Introduction

Before we establish what is an ad placeholder, we need to go over what an ad is and the different variants of ads we see ourselves daily.

The term "ad", is commonly used as an abbreviation for advertisement. It refers to a promotional message or communication which aims to promote a product, service, idea, or event to a specific target audience.

Businesses, organizations, or individuals typically create ads to raise awareness, generate interest, and persuade potential customers to perform a particular action, such as purchasing a product or subscribing to a service.

Advertisements can take various forms, such as:

• Print Ads: Typically published by newspapers, magazines, brochures, or other printed materials.
• Online Ads: Typically displayed on websites, social media platforms, search engines, or similar online venues.
• Television and Radio Ads: Broadcasted on television or over the radio.
• Outdoor Ads: Typically displayed on billboards, posters, banners, and other public locations like highways, bus stops, and buildings.
• Digital Ads: These are similar to "Online Ads". However, they are represented in other formats, like banner ads, pop-up ads, video ads, native ads, etc.

The goal of an ad is to capture the targeted audience's attention, communicate the value or benefits of the product or service it promotes, and ultimately influence the viewer to make a purchase or make another decision based on your desired outcome. 

Ads are an essential part of marketing and play a significant role in the promotion and success of businesses and their products, whether physical or digital.

Ad placeholders are specific locations or spaces within a website, mobile app, or any other digital platform reserved for displaying advertisements.

Depending on various factors, such as the user's location, browsing history, and advertising network algorithms, the ad service you are using (in our case Ezoic) can populate these "placeholders" with different content, targeting the user's preference with high precision.

Ad placeholders are essential for publishers and advertising networks to manage and serve advertisements on their platforms efficiently. They allow for more flexible ad delivery, allowing ads to display various content to users based on targeting criteria the advertiser configures. 

In this tutorial, we will cover the process of adding ad placeholders from Ezoic on your website and the types of ad placeholders you can use there.

Without further ado, let's get started!

Getting Started

First and foremost, before creating ad placeholders in Ezoic, you need to integrate your service with them. If you still need to do so, please refer to our tutorial on integrating your website with Ezoic.

There are two ways to create ad placeholders in Ezoic. The first method is going to your Ezoic dashboard, and the second is installing the Ezoic Chrome extension.

Let's go through both processes so you can pick the one you are most comfortable using.

Creating ad placeholders from the Ezoic Dashboard

The begin the placeholder creation, please log inside your Ezoic dashboard. 

After logging in, please click on the "EzoicAds" icon located on the top menu.

Upon doing so, you will be redirected to the Ezoic ad setup page. Please click on the "Placeholders" tab on the menu at the top of the page.

Doing so will refresh the page, and you will see a table section in the middle that will be empty by default, as you will likely not have any placeholders created at this point.

To create a new placeholder, please click the "New Placeholder" button located on the right side of the screen, above the table mentioned above section.

Performing the action above will reveal the ad placeholder creation interface. Let's go over all the things you will see there:

• Where on the page is this ad? - Please use this drop-down menu to select where you would like to place the ad on your site. There are many options available, so you should pick out the best ones for your specific website.
• Placeholder Name? - Please use this text field to add a name for your placeholder ad. By default, it will generate a name based on your earlier selected location. 
• Use Recommended Sizes For - Please use the toggle switches here to allow Ezoic to automatically choose the most optimal sizes based on the devices these ads will appear for. Underneath these toggle switches, you will notice checkboxes with different dimensions for each device. You can manually pick the sizes if you think Ezoic's recommendations are inappropriate. However, we recommend sticking to Ezoic's suggestions.

Once done with the setup, please click on the “Save” button located at the bottom right side of the page.

Upon doing so, the page will refresh, and you will see a pop-up window in the middle containing the ad placeholder code, which you need to place on your website to make it appear there.

For example, if you selected the "top_of_page" position, you should embed this code into your header.

Creating ad placeholders using the Ezoic Chrome Extension

The second method to create ad placeholders is using the Ezoic Chrome extensions. Please install the "Ezoic" extensions from the Google Chrome Web store using the tutorial here.

The extension will not only allow you to create placeholders, but it will also allow you to view existing ones (if you added them via the previously discussed method) and edit them.

After you install the extensions, please open your website in a Google Chrome tab and then click on the "Ezoic" extensions, which should appear in your extensions bar on the right side of your browser's search bar. 

Upon clicking on the "Ezoic" extension, you will see its options reveal themselves. To create a new placeholder using the extension, please click on the "Create" tab, located at the top left side of the extension's interface.

Doing so will display a drop-down menu, which you can use to select the placeholder ad's size. After doing so, please click on the "Select Location" button located underneath the drop-down menu. We suggest always using the "Automatically Detect" option from the drop-down, as it will dynamically detect your mouse cursor's location and allow you to deploy a placeholder wherever you think it would be a good fit on the site.

Clicking the "Select Location" button will trigger a brief loading screen. After the loading screen is finished, you will notice that you can use the mouse cursor to hover over different elements on the page and deploy ad placeholders. To deploy a placeholder ad there, please click on the desired location.

Upon doing so, you will see an ad block appear above the element, allowing you to add this placeholder there. Above the ad block, you will notice a few available options. The ones we highlighted in the screenshot will enable you to move the ad upwards or downwards, based on your preference, regarding the ad placement. Once you are happy with the ad placement, please click the "Insert Here" button inside the ad block.

Doing so will refresh the page, and you will see familiar options (if you used the previously described method of creating ads from the Ezoic dashboard) inside a pop-up window in the middle of the screen.  

In our example, we will add a placeholder under our post title. Please select the "Under Page Title" option in the drop-down menu. 

Next, let's go over the toggle switches underneath so you can get a better idea of what they do.

• Adaptive Sizing  - Please use the toggle switch to activate/deactivate Adaptive Sizing. This technology analyzes your placeholder and determines if it can place multiple smaller ads inside instead of one. Enabling this will show more ads on your page and maximize ad revenue.
• Allow Fluid Sizes - Please use this toggle switch to activate/deactivate Fluid Sizes. It allows ads to expand to the div size on the user's screen.
• What devices should see this placeholder? - Please use these toggle switches to select which devices should see your ads.

We recommend keeping all toggle switches enabled here.

After configuring the above, please use the side menu on the left side of the pop-up window to select the second available option concerning ad sizes resembling a newspaper.

By default, Ezoic will choose the most optimal sizes for your ads. We recommend keeping these with the default selected sizes. However, if you need to weak them, you always have the option to return and do so.

After configuring the sizes or leaving them with their default values, please move along with the setup by clicking on the fourth option on the left side menu, which resembles a brush. 

The available settings here will allow you to style your ads depending on your preference. The default settings are good and should suit pretty much any website. However, if the ad placeholder does not match appropriately with its placement, you can play around with the margins and the ad alignment. The 15px top and bottom and the central alignment should be ideal for the type of ad placeholder (under the blog title).

To finalize the ad placeholder creation process, please click the "Save Placeholder" button at the bottom of the pop-up window.

Doing so will refresh the page, and you will see your newly created placeholder exactly where you selected and expected it to be.

Conclusion

There you have it! The two methods you can use to create ad placeholders in Ezoic. The Chrome extension method is a more intuitive way of creating ad placeholders in Ezoic, and we recommend using it.

We hope you found this article insightful. If you liked our tutorials and would like to learn more about Ezoic, please be sure to check the rest of our tutorials in our Ezoic section.