Manual Ads
Manual ad placements
You decide exactly where ads appear. Each placement is a specific slot you've chosen, with its own snippet of code.
The core idea
With Manual Ads, you create individual placements — each one is a specific slot on your site you've chosen for an ad. Each placement gets its own short snippet of code. Paste that snippet wherever you want the ad to appear, and that's where it lives.
More deliberate than Auto Ads. But you know exactly what's going where.
The five ad types
There are five placement types — each a different shape, designed for a different part of your layout. The ads that appear are automatically matched to that shape.
Header
Full-width horizontal strip at the top of your page, above main content. Wide and short.
Footer
Same shape as header, anchored to the bottom of the page.
Banner
Horizontal strip within the content area itself, between sections.
Sidebar
Tall vertical slot that lives in a sidebar column. Your layout needs an existing sidebar column for this to work.
Inline
Near-square ad that sits inside a block of text, like an image would.
How a placement works
This is the key thing to understand. Each placement is completely independent — a sidebar snippet only serves sidebar-shaped ads, a header snippet only serves header-shaped ads. Moving the snippet moves where the ad appears.
Create a placement
Choose the type, give it a name in your dashboard.
Get your snippet
A short script tag, unique to that slot.
Paste it on your site
Put it exactly where you want the ad to appear.
Ads start serving
HalalSpark matches campaigns to your placement automatically.
One snippet, one location
Each snippet is tied to one specific placement slot. Using the same snippet in two places — or on two different pages — doesn't create two placements. It counts both locations as a single slot, merging their impressions and analytics into one record. If you want an ad in two different spots, create a separate placement for each one. You'll get a unique snippet for each.
Installing each type
Where you paste the snippet depends on the placement type. The snippet itself always looks the same — only the type name and placement ID change.
| Type | Where the snippet goes |
|---|---|
| Header | Inside <head> or at the top of your header template, after navigation |
| Footer | In your footer template, before the closing </body> tag |
| Banner | Directly in your page HTML, between the content sections where you want it |
| Sidebar | Inside your sidebar widget area or sidebar template section |
| Inline | Between paragraphs in your content editor or template |
Every snippet looks like this (the type name and placement ID are the only things that change):
<!-- HalalSpark Enhanced Ad Script v3.0 - banner -->
<script
src="https://ads.halalspark.co.uk/get-ad-script-banner?placement_id=YOUR_PLACEMENT_ID&domain=yourdomain.com&_v=3.0"
async
></script>Test before going live
Toggle test mode in your dashboard when copying the snippet. Ads will show but nothing gets recorded — impressions, clicks, or budget. Switch to the live snippet when the placement looks right.
Managing placements
All your placements live in the Placements tab on your website dashboard. From there:
- View lifetime impressions per placement — each placement tracks its own count independently
- Deactivate a placement without deleting it
- Get the snippet again if you've lost it
- Rename a placement using the pencil icon — the name is just a label for your reference, the snippet doesn't change
Each placement has a name you set during the setup wizard — something like "Blog Header" or "Shop Sidebar". This is shown as the label in your dashboard. It's cosmetic only; ad serving ignores it, and renaming doesn't affect your installed snippet.
No hard limit on how many placements you can have. Start with one, see how it performs, add more over time.
Tips
One placement per location
Each physical ad spot needs its own placement. If you want a sidebar ad on your blog and a sidebar ad on your shop, create two separate placements — you'll get a unique snippet for each. Using the same snippet in two places merges their analytics.
Above the fold gets seen
If a visitor never scrolls, the ad never loads into view. Start with placements high on the page.
Match the type to your layout
A sidebar placement on a single-column site has nowhere to sit — the layout needs the column to exist first.
Inline ads in long-form content perform well
If you publish articles or guides, inline is usually the best place to start. Readers are already in reading mode.
Spread placements out
Multiple placements on one page should be in different zones. Clustering them makes each one less effective.
Auto Ads and Manual Ads can run together
Many publishers use both — Auto Ads across most of the site, with specific Manual placements in high-value spots they've chosen. When you do, count both together against your content — a page running Maximum-density Auto Ads plus several Manual placements is almost always too many ads for one page, no matter how long the content is.