WordPress.com Introduces WordAds
Popular blogging platform WordPress.com on Monday rolled out its answer to Google’s AdSense.
WordPress.com teamed up with Federated Media Publishing to create WordAds, which lets bloggers earn money through advertising on their blogs.
“We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad,” Jon Burke wrote on the WordPress.com blog. “You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense.”
Only “publicly visible” blogs with custom domains will be considered for the WordAds program. WordPress.com said blogs will be chosen based on the amount of traffic and engagement, the type of content and the language used. “Some blogs may not be accepted,” WordPress.com cautioned.
On the WordPress.com blog, Burke wrote that “advertising on your blog is not for everyone or every blog but when done right advertising should not be a distraction from your message or make you seem fake. There is zero incentive for WordAds bloggers to write about the advertisers so there is no conflict.”
WordPress.com powers more than 24 million blogs. More than 50,000 WordPress-supported blogs come online every day.
WordPress.com and Federated Media announced their advertising partnership in October. At the time, TheNextWeb.com reported that only high-traffic blogs (those with at least 25,000 monthly page views) were able to advertise, and only via Skimlinks or AdSense.
“The addition of Federated Media to this arsenal means more revenue opportunities for WordPress.com, its content creators and brands,” TheNextWeb.com reported.
In October, WordPress inventor Matt Mullenweg was critical of AdSense, saying it “has been declining in quality and is no longer a great choice for bloggers.”
Federated Media is a digital advertising company. WordPress.com is operated by Automattic, whose other businesses include Akismet, Polldaddy and Gravatar.
“WordPress.com contributors epitomize the idea of passionate and influential publishers on the independent web,” Deanna Brown, CEO of Federated Media, said in making the October announcement. “They have ardent followings and they present information in a very focused, conversational format, which is exactly the type of media offerings found in the rest of our existing portfolio. They really are an excellent fit for us.”
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