A very popular feature request was to allow a revenue share with authors. For example, on an ad position within posts, you could show the author’s ad 20% of the time and 80% the ads from the publisher. This would allow authors to earn more from successful posts and also motive them to create more attention to their posts.

After thinking about this for a while, I decided against adding a specific feature. Especially since version 1.7 of Advanced Ads has a display conditions that allows to display ads only on posts from a specific author.

1. Create ad units

The easiest solution for a revenue share with authors would be to create ad units for each author. These ads could either be from your own ad networks (AdSense, or whatever program you are using) or you could get the ads from your authors, in case they have their own accounts.

You also need to create the ads that show up for your account.

2. Set the Author Display Condition

In order to attach a specific ad to an author, you must use the Author Display Condition. Once you added it in the Display Conditions meta box, you can select the author to which this ad “belongs”. This will make sure, that the ad will only show up on posts where this user is the author.

author display condition with Thomas selected
This ad would show only on posts written by Thomas

3. Create a group

Now, create a new ad group from the random type. You might name it by the author. Assign the author’s ad and your own ad to this group. Make sure that the ad weight is set up accordingly. For a 20:80 share you would choose 2 for the author’s ad and 8 for your own. 1:4 would work too.

author share group

4. Implement the group

The last step is to implement the group.

If you have multiple authors and want to display the ad on the same spot, you need to use a little trick.

Create another ad for each group. This ad should also have the author display condition set, be of the Rich Content type and only the shortcode of that group in the text field.

Now, create a meta group with all these intermediate ads in it and place it whereever you want.