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.

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 HTML in HEAD Element in Settings › General › Advanced. 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 their own listings. See Featured listings and promotions.

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.