When should you put ads on your website? [2024]

This post was most recently updated on January 30th, 2024

Did you just launch a new website or just start looking at advertising as a monetization method?

With an established digital presence and solid blog content, are you wondering when to include advertisements on your website?

Here are two key indicators that will guide you to place ads on your website the right way, plus what you should do next.

When should I put ads on my website?

Here’s why you need to put ads on your website:

• You are getting 1,000+ visits per day (organic visits ahem ahem).
• You have at least 50+ blog posts (long-form written content with pictures).

You must be wondering why this is crucial to succeeding in the ‘blog world’.

 Do you have enough written content published?

If you want to list ads on your website, then you’ll need to have a decent amount of written content so that you can get monetized later.

After choosing to monetize with Google AdSense, you will need to go through the content to ad-ratio policies for meeting the eligibility criteria and minimum requirements.

The following kind of pages are examples of objectionable or unacceptable content:

• Plagiarizing written content from other sources without credits or any added value (no one likes facing copyright infringement).

• Blog posts with more ads than written content. Too many popup ads can worsen bounce rates in the long run.

• Hosted ad pages

• Automatically generated content without any proper curation or manual review.

• Pages without any content

• Pages that don’t abide by Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines.

If you can even get around 25-55 blog posts published, you are good to go.

Are your articles’ word count ranging between 800-3500 words?

That means your content-to-ad ratio is well above the satisfactory threshold mark.

Post this, you can freely welcome the Google AdSense monetization approval. (Hello AdSense paycheck!)

You must be wondering about the steps you can take to increase your overall AdSense revenue by legit means.

Past stats have shown that around 10 websites capping the fattest revenue paychecks have an average of around 90-100 blog posts.

Blog posts with around 20-25 article posts didn’t seem to cash out enough Google AdSense revenue (YIKES!)

Few publishers underestimate the power of high-quality content as a traffic driver.

MonetizeMore has personally seen sites acquiring organic traffic visits from zero to ten thousand plus visitors on a weekly basis in a quarterly span:

If you persist enough to write a blog post every alternate day, you will observe steady growth in your AdSense revenue and organic traffic in 4-6 months.

Numbers don’t lie!

Check out our blog post on How MonetizeMore has helped countless publishers 3X  their ad revenue here.

Do you get at least 100 organic visits per day on a weekly basis?

Consider placing ads on your website when you’ve had a solid week of growth.

Once publishers organically reach the 100 visits a day mark and can stick with that consistency for seven days, they are good to go.

Placing ads on your site is the best way to go, once the traffic on your website keeps building up gradually.

Here is an example of a publisher with a positive traffic curve who is above the 100 organic visits per day threshold.

How to put ads on a website?

Have you ever thought about how online ads work?

There are advertisers and there are publishers.

• Publishers want to monetize their written content with ads and fund their blogs.
• Advertisers are looking to improve their reach and brand presence online through their ad campaigns.

Always go for advertisers that fit your website’s niche you would like to monetize your site with.

Many of these partners together make up the Display Lumascape.

The big boys in the ad game here range from monetization platforms and header bidding services.

Publishers often find that too many hands in the money pot take more from them than they give back, and the rest are outright scammers looking to make a quick buck off the value you’ve formulated.

Easily place ads on your website by applying for Google AdSense.

Past stats have shown that Google’s AdExchange typically wins 85-95% of bids despite the fact that there are thousands of potential partners.

Furthermore, we’ve seen that monetization with header bidding and multiple demand partners provides marginal benefits at best.

For this reason, Google AdSense is the easiest and extremely effective way for publishers to display ads on their websites.

Choosing to monetize with multiple demand partners will give you a competitive edge.

How much do website ads pay?

Advertisements are priced by:

• Flat rate (when there’s a direct deal with the publisher)
• Clicks
• Impressions

Impressions and clicks are by far the most popular.

Page RPM (Revenue per mille) is the most common metric used to evaluate publisher revenue.

Page RPM = (Estimated Earnings / Total no. of page views) * 1000

CPMs and eCPMs have proven time and time again that they aren’t good enough KPI’s of overall revenue improvement.

The CPM is the price paid for individual ad space, while the eCPM is the total price for all the ads on a page.

