The ad module is a powerful advertising system for Drupal-powered websites. It supports the random display and tracking of graphical (banner) and text ads. Ads can easily be displayed in themes, blocks, or embedded in site content. The module records comprehensive statistics about when and how often ads are viewed and clicked, including a plug-in module for generating graphical time-based reports. Ads can be assigned to multiple owners, each of which can be assigned their own set of permissions. Installation is simple by design. An API is provided allowing the development of additional functionality and integration with other Drupal modules.

A D9+ version is now available in branch 4.0.x. Not every feature listed below is available and there is no update/migration available from the 7.x-3.x branch. Installation and usage should be straightforward enough, but documentation contributions and improvements to the README are welcome.


Documentation:

There is some online documentation for the ad module found in the handbook; however, the most up to date documentation is included within the "documentation" directory included when you download the ad module below.

Features:

  • auto-generated ad blocks supporting a configurable number of ads
  • automatically or manually embed ads into site content
  • collection of comprehensive statistics allowing time-based reporting and analysis (example report)
  • tracking of when and where ads are clicked, by which user and which IP
  • advertisements can have multiple owners
  • granular per-advertisement/per-owner permissions system
  • activation/expiration scheduling based on time, clicks or views
  • an ad_image plug-in for image (aka banner) ads
  • an ad_text plug-in for simple text ads
  • an ad_report plug-in for basic graphical reports (depends on the Google Charts API)
  • an ad_actions plug-in which can be used to schedule automatic email notifications (depends on the token module)
  • an ad_remote plug-in for hosting ads on remote (non-Drupal) websites
  • geotargeting is provided through the Ad GeoIP project
  • an administrative statistics overview page
  • support for any number of configurable ad groups, utilizing Drupal's taxonomy (category) subsystem
  • display ads based on node ids (nids), or taxonomy terms (categories)
  • file-based caching for improved performance
  • memcache-based caching for improved performance (using the ad memcache module)
  • support for external caching methods
  • MySQL and PostgreSQL support



Integrations

  • Views: Display advertisements and statistics.
    • Requires Views 3 for statistic aggregation.

Drupal 7 Development Effort
There are two Drupal 7 related Ad module efforts:

  • The DRUPAL-7--1 branch is a place for a straight port of the Ad module from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7.
  • The DRUPAL-7--2 branch was an incomplete rewrite of the Ad module.
  • The DRUPAL-7--3 branch is a new rewrite of the Ad module for Drupal 7, leveraging core APIs to offer more robust and flexible functionality.

Related projects:

  • Ad GeoIP, provides geotargeting.
  • Ad Flash, a module adding support for flash-based advertisements.
  • Ad Memcache, integration with memcached for improved performance.
  • Ad Ubercart, a module developed for the Ad Bard Network, not yet providing generic integration with Ubercart.
  • Ad Views, a project looking for a few maintainers, with the goal of integrating the ad module with Views.

Note: If you can not see the download links for this module, they are probably being blocked by your firewall/ad blocking software due to the word "ad" in their name.

Supporting organizations: 

Project information

Releases