Ad.Plus Review: As Honest as It Gets

I was contacted several times by email by a member of the Ad.Plus team because they wanted to work with one of my sites.

I ignored their emails because I didn’t know much about them and I found myself happy using Google Adsense so I didn’t feel like fixing what wasn’t broken

Eventually, I decided to give Ad.Plus a try because I had some issues with an Adsense payment so I thought that diversifying where earnings come from was the way to go from that moment on.

These are my thoughts about Ad.Plus after using their service for three months.

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Ad.Plus: Their Marketing is Kinda Dead

Ad.Plus is not a popular ad network, I didn’t know anything about them before they contacted me.

If you search for reviews, you will find alleged publishers talking nice things about them and publishers trashing them.

If you go to YouTube, You won’t find reputable videos about them, and to make matters worse, Ad.Plus doesn’t even have a YouTube Channel.

If you visit Reddit, you will find that all questions concerning Ad.plus on Reddit start like this:

Besides emails and their website, their marketing efforts seem to be sort of dead.

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Ad.Plus: Google MCM Partner

Ad.plus is not found in the list of Certified Publishing Partners but they are an MCM partner.

These are some of the benefits of using an MCM Partner.

With Multiple Customer Management (MCM), Ad Manager publishers can earn revenue with the help of third-party providers who can consult, represent, and manage networks or inventory on their behalf.

About Multiple Customer Management

I think Certified Publishing Partner makes people trust an ad network more but being an MCM is not shouldn’t be bad thing either.

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Ad.Plus Reviews

I did a bit of research and Ad.plus has lots of negative reviews.

They are called scammers and have been accused of closing accounts and keeping publishers’ money.

You have to take those reviews with a grain of salt, since you don’t know the publishers who are making those complaints.

If you hang around Facebook group, you know the make-money-online people are willing to do all sort of things to make a quick buck.

On Reddit , you will find comments like these in which users explain that Ad.Plus is not a scam but not the best service either.

These are some of the Reddit Threads that I checked while I was trying to learn if Ad.Plus was legit or not

• Is ad.plus legit and trusted?
• ad Networks ad.plus is it a scam?
• Have anyone used ad.plus on your blog?

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Ad.Plus: Site Speed

One of my complaints about Ezoic is that their ads load kinda slow, definitely slower than Adsense.

If you check OwnTheYard.com, you will see lots of white spots waiting to be filled by Ezoic ads.

This site was shared with me by an Ad.Plus team member shows how fast the website and the ads load.

Ad.Plus ads are slower than Adsense but they load faster than Ezoic ads.

I don’t know if Pinoria is their perfect site to get you all excited about using Ad.plus but I didn’t find major speed issues in the tests I ran.

This is a screenshot of a Pinoria GTMetrix test:

Not the fastest site I have checked but still pretty good.

The theme is probably not that lightweight since the site is loading a few CSS files and scripts that could be easily optimized using plugins such as Perfmatters

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Ad.Plus: Onboarding Process

I got a quick response from the Ad.plus team

Ad.plus assured me that the problems that they have had with some publishers are due to them sending bot traffic to their own sites.

I believed what they said because you will find lots of groups where people promote clicking each other ads, doing arbitrage, and other shady stuff to get rich quick with display ads.

The team indicated that they had reviewed my site and that it was a good fit to show their ads.

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First Step

The first step was adding a few lines of text to my ads.txt file.

#Ad.Plus
ad.plus, 352349, DIRECT #Video #Display
google.com, pub-4573231550355221, RESELLER, f08c47fec0942fa0
pubmatic.com, 160907, DIRECT, 5d62403b186f2ace
indexexchange.com, 194273, DIRECT, 50b1c356f2c5c8fc
rubiconproject.com, 24442, RESELLER, 0bfd66d529a55807
media.net, 8CU5DERG1, DIRECT
rhythmone.com, 895733750, DIRECT, a670c89d4a324e47
video.unrulymedia.com, 895733750, DIRECT
sovrn.com, 357833, DIRECT, fafdf38b16bf6b2b
lijit.com, 357833, DIRECT, fafdf38b16bf6b2b
lijit.com, 357833-eb, DIRECT, fafdf38b16bf6b2b

If you use Ad Inserter, you can use that or any other Ad Management plugin like WP Advanced Ads to add that content to your ads.txt file.

