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How to Add AdSense In-article Ads in Blogger

After a few months of using AdSense, one of the recommendations I got from Google was to switch to Auto Ads. Up until this time, I had stuck to banner ads and kept away from native ads, which I had assumed would take a lot of tinkering with to work with Blogger.

However, this new development reinvigorated my interest and I decided to give them a try, especially given the fact that you only need to implement one code for the ads to display in all your pages.

It turned out later that I had actually already implemented code since it the same code used for the AdSense review process. So the only thing I was left to do was activate the type of Auto Ads I wanted to be served by AdSense on my pages.

Auto Ads also serve the traditional Text & Display Ads (Banners), but since I had those already implemented manually my focus was on the Native Ads.

Native In-Article Ads

The Native Ads come in two varieties — those that display on both desktop and mobile devices:

  • In-Article Ads
  • In-Feed Ads
  • Matched Content

And those that display on mobile only These are supported on desktop now:

  • Anchor Ads
  • Vignette Ads

Seeing that a reasonable amount of my traffic comes from mobile users, I decided to give the Anchor Ads a try. To my surprise, they displayed just fine after a couple of minutes.

I took that as a go ahead to activate the In-Article Ads and Matched Content to capitalize on my desktop traffic as well.  Unfortunately, these two didn’t end up working out as I had hoped.

The In-Article Ads were a no show even after days of waiting while the Matched Content did eventually show but in the oddest of places: at the very tail end of the site. At that location it stood little chance of being seen so I ended up deactivating both of them.

That got me wondering if I could perhaps implement the in-article ads manually as they would be a good fit for some of my rather long posts.

Turns out it is possible, however they come with one major drawback — they’ve to be implemented manually on the individual posts. I’ve since implemented them in a couple of my posts and, being responsive, they do display quite well between the paragraphs.

Here’s how to do it on your Blogger site.

Add In-Articles Ads Manually

  1. Log in to your AdSense account and from the menu select Ads then at the top of the page switch to the By ad unit tab.
  2. In the Ad types page, select In-article Ads.
    An image showing the inarticle ad option in Adsense.
  3. Give the new Ad unit a unique name then edit the style as you wish. You can use the default style or may edit it to so that it blends with your blog’s colors and font settings.
    An image showing the ad style editor in AdSense.
  4. When you’re done, click on the SAVE AND GET CODE button. Save this code somewhere as you’ll be using it quite regularly.
  5. Next, go to your Blogger dashboard and open a post which you’d like to display the in-article ads. In the post editor, switch to HTML view. 
  6. Now it’s time to decide where you want the ads to display. Google recommends you show them after the first two paragraphs. I think that’s a reasonable position for most as it’s above the fold to be seen by most of your visitors and at the same time low enough to ensure something has been read before being seen. You are however free to put them wherever you’d wish within the content, just make sure you’re complying to the AdSense policies. 
  7. Copy the code and paste it as it is (do not parse it) between two paragraphs. You can add breaks between the code to make sure the Ad is evenly spaced between the paragraphs. You can also add the code more than once in the same article, if the content is long enough to allow for it.
    An image of the blogger html editor with an adsense code block.
  8. Publish the article while still in HTML view, then close the post editor.
  9. Give AdSense a few minutes and the Ads should start displaying on the live post. To preview the ads quicker, add the code to posts that are already getting good traffic, otherwise you may see a blank space.
  10. Now all that’s left is to repeat this for any existing posts and any new posts that you’ll be publishing.

Performance of In-Article Ads

These ads are responsive so they will fit nicely into the available space both on desktop and mobile views. Google also optimizes them automatically by showing display ads on mobile and sometimes even on desktop.

Regarding the performance of in-article ads, they tend to have a high click-through rate (CTR) but with very low CPC and CPM rates. Banner ads outperform them by a big margin, even on mobile, where they’re occasionally substituted with banner ads.

However this based on the observations on two of my sites and therefore could be influenced by other factors. As always you can do some testing first before you decide switching to them.

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2 Comments

  1. Thank you very much. This has been an incredibly useful post. I myself am looking for ways to make the ads on my website look more organic and less obtrusive, and I think in-article ads are definitely the way to go. Your post helped me figure out how to ’embed’ the ads on my blog posts. Thank you.

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Kelvin Kathia

Kelvin Kathia is a writer that's passionate about sharing solutions to everyday tech problems. He's the founder and editor of Journey Bytes, a tech blog and web design agency. Feel free to leave him comments or questions regarding this post, or by leaving him a message on the contact page. If you found his content helpful, a donation is much appreciated.