Nathan Gwilliam Blog :: e-Business, Social Enterprise, Faith

Ward Andrews recently asked me which ad networks are the best to maximize revenues for website publishers. The following blog entry is a modified version of my email to him.

First, selecting the best ad network often depends on the niche of your site. For example, if you have developed a classic cars site that caters to men, Gorilla Nation (which focuses on selling ads for men’s websites), might be a great place to start. I’ve heard of niche ad networks for health, dating, travel, blogs, women’s websites, financial services, social networks, mobile devices, etc. Search engine ad networks (such as Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Microsoft adCenter) provide targeted advertising generally related to the content of the page. Targeted ads generally sell for a lot more than untargeted ads, and it can be difficult to break into new niches, so finding an ad network that is already selling ads targeted in your niche is very important.

Second, it is important to select a larger ad network if you can find one that sells ads in your niche. Many of the larger advertisers and advertising agencies will not work with the small ad networks which deliver much less reach and return for their effort. The following chart (Source: ClickZ and ComScore) shows the largest ad networks in order of unique visitors as of January 2008. Comparing the number of visitors using each ad platform is one good indicator of the quality of the ad network, just as the number of people in restaurants can be a good indicator of the quality of the restaurants.

U.S. Ad Focus Ranking by Unique Visitor, January 2008
Rank	Property	Unique Visitors (000)	Reach (%)		Rank	Property	Unique Visitors (000)	Reach (%)
	Total Internet users	184,239	100
1	Platform-A**	166,763	91		26	Vibrant Media**	75,953	41
2	Advertising.com**	163,837	89		27	CPX Interactive**	71,667	39
3	Yahoo network**	155,822	85		28	MySpace.com*	68,641	37
4	Google Ad Network**	143,200	78		29	eBay	66,861	36
5	Specific Media**	142,290	77		30	Gorilla Nation Media	65,282	35
6	ValueClick networks**	137,548	75		31	YouTube	61,375	33
7	Yahoo	136,243	74		32	Undertone Networks**	59,273	32
8	Tribal Fusion**	131,840	72		33	MSN home page	58,548	32
9	Google	126,569	69		34	Ask Network	52,102	28
10	Casale Media Network**	121,893	66		35	PrecisionClick**	51,156	28
11	AOL Media Network	109,442	59		36	Kontera**	50,481	27
12	Windows Live	103,424	56		37	Amazon.com	48,324	26
13	DRIVEpm**	102,085	55		38	Business.com network	48,181	26
14	Adconion media group**	98,378	53		39	AdDynamix.com**	46,625	25
15	Yahoo home page	95,460	52		40	MapQuest	44,537	24
16	Traffic Marketplace**	95,254	52		41	Turn Inc.**	42,103	23
17	Tremor Media	93,929	51		42	YuMe	41,666	23
18	AOL	91,005	49		43	About.com	41,487	23
19	24/7 Real Media**	90,483	49		44	eBay home page	39,169	21
20	ADSDAQ by ContextWeb**	88,984	48		45	Vizi Media**	38,066	21
21	BurstMedia**	88,097	48		46	IAC AS network	37,526	20
22	AdBrite**	85,308	46		47	Nabbr	36,643	20
23	Collective Media**	79,832	43		48	Facebook	33,861	18
24	interCLICK**	79,369	43		49	Weather.com	31,464	17
25	Centro	78,460	43		50	CNN	29,157	16
Notes 1. Reach denotes the percentage of the total Internet population that viewed a particular entity at least once in January. 2. * means the entity has assigned some portion of traffic to other syndicated entities. 3. ** denotes an advertising network.
Source: comScore, 2008

Platform-A is owned by AOL and has just debuted in the #1 spot, as it merges the advertising from all of the AOL properties, lead by Advertising.com. AOL has spent nearly a billion dollars purchasing companies to create Platform-A, such as Lightningcast (online video ads provider which AOL purchased for $100 million), Third Screen Media (mobile ads provider which AOL purchased for $105 million), AdTech (ad serving service which AOL purchased for an undisclosed price), Tacoda (behavioral targeting service which AOL purchased for $247 million), Quigo (search engine marketing and contextual advertising provider which AOL purchased for $347 million), Perifilliate (CPA marketing service which AOL purchased for $125 million). Platform-A has the potential to be something amazing and is something that should be watched closely. However, Platform A has not yet lived up to its potential and has not yet created an ad network sufficiently compelling to lure me to use their services.

