Working fine for YEARS

Everybody has their own favourite ad management plugin.

This just happens to be mine.

Why? It works. And has worked well enough for the past decade (or two?).

Do I need any more features? No, not really. I get sometimes annoyed when I cannot save a more complex JavaScript ad snippet — but that’s not AdRotate, it’s the WordPress core interfering, being extra-cautious.

Do I need any fixes or changes? Well, the truth is, Arnan is constantly tinkering with this plugin. Most of the time you just get improvements — free of charge. Some things could be better managed, e.g. changing multiple schedules at the same time for the same last date. But perhaps it’s just me being lazy, and instead of “multiple schedules” I might just need… one, but configured correctly. That said, it’s all my fault, really.

These days, ad blockers are pervasive and AI-enhanced to successfully disable most ads. AdRotate cannot do “magic”, but it has some pretty neat features to punch a hole through all those barriers. This is never 100% guaranteed to succeed, but it’s always worth a try.

One might wonder — why use a third-party plugin to manage your ads manually? Why don’t I stick simply with Google Ads, or any other provider which already has fantastic backends with all statistics I could possibly ever want — and for free?

The answer is not quite obvious and does not apply to everybody. First and foremost, Google is very keen in blocking content that they know that will discourage advertisers. If you have that kind of content, you already know that (you have been blocked, or at least offered a reduced set of advertisers). The option is not to rely on Google (note that other operators have similar rules or guidelines and are quite trigger-happy to exclude as many sites as they legitimately can). And even if you do (my own Google Ads are shown inside AdRotate), you have to take Google’s word on how many impressions you got, and how many of those were clicked-through. I prefer not to trust Google on that, and double-check their status, by contrasting them with what AdRotate says. A small discrepancy is to be expected — both do their maths differently. But a big difference is worth investigating — and, for that, you need to have statistics of your own that you can rely upon.

But the biggest advantage of AdRotate is to manage sections of your site that have “special” links — not necessarily “ads” in the classic sense, but things like URL exchanges with friends with related content. Or actual ads that a prospective customer wants to buy — but avoid Google’s (or any other providers’) fees. Every now and then, I do get the odd customer who wants to “place an ad” but does not want to use Google to serve such ads. Well, I need to be able to track such cases on my own — Google will only track their own ads, obviously — and that means you need an alternative.

This is it.