Do you need an ad server at all?

What Google Ad Manager is and who it suits

Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad serving platform. Google’s help centre describes it as an ad management platform for large publishers who have significant direct sales. It supports multiple ad exchanges and networks, including AdSense, third-party networks and exchanges.

It suits publishers who manage a lot of direct deals, mix several demand sources, and need detailed reports. Its site also lists video, apps and TV inventory, brand safety and yield management.

We read its product page and its help centre overview before writing this. Everything said about it here comes from those pages. We give it credit where it is ahead, because at a large scale it is the standard tool.

The real difference is whether you need a server in the middle

An ad server sits between your pages and your advertisers. You define ad units, Google generates a tag for each, you place those tags in your site, and the service decides which campaign wins each request. That is a strong design for competing demand at volume.

A WordPress ad plugin works from inside the site. You create an ad, assign it to a placement and set a schedule, and the plugin shows it. For one site with a few sponsors that is enough, and it is much less to learn.

What you give up without an ad server

• Competing exchanges and networks bidding for your impressions.
• Support for video, app and TV inventory.
• Customizable reporting at the depth a hosted service offers.
• A partner network and account support for larger publishers.
• The ability to run one setup across many sites and apps.

If one or two of those matter to your income, you need the server. If none do, you may be paying in complexity for features you never use.

A rule of thumb for deciding

Look at your own numbers rather than at the feature list. Ask how many separate advertisers you have, how many ad sources compete for one slot, and how many people touch the ad setup.

• Under ten direct sponsors, a plugin can usually hold them all.
• One ad network plus direct ads is a mix a plugin handles. Several networks bidding is not.
• One person managing the ads suits a plugin. A team with roles and approvals suits a server.
• Video or app inventory points to a server from day one.
• If sales planning depends on forecasts, you want the server.

How the job gets done in WordPress, step by step

These steps use the free plugin unless marked Pro.

1. Create an ad. Choose from five types: an image, rich content that is a plain HTML box, code, Google AdSense or an email capture form.
2. Choose a placement. There are more than a dozen spots, including before and after content, after a paragraph you choose, a sidebar widget, header and footer, around comments, and sticky and popup positions.
3. Set display rules. Pick content types, categories and tags to include or exclude, and special templates to skip.
4. Add visitor conditions. You can target by device, by logged-in status and by user role.
5. Add country targeting if you need it, either showing in chosen countries or hiding from them.
6. Schedule it with start and end dates, days of the week, a time of day and a total impressions cap, and set a priority from 1 to 10 if other ads share the slot.

Checking what happened

The All Ads list shows Impressions and Clicks columns, and a click-through comparison puts ads in one slot side by side. Pro adds an Ad Analytics screen. Full split testing, which sends traffic between creatives, is Pro. The free comparison is only a comparison.

AdSense and ad networks next to your own ads

Google Ad Manager is built to put AdSense and other networks into one auction with your direct deals. The plugin works differently, and the difference is worth stating exactly.

When AdSense and a direct sponsor are live in one slot, the plugin picks one per page view at random, weighted by priority. A direct campaign does not override AdSense. A sponsor at 10 next to AdSense at 1 gets about 91 percent of views. Scheduling decides whether an ad is in the pool, so AdSense has the slot alone before and after a sponsor’s dates.

There is no logic that treats AdSense as unsold space or falls back to a house ad when something fails. A code ad holds HTML or JavaScript, so tags from other networks can go in it. We have not tested Google Publisher Tags there, so try them on staging first. A Max ads per page setting, 10 by default, caps all ads of every type on a page.

Selling ad space directly

Most small publishers do not need a deal desk. They need a way for a sponsor to say yes and pay. The free plugin has a partnership inquiry form so sponsors approach you, and you can schedule their banner for the dates you agree.

Pro adds an advertiser portal, which is a front-end dashboard where members build campaigns, submit them and watch spend. You approve or reject each campaign in a moderation queue before it goes live. Advertisers pay with prepaid credits, topped up through direct Stripe or PayPal, or through WooCommerce, its Subscriptions and Memberships, Paid Memberships Pro or MemberPress.

You bring the advertisers. There are no insertion orders, contracts or invoices in either plugin. If you need those, a hosted ad server or your own paperwork covers it. The direct sponsor ads use case shows a typical setup, and the AdSense and direct mix page covers running both.

Pick the first tool by the question you have today. If the question is how to show a sponsor’s banner for two weeks without editing a theme, that is a plugin job. If the question is how to sell the same slot to forty buyers in an auction, that is a server job.

What you can measure

Free shows Impressions and Clicks for each ad, a running click count on links, and a click-through comparison. It has no Reports screen, no per-campaign page and no per-slot dashboard. Impressions are counted when the server renders the ad, so fully cached pages undercount.

Pro adds Ad Analytics and revenue by placement, plus geo and device breakdowns and a CSV export. Revenue means what advertisers paid for ads and classifieds through the portal.

