This is the fourth guide in our Ad Manager setup series. If you haven't set up your account, created an order and line item, or built an ad unit yet, start with Guides #1 through #3 first.
Two common approaches for WordPress
- A dedicated ad management plugin, which handles tag placement through the WordPress admin without editing theme files directly.
- Manual placement inside your theme's template files, giving more precise control over exactly where each ad unit renders.
Manual implementation, at a high level
- Copy the ad tag generated for your ad unit from Ad Manager.
- Identify the theme template file controlling the placement you want (header, single post content, sidebar).
- Insert the tag inside a child theme, not the parent theme, so updates don't overwrite your changes.
- Test on a staging environment before pushing to the live site.
Things that commonly go wrong
Placing tags directly in the parent theme (lost on the next update), forgetting to test on mobile breakpoints, and not accounting for lazy-loaded content that shifts ad position after page load are the most frequent issues we see.
How AdPulse helps
We handle tag implementation directly for publishers who'd rather not touch template code themselves, and review existing implementations for the mistakes above.
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