Topics covered
Ad stats tracker
The stats tracker counts clicks and impressions for every ad that’s bought through OIO. Advertisers see their own numbers on their stats page, and you can see everything in one place.
Go to OIO Ad Manager > Ad Stats. It has three tabs:
- Overview: all recorded stats, which you can filter by date or purchase.
- Settings: turn on weekly stats emails to advertisers (Send Weekly Reports?), and filter out unwanted traffic by user agent, IP address or referring site. If you show ads on other websites with the JavaScript code, add those sites to the referrer whitelist here.
- Live Stats: today’s raw click and impression data. Use it to spot bots or other suspicious traffic, then filter them out in Settings.
You can also ask Claude for an ad’s stats if you’ve connected OIO to Claude (WordPress 6.9 or newer).
Limitations
- Default ads aren’t tracked.
- Tracking can’t be switched on or off for individual ads.
Geo targeting
Geo targeting lets you show or hide default ads based on the visitor’s country. For example, you could show an ad network’s code only to US visitors, or hide a US-only affiliate offer from visitors in other countries.
Turning it on
- Go to OIO Ad Manager > Settings > Geolocation and set Enable geolocation? to Yes.
- The same page tells you whether your site can detect visitor countries. If it says Working, you’re all set.
- Then open an ad zone in Ad Zones and set the countries for each default ad.
What it needs
OIO reads the visitor’s country from information that Cloudflare or your web host adds to each page request. It doesn’t use any outside lookup service, so no visitor data leaves your site.
If the Geolocation page says no country information was found, the simplest fix is to put your site behind Cloudflare (the free plan works) and make sure IP Geolocation is turned on in its Network settings. Some hosts can also add the visitor’s country for you. Until then, ads show to all visitors.
Limitations
- Geo targeting works with default ads only, not ads bought by advertisers.
- It targets by country, not by state or city.
In older versions of OIO this was called the “Demographics” module.
Payment methods
OIO lets advertisers pay you directly, so you keep 100% of the money. Set up payments in OIO Ad Manager > Settings > Payments: open each method you want, enter your account details and tick enable. Advertisers choose from the enabled methods on your purchase page.
| PayPal | Ads are marked as paid automatically. |
| Stripe | Card payments. Ads are marked as paid automatically. |
| Authorize.net | Card payments through your Authorize.net account. |
| 2Checkout | Card payments through your 2Checkout account. |
| Offline payment | Bank transfer, check or any other method. You write the payment instructions, and mark ads as paid yourself. |
Advertisers get an emailed receipt when their payment goes through. You can edit its wording in OIO Ad Manager > Settings > Emails.
Affiliates
The affiliates module lets you run your own affiliate program. People sign up, get their own link, and promote your ad space. When someone buys an ad through an affiliate’s link, the affiliate earns a commission: a percentage or a fixed amount.
Go to OIO Ad Manager > Affiliates to:
- Set the commission level.
- Set the Sales Maturity time: how many days to wait before a commission can be paid out.
- Choose whether affiliates earn commission on renewals.
- Look up and edit individual affiliates, and see all recorded commissions.
- Download a spreadsheet of affiliates who are due a payout, to pay them in one go with PayPal mass payments.
Limitations
- Payouts are made through PayPal only.
- There’s one commission level (no multi-level commissions).