Google describes customizable reports that show what will serve to given inventory and how much revenue you are likely to earn. Forecasting like that is beyond a plugin. If you plan sales around predicted inventory, that is a reason to use a server.

Disclosure and what you must do yourself

Ads should be labelled as ads. The free plugin has an ad label setting with the text “Advertisement” by default, shown above or below the ad. You can change the text.

The plugin does not add rel attributes automatically. If a sponsor’s link needs rel=“sponsored”, check the output and add it yourself. Nothing writes a sponsored-post disclosure for you. The label does not replace consent either. A setting lets you require consent before AdSense loads, and you should set it to match your region and your consent tool.

Both options leave compliance with you. Google’s site lists brand safety as one of its capabilities, which a plugin does not offer. For a site that sells directly to local sponsors you know, that matters less.

What each costs to run

Google’s help page says a standard account must sign up for a paid account when it reaches a specific impression threshold, and its premium tier lists advanced features that may involve additional fees. Setup often means someone who understands line items, targeting and tags. Its site lists certified publishing partners for help. Check its pages for current terms.

WB Ad Manager’s core is free. Pro is a paid yearly licence, listed on the pricing page. Running costs are your hosting and the time to keep the plugin updated. The skill needed is lower: if you can write a post, you can create an ad.

There is also a cost in change. A hosted ad server asks you to trust one more service with your ad delivery, and a bad tag can slow every page it sits on. A plugin keeps the delivery in your own site, which makes it your problem to speed up but also your control. Both cost something, and neither is free of risk.

Data and privacy

Ads you upload as images are served from your own server. AdSense and code ads load whatever those services load. Country targeting sends the visitor’s IP to a geolocation service, with ip-api as the default and ipinfo.io and ipapi.co as the others. IPs stored by the plugin are anonymized with a daily-rotating hash. There are no third-party tracking pixels from us. With a hosted ad server, ad requests go to the vendor, so read its terms.

Moving over from Google Ad Manager

There is no importer for ad server orders or line items. Moving over means rebuilding each live campaign by hand, or having a developer script it, which is custom work and not a built-in feature. The Pro CSV importer is for links, not ads.

Start with what is live. List active sponsors with their dates, sizes and destination URLs. Create each as an ad, set the schedule and priority, and check the placement on a staging copy. Remove the tags from your theme once the plugin is serving.

Keep the tag-based setup running in parallel for a short time and compare impressions. Remember the plugin counts server-side, so numbers will differ from a hosted service’s counts.

Launch checklist

1. Install the free plugin from the Wbcom Designs checkout.
2. List your live sponsors, their dates and creative sizes.
3. Create one ad per sponsor, set its schedule, and check it on a phone and a desktop.
4. Add your AdSense ad and set priorities for shared slots.
5. Set the ad label text and the consent setting for AdSense.
6. Check a cached page, since impressions may undercount there, and remove old tags from your theme only after the new setup runs cleanly.

Running beside the rest of the stack

WB Ad Manager is one of several separate plugins from the same team. They run on one WordPress site and one login, but you install, host and update each yourself.

If you own an audience worth selling against, the others may matter. BuddyNext is a community plugin, Jetonomy covers forums and Q&A, Learnomy sells courses, Listora is a directory, WP Career Board is a job board and WP Sell Services is a services marketplace. WB Gamification adds points and badges, and BuddyX Pro and Reign are themes.

A publisher with a community or a directory has pages that sponsors may pay to appear on. That is the honest connection. We do not claim these products share data with the ad plugin.

The connections we can state are narrow. Free ad placements include spots for BuddyPress, bbPress and Jetonomy pages. Pro includes a BuddyPress integration that adds advertiser tabs to member profiles, posts activity when an ad is approved and sends notifications. See monetizing the whole stack.

Other alternatives worth a look

• BuySellAds wins when your problem is finding advertisers, because it brings buyers to you and a plugin does not.
• Advanced Ads is another WordPress ad plugin, and its page sets out when it is the better pick.
• AdRotate is a further plugin option, with its own page on when it fits.
• Ad Inserter is compared on its own page for sites that care about exact code placement.
• AdSanity is covered on its page for sites that sell banner space.
• All alternatives lists every comparison on this site.

Who should stay with Google Ad Manager

Stay if you are a large publisher. Google describes the product for large publishers with significant direct sales, and that is where it earns its keep. A plugin cannot replace competing exchanges.

Stay if you serve video, app or TV inventory. We are a WordPress plugin for web pages.

Stay if you need granular reporting and forecasting to plan sales, or you already have people who know the tool. Moving costs more than it saves. If your site is smaller and your ad business is a few sponsors and AdSense, read the WordPress ad manager plugin overview and decide on what you actually use.

You can also grow into a server later. Nothing about starting with a plugin locks you in, because image ads and sponsor details are simple to rebuild elsewhere. The reverse is harder to justify: setting up a full ad server for a site that has two sponsors costs weeks you could spend on content.