Monetization and ads are always a sensitive topic. Let’s alleviate it.
I’ve yet to meet a person to say:
I love those ads popping up everywhere on all the websites. The ones that cover the entire site and you have to find the closing ‘x’ are the best!
Ads are usually the thing that blocks the view, pops out of nowhere and more often than not has very little to do with what I’m personally interested in. Generic ads are just bad. People serving them should feel bad about doing it in this age. There’s no nice way of phrasing it, so why bother?
Ads Can Be Good
I can almost hear a ripple in time and space when you read it.
Ads can be good? Yea right!
The times where ads are treated as a taboo have already passed. People think that if they introduce ads on their WordPress blog they’ll lose traffic. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. Just do it properly the first time. Targeted ads for your blog starts with creating your very own community and this is the best thing that will ever happen to it.
Targeting ads based on interests of your community members is the key here. If you’re having a gaming community, it’s highly doubtful a majority of them would be interested in purchasing gardening tools now, would they? So why even bother showing those ads? Not only it’s ineffective, it’s just annoying to most of your members.
How about this. Show ads about the new Call of Duty game only to members who are interested in action / shooter games. What do you recon the conversion rate will be? I bet everything I own that they’d be more interested in that than gardening tools. But how can you know who likes what?
Bear with me, this will be good and we’re just getting started.
Get To Know Your Community
PeepSo allows you to create your own awesome social network. We all know that. Adding a social network to your WordPress blog is a home run. Allowing members to contribute to a Community Blog is another clear step in empowering Your Community.
The next big thing is to get to know Your Community even better. What better way to do it than just let them tell you. 
PeepSo comes with the essential profiles that you can still edit. 
Extended Profiles take it to a whole new level. You can create multiple, single-choice fields and many others. The plugin allows you to create complex profile fields for Your Community members.
Let’s stick to the gaming topic for a minute here. What fields can you create that are relevant?
- Favorite game genre (RPG, FPS, TPS…)
- Gaming platform (Xbox, PS, Wii, PC…)
- How much time do you spend playing games daily, weekly…
- How much money do you spend on games monthly…
- …
Those are just a few examples of gaming-specific questions that can be asked in profiles. You can of course add a bunch of other ones. The sky is the limit. And hey! If you really want you can throw in a field or an entire section about gardening interests :).
All of those fields can be used to target ads. Ads that are tailored to the exact audience.
Groups
Focus is important, it lets Your Community find exactly what they are looking for. It’s 
Groups plugin. Let your community organize themselves into groups, they can create their own little sub-communities. A group for RPG game lovers or even for specific game titles. How about groups for PC, Xbox, PS and other platforms? Where they can be not only on gaming topic but on a very specific gaming topic.
Open, closed and secret groups – that’s the choice your members have. Perhaps some of them can create an elite group just for the chosen ones. Let users apply or be invited to a group before they can join.
Just like with profile fields you can target ads based on which groups your users are members of.
Friends
Connections are the glue that keeps a great community together and that’s exactly what 
Friends plugin does. It allows your users to create connections between themselves. It’s people come for the content but stay for the unique connections they couldn’t have formed otherwise. You can also target ads based on how many friends your members have.
VIP
Yet another plugin that you can use for targeting ads throughout your site. 
VIP plugin gives you the possibility to group or mark users based on whatever criteria you might want. Whether they’re actual very important people, perhaps they’re moderators on your website, maybe they are the writers who contribute to your community blog.
It’s up to you! With Advanced Ads and 
Advanced Ads Integration plugin you can target those specific people. Better yet. You can set ads NOT to be shown to your VIP users. Which immediately raises the VIP status bar. No ads? Ever? Wow! Everyone wants to be a VIP.
How Big Does Your Community Have To Be?
Well, isn’t that a million dollar question? Obviously, the bigger the better so that there are more people to target. But with a great blog and a dedicated user base you’ve definitely got a great start. There are always ways to get Your Community to grow. Great and regular content, brings people to the site. I’ve argued that creating a community blog is one of the best ways to get that done. You can always start with that and see how Your Community gets stronger not only in numbers but also in engagement.
Non-Invasive Ads
With the Advanced Ads and the Advanced Ads Integration plugin you can not only have the ad targeting that makes sense but also have ads that blend in perfectly within Your Community. The best way is the non-invasive way. Ads still catch people’s eyes but they do it in a subtle way. They don’t distract. They convey the message and the human subconsciousness does the rest. Elegant ads are the future and they’re here to stay.
Ads on PeepSo Activity Stream are just one of virtually limitless possibilities of ad placements. Just because the ads are targeted based on Your Community (PeepSo plugins) doesn’t mean they only work within PeepSo view. Quite the contrary, the ads can be displayed anywhere on your site and in many various formats. That’s all thanks to Advanced Ads plugin on basis of which Social Targeted Ads are built.
Combine It All
With targeting so complex and specific your ads will never miss. They will reach exactly the people they’re supposed to reach. First and foremost, it’ll ensure that people won’t be spammed by ads that are irrelevant. Secondly, the people who get to see those ads might actually appreciate them, it will be the exact thing they might be interested in.
Third and best of all, the results is that those targeted ads show products or services to people who actually appreciate them, that generates better sales for the advertisers, which leads to them willing to make money which gets them to pay more for ads on your website. Consequently that brings more revenue to you. It’s a win-win scenario for everyone.
The best of all is that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Once you get into the targeted ads you will wonder why you ever allowed yourself to even consider running generic ad campaigns.
Tell Us What You Think!
What’s your opinion on selling advertising space on your WordPress blog? Is it hard to find advertisers? Can you think of any disadvantages of targeted ads on your site? Let us know what you think in the comment below.
