WordPress Plugin to Setup Rotating Banner Ads

So I decided that I needed a way to rotate through a series of banner advertisements with my WordPress blog and wanted to find a plugin to simplify this.  I tested several plugins but I wanted one that let me put the rotating ad inside posts or any php file manually and not one that would only setup a sidebar widget.

I decided to go with the Datafeedr Random Ads V2 plugin which was the most flexible and easiest to use in my opinion.  Here are the instructions to download and configure Datafeedr Random Ads V2 so you can setup rotating banner advertisement for your WordPress blog.

Go to WordPress.org/extend/plugins manually or through your WordPress dashboard.

Search for and find the Datafeedr Random Ads V2 plugin and install it.

When it installs under Tools menu to the left of your WordPress dashboard, click on the Datafeedr Random Ads link.

Here you will then have the choice to setup a new ad group, an ad group is a collection of banners you want to rotate through.  You can setup multiple separate ad groups so that you can have different rotating banner ad sections in various places on your blog if you desire.

Click on Add New Group

Here you will type in your ad group name (for your reference only) then decide if you want any text displayed before or after the ad on your blog.  I didn’t want any text on my site so I left those sections blank.

Finally, you now configure your “Ad Boxes” each Ad Box in the Rotating Banner Ads plugin is a section where you put the custom HTML or Javascript code for your banner.   Here you can cut/paste links, images, Google Adsense code or Amazon Affiliate links or iframe code.  The box will let you put anything you want in here so make sure you have your banners adjusted to the right sizes for the area where you want to display the rotating banner ads.

Once you finish with your first Ad Box, you can setup additional Ad Boxes.

Just click on Add Box and copy/paste in your other banner code you want to rotate through.  When finished don’t forget to select Save Changes.

When you are finished you then are taken to the “Ad Group” overview where you can see your ad groups and the Template code you need to use to insert your Ad group into your WordPress blog.

All you need to do is cut/paste this template php code into your index.php, single.php or sidebar.php files to add the banner ad group wherever you want.  This gives you complete control and you can set an ad group for just 125×125 banners, 468×90 banners, or even custom banner ad sizes.

For bloggers that want to start putting in banner ad rotation and still control which banners they display manually the Datafeedr Random Ads V2 plugin is very easy to use and effective.  It does not do any analytics, track clicks, track impressions…etc so you will want to use Bit.ly or other URL shrinking on your links so you can track the performance of your various banners.  This way you can remove underperforming ones and replace with better performing ones later.

So now on my personal blog I have implemented the Rotating Banner Ads for WordPress and am quite happy with the results.  I will let my readers know if I see better conversions with this feature.  For my own site I am rotating 2 affiliate banners with a 468×90 AdSense ad in the same header slot.

-Dragon Blogger