Ads and support blocks

Three placements, each with its own section, each switchable on its own.

Everything here is in Appearance ▸ Customize, which previews as you change it. Nothing is saved until you press Publish, so it is the safe place to experiment: change something, look at the preview, and close without publishing if you hate it.

Each picture below is that section’s own pane, breadcrumb included, so you can see where you are.

Each one takes either an image and a link, or an ad network’s code. A placement with nothing configured draws nothing on a live site.

Leaderboard Ads

Across the top. The most visible and the most intrusive.

Sidebar Ads

On browsing pages, beside the content rather than inside it. The least intrusive of the three, and it needs a sidebar to be enabled to appear at all; see layout settings.

In-Content Ads

Inside chapter pages. Use carefully. This is the middle of somebody’s reading, and it is the placement most likely to make a paying reader feel they are still being sold to.

Consent changes the maths

If your cookie banner is on, ad placements wait for consent before loading anything. That is the correct behaviour, and it means readers who decline see no ads at all.

Worth knowing before you model revenue on impressions: your fill rate is your consent rate.

Instead of ads

The support block is for sites that would rather ask than advertise: a link to Ko-fi, Patreon or wherever you take support, presented as a request rather than as an advert.

On a site that already sells chapters this frequently earns more than ads and costs the reader less attention. See how monetization fits together.