Banners and ad slots

Advertising is one of the simplest ways to earn from a marketplace with steady traffic. You can sell banner space directly to local businesses, or let a network such as Google AdSense fill it for you. Yclas gives you several places to put a banner, all without editing your theme.

Where you can place banners

The names above are Nova’s. Most older themes have the same banner fields in their Theme Options; a few name them HTML code for header banner and HTML code for footer banner.

Add an image banner

The simplest banner is a picture that links to the advertiser.

1. Put the banner image online and copy its address. An image you’ve inserted in one of your pages appears under Media › Image library, where Copy URL gives you the address.
2. Go to Design › Widgets and add an Image widget.
3. Choose where it goes (sidebar or footer), paste the address into Enter the image URL and the advertiser’s address into URL to redirect when clicked (Optional).
4. Click Add widget.

For the header, footer or between-listings slots, paste the banner as HTML instead:

<a href="https://www.advertiser-example.com" target="_blank" rel="sponsored noopener">
  <img src="https://www.example.com/banner-728x90.png" alt="Advertiser name"
       style="max-width:100%;height:auto">
</a>

max-width:100% keeps the banner from overflowing on phones, and rel="sponsored" tells search engines it’s a paid link.

Common banner sizes are 728 × 90 px for the header and footer, and 300 × 250 px for the sidebar. A banner wider than the screen is scaled down on phones, so keep the text on it large.

Ad slots in Nova

The Nova theme has three widget areas made for banners and ad code. Put a Text widget with your banner HTML or AdSense code in any of them:

1. Go to Design › Widgets.
2. In Add a widget, find the Text widget and click + Add.
3. In Where do you want the widget displayed?, choose the slot by its code name, for example ad_listings.
4. Paste your banner HTML or ad code and click Add widget.

An empty slot shows nothing. To choose how often the slot between listings appears, go to Make money, step 2, Ad slots, and set Between listings: one slot every (8 listings unless you change it; 0 turns it off, and hides banners advertisers bought for that slot too). The same panel shows which slots are in use, with a link to Widgets. If bought banners are running between listings, setting it to 0 shows a warning with how many, because advertisers have paid for them.

If your cookie banner asks visitors to choose cookie categories, the ad slots only show to visitors who accept marketing cookies.

Sell banners to advertisers

Instead of placing each local advertiser’s banner yourself, let them buy it: with Sell banners on, anyone signed in can buy a banner for your ad slots, pay for it online and see its views and clicks. You only approve it.

1. Click Make money in the sidebar and continue to step 2, What sellers pay for.
2. Switch on Sell banners and set the Price per week (suggested: 20 in your site’s currency).
3. Finish the steps and click Save and switch on.
4. Add a link to the Advertise page, at /banner on your domain, to your menu or footer, so advertisers find it.

Banners need a payment method and are shown by the Nova theme.

How an advertiser buys a banner

On the Advertise page, under Buy a banner, the advertiser chooses:

They click Continue to payment and pay like any other order (the product is Banner in Orders). The same page lists their banners with their status and, once live, about how many views and clicks each has had.

Approve or reject a banner

When a banner is paid for, you get an email (A banner is waiting for your approval), and your dashboard shows Banners to approve under Needs your attention. Both open the Banners page, which is also in the admin sidebar while Sell banners is on:

• Approve starts the banner: it runs from now for the weeks bought, and the advertiser is emailed the end date.
• Reject stops it and refunds the order. Write a Reason, if you reject it (sent to the buyer). A Stripe payment is refunded straight away; for other payment methods the order is marked refunded and you send the money back yourself.

The Banners page also lists the live banners with their views, clicks and end date. Stop ends one early, with the same refund as a rejection.

Where bought banners show

Live banners rotate in their place, one per page, labelled Ad:

• Top of every page and On listing pages: alongside anything you placed in those ad slots yourself.
• Between listings: only when you have no widget in the ad_listings slot, at the spacing set in Between listings: one slot every in Make money. With 0 there, they aren’t shown.

A banner for one category shows on that category’s pages (and its subcategories’), as well as on listing pages in it. Views are estimated from a sample of visits; visits from search engine robots aren’t counted.

If one of your categories has the web address name banner, the Advertise page doesn’t open, so the category keeps its address.

Add Google AdSense

1. In AdSense, add your site and create an ad unit, or switch on Auto ads.
2. For Auto ads, paste the AdSense code into Code in the page head in Design › Custom code. See Add code to the head and footer.
3. For a fixed ad unit, paste its code into one of the banner fields above, or into a Text widget.
4. Add your ads.txt line (see below).
5. Click Save changes and wait for AdSense to review your site.

Use the same approach for other ad networks: their site-wide script goes in the head, their individual ad units in a banner field or a Text widget.

Ads.txt

Ad networks ask you to publish an ads.txt file listing who may sell ads on your site. AdSense shows a warning until it finds one.

1. Copy the line your ad network gives you. For AdSense it looks like google.com, pub-0000000000000000, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0.
2. Go to Settings › General and open Advanced.
3. Paste it into Ads.txt, one line per network.
4. Click Save changes.

Your file is now at https://your-domain/ads.txt. The link under the box opens it so you can check.

Tips

• Don’t overdo it. One banner above the listings and one in the sidebar earn more over time than a page full of ads that sends visitors away. Ads also compete with your members’ own listings for attention.
• Banners between listings work well because they look like part of the page; keep them the same width as a listing card.
• Privacy: ad networks set cookies. In the EU and UK you need your visitors’ consent first. See Cookie consent and privacy.
• Ad blockers hide many banners. The ad-block detector can ask visitors to turn theirs off.
• Selling promotion instead: members can also pay to feature, boost or sponsor their own listings. See Boosts and promotions and Featured listings.

Related guides

• Ways to make money from your marketplace — banners and everything else.
• Widgets — the Image and Text widgets in detail.
• Theme options — all the banner fields of your theme.
• Add code to the head and footer — site-wide scripts.