What’s the Best Advertising Network for Your Website?

This is a question that’s been asked by millions of website owners and online entrepreneurs over the years. While there are a number of different monetization methods available–such as affiliate marketing and e-commerce–most online properties generate a substantial portion of their earnings from display ads served through networks.

There are a number of factors that impact display ad revenue, and the choice of network is definitely one of those. So this is a very important question to ask–and it’s also a tough one to answer. We’ll do our best to highlight some of the best display ad networks out there, and make a recommendation for specific steps. (You can also skip straight to our Bottom Line, which includes a detailed 10-point plan for picking an ad network.)

Factors to Consider

Before diving in to the specific networks, we should explain the primary factors we consider when evaluating the attractiveness of an ad network. There are five primary points of evaluation for any ad network:

Factor	Description
Earnings	This is obviously the big one; the more an ad network pays out for every impression you serve, the more attractive it is.
Ad Quality	For many publishers, ad quality is equally as important as the bottom line earnings figures. Most publisher would prefer to serve clean, quality ads from premiere brands instead of the sleazy “one weird trick ” ads that seem to be everywhere now.
Ease of Setup	Some networks make it much easier than others to get up and running. The amount of time and assistance from signing up to serving your first ad can vary dramatically across networks. For publishers who don’t have extensive technical skills, this factor can be particularly important.
Customization Options	Some ad networks give their partners the ability to customize almost everything about their ads, from the size and shape to the types of ads allowed to run. Others offer almost no customization opportunities; you can either run their ads or not.
Reporting Detail	This feature is more important for publishers planning to spend a meaningful amount of time optimizing their ad implementations; better reporting makes it easier to see what’s working (and what isn’t) and spot opportunities for improvements.

Before we dive in to some specific recommendations, we should give a brief overview of the ad network landscape. There are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of ad networks operating currently. Most of them are generally worthless, offering very limited earnings capabilities with clunky user interfaces and limited transparency.

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We’ll focus below only on the higher quality ad networks that, in our opinion, are actually worth using. These opinions are based on our personal experiences with each of these networks, and provided objectively. There will of course be publishers who have had different experiences, or who may have had some success with networks we don’t even cover here. If so, we’d love to hear about it; leave a note in the comments, or put up a post in our display ad forum.

Top Tier: Google AdSense & Media.net

To make a broad generalization, there are two ad networks that are head-and-shoulders above the rest: Google AdSense and Media.net. These two networks maintain the deepest pools of advertisers and seem to have the best technology, resulting in relevant ads served and high payouts to publishers.

Google AdSense

AdSense is the largest ad network in the world; they paid out more than $9 billion to over 2 million publishers last year. With an average payout of less than $5,000 per publisher partner, AdSense clearly works with publishers of all sizes. AdSense is great for small publishers because there is no minimum number of pageviews required. If you have a Google account and a site that meets their quality standards (i.e., isn’t in a restricted niche), you can be up and running in a matter of minutes.

Below we outline why AdSense is the best ad network in our opinion:

·         Earnings: AdSense generally offers the best CPMs of any ad network. This is attributable to a number of factors, including: 1) generous revenue split (68% to publishers); 2) deep pool of several million advertisers; and 3) superior technology that serves relevant and targeted ads. While CPMs vary by site and niche, AdSense will generally beat all other options.

·         Ad Quality: Google has fairly high quality control thresholds, meaning that the ads running on AdSense are generally not spammy or low brow. There’s also a dashboard that allows publishers to block specific advertisers or entire niches (e.g., personal fitness products).

·         Ease of Setup: While you’re unlikely to get any assistance from a human, the process for getting approved and completing the initial setup is easy enough. There’s a massive amount of documentation around the ad setup process, though some degree of technical knowledge is required.

·         Customization Options: One of the major advantages of AdSense is the extensive control publishers have over ads. Tweaking the type, color, and size of ads is a pretty straightforward process.

·         Reporting Detail: There is also extreme customization available within the reporting interface, allowing publishers to get data on just about anything they would want.

For both large and small publishers, it is very hard to beat what AdSense has to offer. In our opinion, no other ad networks do; AdSense is the most popular for a reason.

·         Biggest Advantages: Competitive earnings, extreme customization options. Deep pool of advertisers + superior technology = relevant ads, higher earnings.

·         Biggest Disadvantages: If you do have any questions about your AdSense account, getting in touch with someone to help you through them is next to impossible, though there is an impressive amount of documentation and a number of active forums.

Media.net

Medit.net is a collaboration between Yahoo! and Bing, Google’s two largest competitors in the search engine space. Though this network is beginning to serve more “traditional” banner ads, the business has historically focused on Keyword Blocks that send visitors to a landing page full of relevant ads.

To the right is an example of one of these blocks, and below is a sample landing page where visitors are directed after clicking on one of the “ad topics”.

·         Earnings: Media.net isn’t always mentioned in the same breath as AdSense, but the earnings capability here is just as good. This network will earn many publishers equivalent or even better RPMs relative to the Google display ad network.

