Web Design

Quick Adsense is Dead, Long Live Ad Inserter and Global Content Blocks!

- by Webologist - 32 Comments.

For some reason the best advert management plugin for WordPress is no longer supported. Quick Adsense is dead, the adverts simply do not appear any more. It seems that the original plugin developer sold it to another party but they have not updated it – they also do not respond to enquiries.

Now, the plugin actually stopped working a while ago as it is not compatible with the latest version of WordPress. I decided to get around this snag by not updating the WordPress core files. Risky maybe, but not so risky as having no way to display adverts within the content on my site. It all went wrong last night when I decided to update some other plugins though.

Showing Adverts Within Wordress Posts

See, this is what Quick Adsense did so well. The name was misleading, you could place any code in the fields to be displayed. Then for each piece of code you set where abouts within posts (and Pages) it appears, e.g. before the content, centre of the content, after the content, after Nth paragraph, after an image, after the “more tag” etc. etc. You could display up to 12 (I think) adverts on a page too.

Optimising Adverts / Adsense

A side note – I have been using Adsense for years and have tried just about every placement you can think of, with every ad format. By far the best is always to have 2 adverts within the content. Adsense ads in side bars suffer from serious banner blindness issues, above the content causes “Page Layout” Google search penalties. In the content works best. Not too soon, after a few paragraphs.

Quick Adsense Alternatives

So, as I said, I was careful not to update WordPress. However, last night I did update something (possibly the WordPress SEO plugin, maybe something else) and that broke Quick Adsense. I only noticed this morning so lost half and American day’s revenue (the Brits were all asleep or in the pub so did not affect them so much).

I had searched around for some alternatives before but none seemed to work. Ad Injection was tested but it killed the whole site (some sort of php error appeared instead of the website).

Finally I found half a solution, so had to add a workaround to make it a full solution.

Ad Inserter (version 1.2.0)

Ad Inserter inserts adverts into Posts. For some reason it does not insert into Pages. Not a big problem as I only run a few Pages instead of posts. It was developed by Igor Funa and can be found here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ad-inserter/.

His description:

“Integrate any HTML code into WordPress. Just paste the code and select the location and display mode. Perfect for AdSense or contextual Amazon ads.”

It does what it says on the tin.

However, for strange, historic reasons, some of my most popular pages are Pages and not Posts. So they were still without adverts. So another solution was needed.

Just spotted one issue – it inserts Adverts into blockquote areas. Annoying to say the least! Oh well. I think I will be doing a lot of manual checks and hopefully fixing on a Post level.

Global Content Blocks

Global Content Blocks is a plugin which lets you create and manage shortcodes in WordPress. Shortcodes call up more complex code so it is easier and add HTML to a post (or Page!) and easy to edit it. Global Content Blocks was developed by benz1 and can be found here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/global-content-blocks/

So I created 3 shortcodes for my 3 adverts and added them manually to the Pages that needed adverts.

Now, I probably could just put the shortcodes into Ad Inserter – I only just thought of this. This would mean that all the adverts are managed via Global Content Blocks. I may try this on another site. For now, I have adverts again. Phew.

I have not had time to scrutinize these plugins, I cannot see anything “odd” happening, so for now am trusting that nothing untoward happens while my back is turned.

Ideally someone will fix Quick Adsense or build a new plugin to properly manage adverts. Ideally someone at Google / DoubleClick for Publishers will build a WordPress plugin to manage it – most publishers use WordPress don’t they?

 

32 Comments on “Quick Adsense is Dead, Long Live Ad Inserter and Global Content Blocks!”

  1. Good to know that you found Global Content Blocks useful. There is no end of uses for it, glad to hear it provided you with a good solution to replace Quick Adsense 🙂

  3. A little update: I still have Quick Adsense working on one blog, so I think the problem is compatibility with some themes. Maybe a theme update is needed to work properly with Quick Adsense / WordPress now? Not sure, I cannot delve deep into these things, not a coder!