Remembering clearing caching and checking your site txt file by visiting yoursite.com/ads.txt

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Second Step

Ad.Plus sent me a Google Ad Manager Invitation. I already had a Google Manager account because of Ezoic, so that process took me a couple of minutes to complete.

I was told that my site still had to be approved by Google and that the process would take 48 hours.

My site was approved by Google Ad Manager in 24 hours or so.

The site was ready to show ads.

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Third Step

I got my username and password by email.

The dashboard is quite simple. You will see an overview of your earnings, stats, your ad codes, and the lines I already added to my ads.txt file

New features were soon added after I joined ad.plus.

• A new section to add more sites to Ad.Plus and check if the sites have been approved by Google Ad Manager.

• Now there is an option within the dashboard to submit your payment info and Paypal and Wire Transfer are among the options available. You will also find a summary of the payments already made in this section.

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Fourth Step

I added some ad codes to the header to show anchor ads, interstitial ads, and a video ad.

I added a couple of units in the sidebar and a couple of units inside the content.

The site still loads fast despite the additional scripts and requests.

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Ad.Plus: Thoughts After Two Weeks

These are some of my initial thoughts after using Ad.plus for two weeks.

• There is not much documentation about Ad.plus, so you gotta figure out stuff based on the experience that you have with Adsense and other ad networks.

• I didn’t have any issues during the on-boarding process since I know the basics of making money with display ads.

• The ads don’t refresh, at least not the ads displayed on my site, not even the ads with high viewability like the sidebar ads or the anchor ads.

• All support and instructions are received by email.

• There is no group or forum that I could join to learn from other users’ questions and mistakes.

• There are no webinars or YouTube channels where I can learn more about making money with Ad.Plus ads.

• Ad.plus won’t slow down your site in the worst possible way. No 200-line code will be added to your site, you can optimize your site the best way you can and use any optimization plugins you want.

• I don’t know what percentage they take from your earnings. I think it is 80/20

• At the end of the day, you don’t have to commit 100% to Ad.Plus, you can try a few ad units and keep adding more units if your earnings improve.

• You can keep your Ezoic and Adsense Ad units if you don’t want to put all the eggs in one basket.

• Interstitial, Anchor, and Sidebars ads will make you more money than in-content ads. (obviously)

• The In-read video placed after the first or second paragraph is kinda heavy when compared to the rest of the ad units

• I like the compact sticky anchor ads more than the regular anchor ads offered by Adsense

• I had concerns about the number of impressions the ads were getting so I talked to my account manager about it and now Ad.Plus will serve an Adsense ad unit if an Ad.Plus ad unit isn’t available.

• I replaced all of my Adsense ad units with Ad.Plus ad units by the end of the two weeks

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Ad.Plus/Adsense vs Ezoic

Comparing Ad Companies is kinda hard to do because many factors come into play.

Ad.Plus uses ECPM as the main metric, Ezoic uses EPMV and Adsense is all about RPM’s

Each one of my site versions gets 50% the of day traffic. At least that’s what I indicated in the Ezoic Panel

Before saying what company is better at this and that, don’t take these results as scientific proof to make a choice about the ad company you want to work with.

Do your own testing and make your own decisions.

Don’t buy into anybody’s experience because those are freaking anecdotes.

These are my earnings divided by ad network.

Date	Adsense	Ad.Plus	Ezoic
July 21st	14%	46%	40%
July 22nd	21%	41%	38%
July 23rd	16%	45%	39%
July 24th	20%	42%	38%
July 25th	17%	41%	42%
July 26th	14%	42%	44%

Ad.Plus makes me similar amounts of money to the ones generated by Ezoic.