·         Ad Quality: The implementation of the keyword blocks shown above may be a bit of a turn-off to publishers who would prefer to see image-only ads. While Media.net has a deep pool of premium advertisers, the appearance of the ads isn’t necessarily great.

·         Ease of Setup: Getting approved for Media.net is a straightforward process, and getting ads up and running is very straightforward as well.

·         Customization Options: Media.net gives publishers a fair amount of control over how their ads look on the site, presenting options for selecting style and color. There is no control, however, over the specific advertisers and niches that appear within your site.

·         Reporting Detail: The reporting for Media.net is a bit delayed, which can be frustrating. But otherwise, the granularity is pretty good (though not as detailed as AdSense).

Media.net does do some things better than AdSense. Publisher support is a great example; even small publishers have no trouble getting in touch with a human being to help troubleshoot issues, something that is next to impossible with AdSense. If you don’t have the time or interest in attempting to maximize your network earnings, Media.net may be worth trying out as a primary partner. If you have an audience of a decent size, you should be able to get optimization suggestions from an account rep. Those suggestions, which can translate into meaningful increases in earnings if implemented properly, aren’t going to be made available to the vast majority of AdSense publishers.

The Rest

Beyond AdSense and Media.net, the remainder of the ad networks out there generally won’t come close to matching up. Earnings will be significantly lower, the quality of ads will drop off, and the details and timeliness of reporting will decline as well. We’ll mention some quick thoughts on these below:

·         Chitika: This network has some quality brands on board as advertisers, but struggles to serve up relevant ads that will generate attractive click rates. So you’ll get “pretty” high quality image-based ads from well-known brands, but the earnings will generally be much lower than AdSense or Media.net. (Read our in-depth review of Chitika.)

·         Kontera: This network has a variety of display ad options, including standard ad sizes and text links. (Read our in-depth review of Kontera.)

·         Infolinks: Infolinks is known for turning text within articles into ads (upon hover-over), but they offer some more traditional display options as well. (Read our in-depth review of Infolinks.)

·         We have put together an expanded list of ad networks; if you want to see more options, check out Top 25 AdSense Alternatives for 2014.

Supplementary Networks

When discussing display advertising, many publishers still think of traditional banner ads (e.g., 300×250 rectangles and 728×90 leaderboards). In reality, however, the “display advertising” umbrella now covers a significantly wider range of monetization techniques and strategies. And there are a number of ad networks that offer niche display advertising packages:

·         Text Links (Infolinks, Kontera)

·         Sponsored Content (Taboola, Outbrain)

·         Native Advertising (Sharethrough, Nativo, Publish2)

Exploring Ad “Marketplaces”

For premium brands–high quality sites with a large audience–it may be worth expanding beyond the usual ad network suspects. There are a couple of major ad “marketplaces” that allow publishers to showcase their ad inventory to media buyers and advertisers interested in establishing a presence there:

BuySellAds: We’ve mentioned this site before as a great resource for intelligence on CPM rates. Publishers can list their inventory here, and interested advertisers can find it by searching through different niches and topics. Judging by the number of “Sold Out” placements on this site, publishers seem to have decent success in getting hooked up directly with advertisers have the option to spend anywhere from $100 to $100,000 per month on this site, so there’s a chance to get in front of both big and small clients.

iSocket: This platform is similar to BuySellAds, functioning as a marketplace where media buyers can browse higher quality publishers and purchase ads on a specific site. Publishers are able to set rates for certain ads and packages on their site, and will then receive a message when interested advertisers want to book that position.

Bottom Line

If you’re able to get approved for both, the best approach for monetizing your site via display ads from networks will be to use a combination of Google AdSense and Media.net ads. For a site with two to four standard ad units, we’d suggest the following 10-point approach to setting up an ad network. These are presented in order of difficulty / time commitment and importance. In other words, everyone should do the first step, but most won’t make it to step ten (and that’s perfectly fine):

1.       Open an AdSense account, create your ad units, and get them running on your site.

2.       Experiment with the settings (color, style, etc.) of these AdSense units until you find a combination that generates the highest RPM. (This feature can help.)

3.       Open a Media.net account. Start serving Media.net ads in one or two of the units that was previously running AdSense.

4.       Experiment with the settings (color, style, etc.) of these Media.net units until you find a combination that generates the highest RPM.

5.       Split test ad units between the different networks, filling 50% of the impressions with AdSense and 50% with Media.net. If there is a clear winner, shift 100% of impressions to that network if possible. (Note that you’re not permitted to have more than three AdSense units per page.)

6.       Create AdSense link units and add them to your site.

7.       Add a Custom Search Engine to your site.

8.       Create a profile with an ad marketplace (BuySellAds or iSocket), and list your inventory there.

9.       Experiment with other ad networks (Chitika, Kontera, etc.). We doubt any will beat the baseline you’ve established with AdSense / Media.net, but ongoing experimentation is always a good idea, particularly if you’re looking to supplement (rather than replace) AdSense and Media.net revenue.

Source: monetizepros.com