How to integrate ads into the Viral Pro theme

The Viral Pro theme by HashThemes is a versatile and feature-rich WordPress theme designed for creating attractive news, magazine, and blog websites. Leveraging the theme’s widget section and Advanced Ads makes automatic banner embedding a breeze and several useful options for ad management.

In this tutorial, we’ll explore the advertising embedding capabilities of the Viral Pro theme. We’ll start by examining the theme’s built-in ad management features and then demonstrate how you can easily integrate your banners into the theme using Advanced Ads.

Exploring the built-in ad options of the Viral Pro theme

You adjust the key theme settings through the WordPress Customizer. Here, you’ll find the sole feature worth noting at this point: a widget position for header ads located in the site header next to the logo.

This widget area allows you to select from all available widgets. Suppose you prefer to use something other than an additional plugin like Advanced Ads for ad embedding. In that case, you utilize the HTML block to insert the code for a horizontal ad from sources like AdSense, Amazon, or an affiliate network.

In addition to the header ads widget position, the Viral Pro theme offers additional widget sections in the footer and sidebar, where you can also insert ads using the HTML block.

Widget Positions

Viral Pro offers multiple available widget positions, providing you with a slightly broader selection for ad placement. Two notable widget positions are “Single Post – Before Article” and “Single Post – After Article.” Adding widgets to these positions automatically places them before or after all posts on your website.

VP Banner Ads Widget

Furthermore, the theme introduces a dedicated ad widget, the VP Banner Ads Widget. It allows you to create simple image banners in just a few steps. You can select an image from the media library, set a link destination, and determine whether the link should open in a new tab.

Cookie Notice

Viral Pro also provides a basic onboard solution for creating a cookie banner. If these straightforward options meet your legal requirements, you won’t need an additional consent plugin.

Elevating your ad integration with Advanced Ads

In this section, you’ll encounter numerous features of Advanced Ads available in the free plugin version. However, certain functions such as advanced targeting, tracking, or specialized features like Click Fraud Protection or extended ad blocker options are exclusive to Advanced Ads Pro or the All Access license.

Next, we’ll systematically explore the advertising options. I’ll illustrate how Advanced Ads can assist with tasks that Viral handles less effectively.

Placements

The widget sections in Viral Pro’s Customizer cover basic ad embedding and enable automatic insertion of ads in the header, sidebar, and footer, as well as at the beginning and end of each post.

Unfortunately, other positions for automatic embedding, ad rotations, or split tests are not feasible with this method. Therefore, I recommend using Advanced Ads Placements for ad management, as they offer more options and a much more flexible ad management system.

Prepare placements for your ad spots 

For each widget position in the Viral Pro theme where you want to display an ad, create a Manual placement using Advanced Ads. Apply these placements to advertisements in the header, sidebar, and footer.

Additionally, utilize Advanced Ads placements instead of the widget sections “Single Post – Before Article” and “Single Post – After Article”. Consider using the equivalent placements “Before Content” and “After Content” for these. These placements roll out the ads on all posts and pages.

Viral Pro Widget sections	Recommended Advanced Ads placements
Header ads	Manual placement (insert Advanced Ads block or shortcode)
Below Menu	Manual placement (insert Advanced Ads block or shortcode)
Sidebar ad	Sidebar Widget or Manual placement (replace)
Single Post – Before Article	Before Content  (replace)
Single Post – After Article	After Content (replace)

Apart from the sidebar ad spot, the only ad spots you should retain in the Viral Pro theme settings are the Header ads and ads in the below menu section if you choose to place any there.

These spots enable you to incorporate ads into the header without having to embed a Manual placement via PHP into the theme files or utilize the Custom Position placement. Generate a Manual placement for these positions and insert them via the Advanced Ads block or the specific placement shortcodes.

Publish ads and assign them to placements

Advanced Ads supports all types of ads and provides dedicated integrations for ads, such as Google AdSense ads. The plugin allows you to set up your entire ad setup within minutes and automatically apply it to all website pages without manually editing your theme.

In this video, you’ll see how easy it is to create new ads:

Precise targeting with Advanced Ads conditions

The built-in ad features of the Viral Pro theme lack the flexibility to target ads to specific types of content or user segments.

This absence of functionality is unfortunate because targeted ads typically result in higher click-through and conversion rates. Moreover, essential features such as frequency capping are unavailable.

In contrast, integrating Advanced Ads with the Viral Pro theme provides access to a robust toolkit for highly targeted ad placement. Advanced Ads’ Display conditions enable precise delivery of ads to specific content based on categories, tags, authors, keywords, URL parameters, or content age.

Furthermore, Visitor conditions allow for precise targeting of user segments, including user roles, memberships, device types, browser widths, referral URLs, geo-locations, and more.

By harnessing these versatile conditions, you can optimize your ad targeting strategy, tailoring it to your content and specific user demographics. This level of customization significantly enhances ad performance, ultimately leading to higher revenue generation.

Showing ads aligned to the Viral Cookie Consent

If you’re using the Cookie Notice feature of the Viral Pro theme, you can also integrate with Advanced Ads to show ads only after a user has consented to use cookies.

To display ads only after the user has consented to storing cookies, follow these steps:

1. Go to Advanced Ads > Settings > Privacy.
2. Enable the Privacy module.
3. Enter the cookie name (Viral_pro_cookies) and its corresponding value (value: yes).
4. Save the settings.

Boost your ad management capabilities to unlock additional income potential 

Elevate your ad performance with a range of robust features:

• Ad Tracking: Gain valuable insights into ad performance through detailed statistics.
• Expanded Placements: Explore additional placement options such as Anchor and Parallax ads.
• Click Fraud Protection: Safeguard your ads against fraudulent clicks to protect your earnings.
• Lazy Loading: Improve page speed and user experience with efficient lazy loading functionality.
• AdBlocker Features: Overcome revenue challenges by implementing AdBlocker-compatible ads.
• Integrations: connect with networks like Google Ad Manager and popular WordPress plugins, including BuddyBoss, WPML, or GamiPress.
• AMP Support: Ensure compatibility with Accelerated Mobile Pages.

These powerful functionalities are available with Advanced Ads Pro and various add-ons. For the complete feature set, consider upgrading to the All Access license.

Conclusion: Advanced Ads is the perfect match to integrate ads into the Viral Pro theme

In summary, integrating ads into the Viral Pro theme presents strengths and limitations, as explored in this guide. While the theme offers a solid foundation, its complexity, ad spot constraints, and targeting limitations can impede monetization efforts.

Enter Advanced Ads. This plugin comfortably augments the Viral Pro theme, significantly expanding ad options. Advanced Ads allows users to create unlimited placements, conduct ad rotations, and execute split tests effortlessly. Furthermore, Advanced Ads enables precise ad targeting to specific content and user demographics. This refined ad delivery results in enhanced ad performance and increased revenue potential.

Keep this guide in mind as you monetize your Viral Pro theme website. With Advanced Ads, you’ll overcome the theme’s constraints and thrive in ad integration, unlocking the full earning potential of your website.