placed, and how often the advertisements are displayed.

  5. malvedos
    Member

    @macmanx - I will contact support, but like TimeThief that phrase "for the most part" is kind of chilling and I second her request for some black and white rules about how the advertising space is now working. I had imagined the ads were confined to some kind of widget - like dedicated space outside of the text space. If in fact the adverts are somehow appended or inserted to blog text space, that is very very worrying. I take great care with my blog posts to ensure they LOOK good as far as balance and placement of text and photos, and I am worried your ads could utterly destroy the quality look of our Malvedos blog, which is a business blog. I will leave this thread open till that is clarified for us all. Thanks.

  6. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    "For the most part ..."
    Please expand.

    It basically means that the ads should be below the posts, but I can't account for changes that could be made to the advertising program in order to allow us to continue to offer our free services.

    In short, most out of place ads are a theme or formatting issue, but I can't guarantee that won't change.

  7. timethief
    Member

    @macmanx
    Thanks for responding.
    At present ads do not display to users when we are logged in. If we are logged out and/or if we are using browsers like Firefox with Adblock Plus we cannot view what our visitors are viewing when ads are being displayed. . On the Features page 'occasionally show ads on your blog, however we do this very rarely". Now there is more information which you provided above " ...
    In short, most out of place ads are a theme or formatting issue, but I can't guarantee that won't change. "

    Just saying that until users are fully informed about
    (1) which ads are being placed on our blogs,
    (2) where they are being displayed,
    (3) and we can examine their appearance and content,
    (4) and we are informed as to how frequently they are being displayed, to our visitors, then it's impossible for us to make a fully informed decision with regard to whether or not we wish to purchase the No-Ads upgrade. Therein lies the conundrum. :(

  8. malvedos
    Member

    Hear hear. I look forward to the replies to TT's questions as well as mine. Saying it's a theme or formatting issue not only does not explain clearly where the ad is meant to go, it give us the impression the function wasn't tested very well before launching, if it can behave so badly in some themes... maybe... depending on formatting... what formatting exactly? My confidence in WordPress is eroding slightly.

  9. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Out of place ads really need to be dealt with on a case by case basis. The code that displays them is pretty strong, so anything that would affect that has to be either a new bug or a really poorly formatted post.

    Contact us via http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ with details so we can take a look.

  10. malvedos
    Member

    @macmanx - I did send support question last night, and just now replied to their reply to send the screen print. (James, item #804516 if you want to look it up)

    But... forgive me... can't you please answer us and tell us what are the rules here? As Timethief asked, please explain how all this is meant to work, so we know what to expect and accept versus what really is "out of place" behaviour that needs reporting? This is the tenth item in this thread, and my original question is still not answered.

    Where exactly is the advert supposed to appear? Choose one:

    A) Inside the text-box of the blog article, or

    B) confined to a separate space away from our own content?

    I need to know this, so I can plan accordingly. Thanks! cynthia

  11. teamoyeniyi
    Member

    Add me to the list of users who would like to know the answers to Timethief's questions.

    I understand WP had to generate revenue to provide the service, however without the bloggers you would not have the avenue available to generate that revenue stream, so I do believe we are entitled to know exactly what is happening.

  12. wank
    Member

    The trouble is, if you are trying to make money out of advertising you pretty much have to keep messing around with size, placement etc. in order to optimise your earnings, and the volume and prominence of advertising will increase over time. That's just a given. If macmanx were to come back with a straight answer now, it would make Automattic look bad when (not if) their policies change. Even if you don't have ads plonked in the middle of your posts right now, it's likely that one day you will.

    The only way you can ever have full knowledge of or control over what advertising gets displayed on your blog is to self-host. Even the upgrade is no guarantee -- you can never rule out a technical glitch which results in ads being shown, or your definition of an 'ad' differing from Automattic's.

  13. justjennifer
    Member

    What is happening is that WordPress.com places advertisements on your blogs. Some of the ads are Google Adsense ads, others are referrer links if you link to WordPress.com's ad revenue partners. (Right now can't find the forum thread on that one.)