However, I make additional from Adsense because of Ad.Plus shows Adsense Ad units when they can’t fill an ad spot.

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Ad.Plus: Thoughts After Two Months

These are my thoughts about using Ad.Plus for two months

• I stopped using Ezoic ads.

• Ezoic adds lots of code to my site and their ads tend to load slower than Adsense and slower than Ad.Plus.

• I reduced the number of Ad.Plus ad units

• I got my finalized gross revenue report around August 7th, 2022

• I got my first payment via PayPal on August 29th, 2022

• I got deducted 20% of the finalized gross revenue. So now I am sure it is an 80/20 relationship.

• I thought the amount in my dashboard was the final amount. I didn’t expect that 20% deduction.

• Consider that 20% deduction when analyzing the Ad.Plus, Adsense and Ezoic tests mentioned previously

• I also got deducted some money by PayPal for processing the payment.

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Ad.Plus: Thoughts After Three Months

These are my thoughts about using Ad.Plus for three months

• I got my finalized gross revenue report around September 7th, 2022

• The simplicity of the Dashboard makes the analysis of the ad unit’s performance impossible.

• I was using 320×100, 320×50, 320×50 and 300×50 during my last month with Ad.Plus

• I got my August payment by the end of September.

• The RPM is similar to what I am getting from Adsense so I guess this is the end for me and Ad.Plus

• I removed all Ad.Plus ad units and I got the September earnings by the end of October.

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Ad.Plus ADX Account

Recently I was asked if Ad.Plus gets you your own ADX Account as promised in this post

Having your own Ad Exchange account inside your own Ad Manager gives you freedom, flexibility and transparency. You can set up your own orders and line items and set your AdX to compete with AdSense and/or any other 3rd party networks that you might have in real time.

You can check the reports and track your earnings right inside your Google Ad Manager account (GAM) and get paid directly by Google if needed (between the 21st and the 26th of each month).

How To Get Your Own Google Ad Exchange (AdX) Account?

I authorized Ad.Plus the same way I have authorized Ezoic or Optad360 and I can tell you that I wasn’t given any superpowers but being fair with Ad.Plus, I didn’t ask for them either.

1. I didn’t set up any orders
2. I didn’t set my A to compete with Adsense
3. I tracked my earnings via the Ad.Plus dashboard, not In Google Ad Manager
4. I didn’t really want to be paid by Google because of the issues with one of my payments in the past.

They probably set up #1 and #2 for me so I didn’t have to deal with the technical aspects of the process but I am not aware of it.

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Ad. Plus and Twitch Tracker

The other day I was checking the Twitch Tracker. The site is monetized with display ads so I got curious about the ad network they were using.

I checked the site ads.txt and to my surprise, they are using Adsense and Ad.Plus

So I guess that also proves the point that Ad.Plus is a legit company that some popular and big sites use.

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Final Thoughts

What’s the best ad network?

I don’t really know.

I have never used Mediavine or AdThrive, the Ad Networks that most publishers love.

When I use an Adsense Alternative, I usually make more money than Adsense but not enough money to think that switching was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I think that the big gains affiliate marketers talk about come from having a poorly optimized Adsense setup or perhaps those marketers are straight-up liars.

If you read those clickbaity titles that promise a 200% increase in earnings, you will find that they rarely talk about where the extra money came from.

• More ads?
• Automatic Refreshing of High Viewable Ad units?
• Higher viewability?
• Ad Network having better advertisers?

My major takeaway after using three or four ad companies is that:

• Comparing ad networks is super difficult.
• No ad network is really beating the living crap out of any other ad network in this space.

Ad.Plus is not a scam. They won’t ban your site or close your account unless you do stupid sh*t like sending automated traffic to your site.

You can give them a try, and place some of the ad codes without making changes to your current setup.

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