  5. I’d been using quick adsense like you.
    But It’s broken after I updated wordpress latest version.
    I wasted a lot a time to find an alternative until I finally arrive here.
    Immediately I got rid of quick adsense and install ad inserter instead

    and It works pretty well!! I love it!
    Thanks a lot!

  6. Quick Adsense doesn’t work? I was just about to install it! Good thing I found this article! I’ll give Ad Inserter a shot and see how it goes!

    I’ve also come across another plugin called Ad Injector! I’ll see which one works better!

    Thanks a lot Jim!

    cheers!

    – Chris

  7. I think I mentioned above, the problem is with a WordPress update and some themes – it still works for some other themes.

  8. Well Suggested Plugins, In my opinion “WP Insert” works better for me, i just have to add my code in its panel and all goes live, it is very easy and fast in my opinion, by the way good suggestion of plugins!

  9. I will go with @Webologist comment. I am using Thesis and Arthemia for my blogs. I have no problem with Quick Adsense with any of it. I’m using WordPress 3.5 version. So it must be only the themes. BTW, the learning curve for adsense plugins is little headache. So better stick to one plugin. The alternatives provided by the author are useful, though I have not tested it.

  10. Hello,
    the Quick Adsense Plugin works for me on a handfull Blogs. All the Blogs are working with Thesis Themes.

    There is only one point to complain about: Quick Adsense does not Show ADS on Category Pages.
    Is there a solution for this?

  11. Hi,

    I have the same problem with Quick Adsense and found the plugin, which breaks Quick Adsense. In my case it’s the Jetpack Plugin. When I disable Jetpack the Ads are showing up normally. Have the latest wordpress version 3.5.

    Cheers!
    Daniel

  14. If you’re evaluating free ad plugins other than Quick Adsense, make sure you read the fine print. Most of them display a small percentage of ads connected to the author’s AdSense ID… very shady. Quick Adsense is the only one I’ve found where I’m sure that all the ads on my site are my own.

  15. I had better double check the plugin I use for my main site – thanks for the tip Dan!

  16. Go look at the reviews of the plugin on the WordPress site. Many of the “free” ad plugins have reviews where people talk about the fact that ad revenue is being stolen. That’s how I found out in the first place.

  17. I have the same problem with Quick AdSense that you had initially with the plugin you were using. It only works in posts (for my theme anyway). I submitted a support ticket at the WordPress site, but I don’t expect anything to come of it.

    I’ll probably end up signing up with a second ad network and putting those ads in the widget areas so the rest of the site will be covered.

  18. Sorry to be spamming your discussion thread here… but it’s been a while since I did this research and it’s not the reviews… it’s the support forum where there are lots of discussions about this. Do a Google search for “adsense plugin stealing” and you’ll find lots of discussions on this topic.

  19. On sites where Quick Adsense is not working (it is still working on some, so I may try again) I am using Ad-Inserter: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ad-inserter/

    I am pretty sure it is not doing anything naughty, I had a look at the code and cannot see how it could be calling up their own adverts anywhere. But I will keep investigating, just in case I missed something.

  20. Dan, it is not spamming if you are a central part of the discussion!

    Which plugin did you find a problem with? I am curious to know. I am searching the forums and looking at reviews on other sites, Ad-Inserter still looks like a safe option though, which is a relief.

  21. I just did a search as suggested, and yep, there are a few naughty plugin developers out there. But a few good guys too.

  23. Hi Ummi, both Quick Adsense and AdInserter allow you to remove the ads as post / page level by adding a line of code to the HTML.

  24. Hi,
    I am using quick adsense. Can anybody please tell me how could i know if they are stealing my adsense earnings or not. I have googled and didn’t find anything. 🙁

  25. Pretty positive they are not. Easiest way is to look at the ads on your site and check they are yours.

  26. Can any one list Free WordPress themese where Quick Adsense is working fine without any issues (especially on sidebar of home page) please?

  28. Quick Adsense is working well on my site, however i miss the feature of managing ads separately for single posts and archives

  30. at the moment that does seem to be the better option. make sure you use the latest vesion though, as there was a report of a cross-script vulnerability in older versions.

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