    As far as placement, while not an official reply, this diagram from Adsense is pretty spot-on as it goes. For myself, I have only ever seen ads right at the top under the Post title or bottom of blog posts before the comment section. Nothing in the sidebars, nothing in the middle.

    If you want to see those ads, log out, clear your cache and cookies (or use another browser) and find a way to click into a single post on your blog.

    IMNSHO the only ads that have been very intrusive were/are the ones for WordPress.com's in-house ezine, PopPressed.

    With the exception of PopPressed, none of this is news.

    As far as the No-Ads Upgrade, James has stated elsewhere in the forums that this will remove all ads, including PopPressed, and anything they may come up with in the future.

  14. justjennifer
    Member

    Found the reference to the revenue partner links (Skimlinks)

    http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/property-attribute-oncontextmenu-being-added-automatically-to-url?replies=14#post-572675

  15. malvedos
    Member

    Thank you Jennifer, that Adsense link is very helpful [I always learn from you!] though I still wish WP would state categorically how they are doing it. I know the thread you are talking about re pop pressed et al. The start of this whole thread was that I was logged out, and I did see an ad - bang in the middle and apparently bunging up the text and photo placement of my blog article. heavy sigh... I am frustrated that we are not being told the rules of play here... Self hosting is a long way off, I think. Thank you.

  16. malvedos
    Member

    Jennifer - we crossed posts. didn't see that one about skimlinks, Scary. Thanks again.

  17. justjennifer
    Member

    You are welcome and do take James' advice here and send Support a screenshot so that they can review it.

  18. malvedos
    Member

    I did send it. we have a little time zone lag, I thnk - I'm in Portugal - so may not get his reply till my evening time. Thanks!

  19. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    If macmanx were to come back with a straight answer now, it would make Automattic look bad when (not if) their policies change.

    Unfortunately, that's exactly why I can't give a definitive answer. All I can say is that they should appear between the end of the post and the start of the comments, for the most part, for now, etc.

    malvedos, I just responded to your ticket, but in short this was a combination of problems between the formatting of just that post (other posts appeared to be fine) affecting our ad code and your browser.

    We've prevented the post formatting for affecting the ad code by adding the following line to the end of your post in the HTML tab of the editor, so hopefully that takes care of your browser rendering problem too:

    <p style="clear:both;display:none;"></p>

  20. nickmomrik
    WordPress.com Staff

    There are no plans to inject ads in the middle of your content and I highly doubt there ever will be. We used to show some of the AdSense ads between the post title and the content but we stopped doing that a couple of years ago even though they were more successful than the under the post placement we use now. We stopped using that placement because it was too much like injecting the ads inside your content, which we don't like.

    @malvedos, to expand on @macmanx's reply about what caused the problem on your site...
    You had some images aligned left and right in your post. In order to do this, the CSS floats the images. If there is space in the middle of these floated elements, the browser will attempt to float up anything else to fill in the gap. Since there was a rectangle of space in the middle of the images, the next thing in your content was the AdSense text. We added the code provided to the end of your post, which tells the browser to stop floating things that come next.

  21. malvedos
    Member

    Thank you macmanx and nickmomrik, both of you, for the fix and the explanations. So... sorry - one more question / clarification for me, please - forgive me, HTML is still not something I understand very well. That code you put in to stop the ad text floating up - Is that something I could or should put at the end of every post, pro-actively, as a way of keeping ads in their place - below my text? Thanks.

  22. justjennifer
    Member

    Couldn't hurt. tsp recommended something similar to me
    <br / style="clear:both;"> on this post
    http://agallerydemo.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/include-from-media-library-gallery/ when the PopPressed photo ads were sliding up the left side making them look like part of the post.

    The only trouble I had is that the code has to be added via the HTML Editor and if you switch to the Visual Editor, it immediately gets wiped out.

  23. malvedos
    Member

    Thank you Jennifer - will book mark that and have a play with both lines of code. HTML is still slightly mysterious and intimidating to me... cross fingers!

Topic Closed

This topic has been closed to new replies.

About this Topic

Tags