The RPM metric that measures revenue per thousand impressions does not accurately measure publishers’ performance because it does not account for additional page views per session.

A site’s long-term success depends on metrics such as UX, earnings, visitors, and SEO (these metrics are not considered by RPM).

CPC vs CPM

The term CPM means Cost Per Thousand Impressions or Cost Per Mille. It is the price advertisers pay for each ad space.

The main question is how do you get paid?

You’ll get paid based on the number of times the ad has been shown.

CPC on the other hand stands for ‘Cost per Click’.

With CPC, you get paid solely based on the number of ad clicks.

For advertisers, both the CPC and CPM models work in their favor.

Earlier, AdSense used a CPC model, but it became evident that people would click their own ads to inflate their revenue.

As of now, AdSense has switched to CPM model. In this case, advertisers pay a fixed rate for 1000 ad impressions.

It is not mandatory for people to click on your ads for you to make money.

Do I need to follow any policies for placing ads on my website?

There are tonnes of ad demand partners around, but some might not follow strict policies.

Since Google AdX is Google’s golden boy, multiple ad network partners from around the world are sourcing their demand from Google AdExchange or DFP.

By hovering over ads, you can feel how powerful Google’s presence has become.

Google’s AdExchange won the bid for that ad space if you hover over the ad and see “Doubleclick” anywhere in the URL.

Accordingly, you need to follow Google’s policies if you wish to work with their ad demand.

Here’s the complete guide to AdSense program policies that enumerates all details you need to know to be Google compliant.

Here’s a quick rundown on Google’s AdSense policies:

• No encouraging views or clicks
• No false clicks or impressions
• Embedding ad code on site pages with “restricted” content
• No ads on blogs with sensitive content
• No ad code in hidden areas of the site.
• While using Ads.txt, don’t forget to add yourself as an authorized seller
• Avoid modifying the Google AdSense code.
• Users should not be able to alter their preferences, be redirected, download software, or be exposed to popups that interfere with navigation.
• Don’t add or disclose any personal identifying data or personal details. Example: credit card information
• Always adhere to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
• No bot traffic. (Human traffic via SEO or paid ads).

How many ads can I place on my site?

There’s no fixed number of ads that you can place on your website.

If the main aim is to grow your ad revenue and reach out to real people.

The number of ads you place on your site can affect your ad revenue in a good way or a bad way.

You can always split test and analyze if 4 ads are enough or you need to take it to 6 ads.

Split testing and multivariate testing helps to optimize ad revenue in the long term.

Additionally, there are tons of other metrics other than the number of ads affecting publishers’ ad revenue.

The attributes are as follows:

• Ad placement
• Ad design and color
• Ad size
• Reader behavior attributes

Also, user experience metrics like bounce rates, exit rates, pages per session, and time spent on the blog are also important.

Am I picking the right ads for my website?

Ideally, you want to increase your ad relevance without limiting your site’s advertiser demand.

Despite the fact that you don’t select every ad that appears on your website, you can always choose the ad category in which it appears.

So, if your blog’s niche is based on controversial topics like politics, consider blocking ads that may be sensitive or come in restricted categories.

Enhancing your Ad Viewability

An ad served is not always an ad viewed.

Viewability is a metric that measures how visible your ads are online.

A banner or creative needs to be displayed for at least 50 percent of its duration to be considered viewed.

Therefore, if your ads are placed at the bottom of your website, but viewers aren’t scrolling down to view these ads, you won’t receive viewable impressions.

This could result in advertisers avoiding your domain from serving their ads.

No one wants that!

PubGuru Header bidding can help in this case.

Ensure that your ad viewability is up to mark to get that ad revenue rollin’.

Wrap Up

The process of deciding when and how to display ads on your website isn’t as complicated as you may think.

Stop believing rumors that ads are bad for UX.

In fact, your user experience metrics only improve post ad placement.

By placing ads in the right locations, they actually enhance UX.

A blocked domain or a lack of intersection between your content and your visitors’ personas is the last thing you want.

With 300+ ad tech professionals, MonetizeMore makes ad operations and monetization a cakewalk for publishers.

Choosing and displaying the right ads can be a bit of a learning curve, but we are here to help.

Sign up for a starter account at MonetizeMore today and let’s make your ad monetization journey a cakewalk.