75
Advanced Ads – Ad Manager & AdSense
Monetize your site quickly but keep a backup handy for updates.
HealthyDeclining
75/100
Powerful ad management features are occasionally undermined by buggy updates and inconsistent support.
Active installs
~150,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 100k+
Rating
4.9★
1,461 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
-9%
Declining
886 → 807 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MINORreview volume down 68% vs prior 6mo
Downloads over time
real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03
organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median
Declining · -9% in the last year
886/day a year ago→807/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayAdvanced Ads is a well-regarded and feature-rich ad management plugin for WordPress, but it carries a notable caveat of recurring post-update instability and inconsistent support responsiveness that has frustrated some long-term users.
What people like
- +Powerful and flexible ad management with a wide range of options and use cases, including arbitrary code insertion×4
- +Support team is responsive and thorough when engaged, including hands-on server-level troubleshooting×5
- +Plugin is actively developed with ongoing updates and new features×2
- +PRO version considered worth the cost by users who invest time in learning it
Common complaints
- −Recent updates have introduced bugs and broken functionality, including a reported breakage of adding new image ads and ads not serving to logged-out guests×4
- −Support is unresponsive or very slow for some users, including paying PRO customers×3
- −A past update rendered existing premium add-ons unusable and required repurchase, perceived as a forced upsell
- −Intrusive, undismissable promotional banners (e.g. Black Friday ads) displayed across the admin dashboard
- −Steep learning curve; takes significant time to understand and configure correctly×2
- −Conflict with Elementor Pro causes a white screen when the plugin's shortcode is present on a page being edited
Review trustReviews look organic
- 4.25★Verified rating — drops from 4.90★ once one-shot reviewers are removed
- 20%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2023-09-182025-02-092026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 1,461 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2026-05-07★★★★★Fantastic Customer Supportlukemccoy
- 2026-04-28★★★★★Disappointed with product stabilitypaywall
- 2026-04-14★★★★★VERY powerful pluginpharmandsdinc1-shot
- 2026-03-09★★★★★A powerful plugin, I recommend itporton
- 2026-03-05★★★★★Great app and great supportleemarquis
- 2026-02-25★★★★★Efficient customer supportwebfacto1-shot
- 2025-12-06★★★★★Great customer supportmatthewkeyslive
- 2025-12-05★★★★★Supportmerriwa7795
- 2025-12-02★★★★★I'm excited, an essential toolJose
- 2025-11-26★★★★★Ads on Admin Dashboard that cant be DismissedGDU
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNFor developers & the curious
the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary aboveDownload signals
Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.
649
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
782
Prior 7-day baseline
580
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
831
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
-17.0%
Week-over-week organic trend
Review signals
Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.
9%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
0.79
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
81%
5★ share in analyzed sample
20%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
-68%
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.36 → 4.25★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered