How to setup ads for users with JavaScript disabled.

Posted by Ryan

January 26, 2008

If I had to guess I would say 80% of advertising services today display their ads using JavaScript. This makes sense considering JavaScript is lightweight, easy to install and it’s dynamic so ads can be changed on the fly without the need to update the code. However JavaScript is not perfect. In my previous post on JavaScript I mentioned how there are some 75 million users browsing the Internet with JavaScript disabled. With these numbers, only serving JavaScript ads could mean a potential revenue loss of 6%. This is 6% that with 30 minutes of your time you can get back, here’s how.

You need to find an alternative advertising source that does not use JavaScript exclusively. AdSense for example only uses JavaScript so if you’re currently using AdSense for all of your ads you will need to find an alternative ad provider for this to work. I, for example use a combination of personal ads (ads I setup), AdSense ads, and Commission Junction ads. The ads I install are HTML only, the AdSense are JavaScript only and the Commission Junction ads are a combination of both HTML and JavaScript. Using these three sources I’m able to setup my sites so there are always ads being displayed even when the user has JavaScript disabled. Most advertising services offer HTML ads but you will want to check with them to make sure they do. If they don’t currently support HTML ads there are plenty of other services out there that do, search around until you find one that fits your website.

Before you start installing your HTML ads you want to setup everything so it works and looks good for users with JavaScript enabled. The majority (94%) of Internet users have JavaScript enabled so this will be your primary source of ad revenue, making sure these ads look good should be top priority. Once your ads are setup and looking good you will now want to turn off JavaScript in your browser so you can see what you site looks like when your ads do not appear.

Since there are so many different browsers and versions I will not list the steps to disable JavaScript in this post. If you’re unsure how to enabled/disabled JavaScript in your browser please refer to my good friend Google.

Once you have JavaScript disabled in your browser go ahead and look at your site again. Since you only have the JavaScript ads installed you should not see any ads on your site at all. If you do then you either have HTML ads installed already or you didn’t disable JavaScript correctly. Now open up your web page source code and find where you installed you JavaScript ads. Directly below that ad code enter this code.

<noscript> <!-- Your HTML ad code here –> </noscript>

And replace the <!-- Your HTML ad code here –> line with the HTML code you got from you ad provider. Copy and paste the code between the noscript tags as shown above, save your page and reload it in your browser. If you installed it correctly you should now see ads even though you have JavaScript disabled. If necessary tweak these ads so they look good. Now, turn JavaScript back on in your browser and your HTML ads should disappear and your JavaScript ads should appear in their place. Congratulations, you now have both JavaScript and HTML ads installed on your pages and you’ve regained that potential lost revenue by allowing visitors with JavaScript disabled to see ads.

Example:

Below is an example of how I have it setup on my site. You will see my AdSense code and then right under it my HTML code within the noscript tags. In this case I have a static banner from Commission Junction but I use a combination of image and text ads through my sites.

<script type=“text/javascript”><!–
    google_ad_client = “pub-4938035643291815″;
    google_ad_slot = “8219515238″;
    google_ad_width = 468;
    google_ad_height = 60;
//–>
</script>
<script type=“text/javascript” src=“http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”></script>

<noscript>
    <a href=”http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-2829149-10386906″ target=”_top”><img src=”http://www.tqlkg.com/image-2829149-10386906″ width=”468″ height=”60″ alt=”GoDaddy.com Hosting & Servers” border=”0″/></a>
</noscript>