Why Are There So Many Ad Networks?

December 22nd, 2008

3 comments

Posted in: PPC Ad Units

Advertisers and publishers are aware of many more ad networks than the few which were part of the panel discussion that I participated in at the DPAC II conference this past October. Why are there so many networks? As an advertiser or as a publisher, should you work with more than one network? Why work with any network? What are the differences between the networks?

There ARE many networks. Because of this there are a lot of interesting innovations in technologies and service delivery. There are different pricing models. Some networks reach limited demographics and geographies, some reach broad demographics and geographies. Some networks and pricing models are best for short term campaigns and others are great for ongoing campaigns. Different networks offer different opportunities for both advertisers and publishers.

If you are an online advertiser, you likely leverage multiple advertising networks for achieving and exceeding your strategic objectives. Internet advertising is highly quantifiable and you can therefore measure the exposure, volume of traffic and quality of traffic received through your network ad spend as well as any direct ad spend. You are likely analyzing a few of fundamental items such as – How is each advertising program performing towards your overall goal? Top to bottom, which are your best programs? Which programs, if you want to press the accelerator, can allow you to scale?

Our Advertisers, especially in challenging economic times, like the fact that we are a performance based PPC keyword engine with closed loop conversion tracking. To our advertisers, we look and behave as a search engine-like sales and marketing channel. Based upon the more than 500,000,000 ads we served in September to end users who clicked from a search engine to our publishers’ sites, Chitika is trending to become the “3rd largest ad serving search engine” behind Google and Yahoo (uniquely we’re monetizing the “2nd click”).

Some publishers generate all of their revenue through advertising networks. Other publishers complement their direct advertising sales with inventory from advertising networks. With so many networks available, how are publishers deciding which to participate in? Publisher decisions around advertising network partnerships are many and include potential revenue, network mandated rules and contractual obligations, style of advertisements (is the look and feel of the ads appropriate for the publisher’s site?), content and relevancy of the advertisements, quality of advertisers, the initial setup work and ongoing “maintenance” for an ad unit, and the volume of available advertising inventory. Publishers typically have more than one advertising network relationship.

Why is Chitika’s cpc network growing so quickly? Publishers are pleased with several aspects of the Chitika Premium ad program including strong eCPMs, best in class targeting (by design our ads are always relevant to any web page on which one appears), easy deployment, and unlimited inventory from a massive base of blue chip advertisers.

I am looking forward to having an interesting discussion with you - the advertisers and publishers - about this.  Whether you are an advertiser looking to expand your reach, or improve the results from your current ad spend, or if you are a publisher looking to improve your revenue stream and maintain a great end user experience, please be sure to participate by leaving comments below.

3 Responses to “ Why Are There So Many Ad Networks? ”

1. 
   D. Sorley Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 am

   Nice post Jeff. I make almost all of my revenue from advertising/affiliate programs.

   As far as ad networks go, I know there are a lot of them out there but the only ones that I have actually had success with are AdSense and you guys (Premium is doing quite well for me).

   From what I have experienced, many of the other networks out there just aren’t worth the time.

2. 
   Andy Hodges Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 4:09 pm

   I’ve been through so many Ad Networks, it’s embarrassing. My advice to any publishers out there that use multiple Ad Networks - Beware! For example, some of my visitors complained that our ads were redirecting them. Others said that their Web browser locked up when visiting our site. We could never find it, because the Ad Network made sure not to show the ad on my IP address. These particular Ad Networks were also paying us BIG! We were making nearly five-times the amount we make using Chitika. Guess what happened? Complaints went to Yahoo and Yahoo flagged us as presenting malicious code. Google penalized us as well. While evaluating the Ad Tag we received, we found out that we were helping other sites receive extra hits (to improve ranking). It’s a long story, and no, I won’t disclose who the Ad Networks are. Some Ad Networks are up to no good. Eventually, a few of our visitors made screen shots and copied us the HTML code they were directed to. We removed those Ad Networks from our system. Within 30 days, we were no longer flagged by Yahoo and our Google ranking even went UP more. If you upset your visitors, word will get around. You need visitors to run ads. Just for the record, Chitika does not do anything bad with their code. We fully checked their AD Tags and they are clean. We like Chitika because not only does it compliment our pages, but it offers our visitors valuable information while providing usability such as the search bar.

3. 
   skgrao Says:
   March 17th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

   I have just started today blindly and I have to wait and watch how Chitika goes.
   AdSence is holding my account and I do not know if they see Chitika since it is long time ago that I had applied to AdSence.
   My sence is getting impatient.

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