Once you have decided your blog has reached the stage where you would like to add some paid advertising to it, then Google AdSense is one of your many choices.
Frequently, bloggers who use AdSense wish vary their ad positioning and make their ad blocks prominent in certain kinds of posts. These are good ideas. But how should one go about it?
Well, a fine plugin by Martin Fitzpatrick called Adsense Manager gives you very good control on how and where you choose to display ads on your blog.
Using AdSense Manager is straightforward and intuitive. First, you will need to log in to your Google AdSense account and configure an ad block (AdSense Manager also work with many other paid advertising programs including YPN, EPN, CJ, WidgetBucks and more). Once you have the ad block code, import it in to AdSense Manager. To do this under the current version, go to “Settings” -> “AdSense Manager” ->”Manage Ad Units”. Paste your ad code in to the designated area, change the name of the ad block to something more descriptive if necessary, and then click on the “Import to New Ad Unit” button.
This copies in the ad block and makes it available in posts or pages.
Leaving the ad block in the default setting will enable you to insert it in to posts either above of below or as a breaker in a post. However, if you wish to truly embed the ad block within the text of the post (with the text wrapped round the ad block), then you will need to add some additional formatting to the ad block settings.
If you edit the settings for your ad block, you will notice a small section for “Wrap HTML” which can be added. Essentially, this place the ad block between the HTML you provide in the “Before” and “After” text fields. This enables you to apply some on page formatting.
If you wish to embed your ad within a block of text, then before your ad you should add text like:
<div style="float:right;left-margin:8px;bottom-margin:8px;">
float:right will push the ad block to the right side of the post. The other two parameters place a small space around the ad (at the left and bottom in this example) so that text does not get too close to the ad border.
Similary you should close the <div> by adding the folloing to the “After” field:
</div>
In order to insert your ad, flip to HTML mode in the post writer/editor and drop down the “Adsense” drop-down box and select your ad.