Third, the growth trends of the major ad networks is another key indicator of the future quality of the ad network and the culture of innovation within that organization. Growth rate is one of the best indicators of the future growth of of the ad network. The chart below (Source: eMarketer) shows the growth rates of leading ad networks. According to this chart, Google’s projected growth rate for this year of more than 30% and its historic growth rate far surpasses any of the competitors.

Fourth, it is important to determine the advertising behavior of the visitors to your website. For example, if you have a blog, forums or social networking site, which has a large percentage of repeat visitors, it might be more effective to use a CPM (cost per thousand ads displayed) model. The same would be true if advertisers are not willing to bid a lot for the keywords related to the topic of your site (such as a site for fans of your favorite sports team). However, if the content of your site is primarily about topics for which advertisers would bid higher amounts to reach (mortgage, cars, etc.), or if your website attracts a large percentage of new visitors, then a CPC (cost per click) model would often be more effective.

One of the first questions you should probably ask is whether your site can generate more revenue in a CPM or CPC model. As a general rule, CPM advertising with ad networks will generally pay about $3 to $4 for every 1000 times an ad is displayed on your website, but this can vary substantially.

If a large percentage of your traffic is from visitors outside the United States, this can also be a red flag for some of the ad networks. Also, if the URL of your website contains keywords not related to the topic of your site, that can cause confusion for the contextually targeted ad networks and result in untargeted advertising.

Fifth, it is important to provide variety of ads on your website. It is generally better to rotate several different ad networks so that a wider variety of advertisements and ad formats are displayed on your website. If you select Google Adsense, you should enable the graphical ads from third-party ad networks to help provide this variety. You do this by opting in to image ads, enabling advertisers to target your Adsense channels, and then opting in to placement targeting.You can also use the Google Ad Manager to rotate in multiple ad networks and select the one providing the highest return. This variety can often increase the click-through rates and revenue earned. This variety will also help you to better determine which ad networks should receive more or less of your available ad inventory.

In addition to Google Adsense you may want to experiment with some of the following ad networks to see which combination works best for your niche site:

• Yahoo Publisher Network
• Advertising.com (purchased by AOL)
• BlueLithium (purchased by Yahoo)
• AdMarketplace
• ASDAQ (a service of ContextWeb),
• Direct Media Exchange (a service of Right Media),
• Vibrant Media IntelliTXT (in-text advertising)
• Kontera (in-text advertising)
• Tribal Fusion (not the strongest interface)
• SnapShots Ad Network
  
• Text Link Ads
• AdBrite
• SpecificMedia (focuses on larger websites)
• Quigo (purchased by AOL)
• Azoogle
• ClickBooth (cost-per-acquisition ad network)
• FeedBurner (advertising on feeds, such as a blog RSS feed, purchased by Google)
• Social Media (social media advertising)

The number of ad networks on this list seems almost unmanageable. However, select the ones that make the most sense for your site, then use PubMatic. PubMatic is an amazing free service which rotates the ads from different ad networks on your website, testing the ads from each ad network in each ad position, and automatically displaying the ads that perform the best on your website.

If your site is large enough to hire an in-house ad sales team, you can probably generate more income from your advertising inventory than these ad networks, but until then, these competing ad networks provide great solutions to help smaller websites increase revenues.

Which ad networks have you used and which have or have not worked well for you?

Posted on May 28th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Advertising, Internet Marketing, Mergers & Acquisitions, e-Business