San Clemente Web University: FREE Web Marketing & Advertising Classes

It's been a long time coming. But through its partnership with Federated Media, popular blogging platform WordPress has launched an AdSense alternative dubbed WordAds.

While the name is confusingly similar (at least to me) to Google's search-based advertising product Adwords, expect the millions of WordPress users to sign up in droves.

WordPress has never supported the inclusion of advertising so this does come as a bit of a surprise for many.

“We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense,” said Jon Burke of WordPress in the official announcement.

Only publicly visible blogs with custom domains will be considered for the program. Website Magazine will provide more information as it becomes available.