I Hate AdSense, So I Built My Own Ads

And started using it on my WordPress blog

My Medium friends can read this story over there as well.

Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

As a web designer, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Google AdSense. Actually… it’s just hate.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why AdSense exists. It’s easy to implement, requires zero maintenance, and generates passive income. And if you really do it right and at scale, you can earn a lot of money from AdSense.

For many bloggers, it may be a no-brainer.

But AdSense ads are just ugly. Jarring. They’re completely disconnected from my brand. And worse, they’re usually promoting products I don’t care about… or want.

So I did what any reasonable writer and web designer with no free time on his hands would do: I spent hours and hours building my own ad system from scratch.

Of course…

---

The Problem with AdSense

Let me paint you a picture. You’ve spent hours crafting the perfect blog post. Your typography is on point, your color palette is harmonious, and your layout is clean and modern.

Then you drop in an AdSense block, and suddenly there’s a flashing banner for “ONE WEIRD TRICK TO LOSE BELLY FAT” plastered across your carefully designed website.

That’s just sad.

This drove me absolutely insane. I wanted ads that:

1. Matched my aesthetic — Clean, modern, and on-brand

2. Promoted my own products or carefully selected ones — Why send traffic to random advertisers when I have my own Gumroad store and affiliate partners I actually like and recommend?

3. Were contextually relevant — Show writing tools on writing articles, not random garbage

4. Respected my readers — No flashing banners, no autoplay videos, no dark patterns.

AdSense couldn’t give me any of that. So I decided to build something that could.

---

Enter the Custom Ad System

I wanted to create a WordPress plugin that would serve beautiful, context-aware ads for my own digital products.

Think AdSense, but actually good-looking and promoting image cards of things I actually sell. (By the way, I used another tool I created to generate these image cards for ads.)

The requirements were simple:

• Image cards — No ugly text overlays

• Smart keyword matching — Show relevant products based on article content

• Multiple placements — In-article, fixed corner, and optional overlay

• Zero tracking — No cookies, no GDPR issues, completely privacy-friendly

• Smooth animations — Because… why notHow It Works

The system is simple. I am not a “real” developer,

Here’s the technical breakdown: