Automattic’s WordAds, and other features, now available to paid Jetpack users

Jetpack 4.5 has several new features, including a newly designed VideoPress that I look forward to checking out further.

But what caught my eye the most is that Automattic is now making WordAds — their home grown ad platform that has run on WordPress.com for centuries — available to all Jetpack users.

This is an interesting play, purely because of the sheer number of pageloads and therefore ad views this makes available to Automattic and site owners to monetize.

WordAds is only available to certain paid Jetpack users right now (the second tier, $99 per year plan), which will naturally limit its usage to a tiny fraction of users. But still, it's a big incentive for upselling Jetpack.

Speaking of upselling Jetpack, they have been playing with their upsell a ton, and the $3.50 per month ($39 per year) plan now includes daily backups and “priority support”. The $99 plan enables WordAds, daily malware scanning, and 13BG of VideoPress credit.

It's pretty fun to watch Automattic test various revenue generation setups for Jetpack. They are obviously seeing the benefits of merging some of their products' features. For instance, VaultPress is now only shown as available as part of a Jetpack upsell.