If you’ve got a website with regular traffic coming in, you may be thinking about monetizing that traffic with ads. Having ads placed on your website can potentially increase your income by a lot!
So how do you go about putting ads on your website?
The best way to put ads on your website is by using a popular ad network such as Google AdSense, Ezoic, MediaVine or AdThrive. Using programmatic advertising, these ad networks can automatically place ads on your website that are targeted to your audience, while providing you with the highest revenue per ad possible.
While some of the theory surrounding programmatic advertising can be confusing, an ad network will make the process easy and you’ll be earning ad revenue in no time.
Read on to learn all about monetizing your website traffic with ads. I’ll explain the basics, tell you a bit about the most popular ad networks and explain what you need to know to get the ball rolling.
Ezoic uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to increase the earnings from ads on your website. Learn more about Ezoic here.
Contents
First a Bit of Ad Publishing History
I promise this won’t take long! 🙂
Back in the days of print magazines and newspapers (sorry you glossy paged periodicals, I know there are still a few of you left around), advertisers paid to have their ads placed inside the content of these publications.
The ad rates paid to the publishing companies created most of their business profits. This ad income was so lucrative that publishers were able to keep their subscription prices artificially low in order to attract more readers. More readers meant they could charge more for ads.
As the world moved online, these newly digital publications had to find a way to be profitable and ads were still the perfect choice. By placing display ads on their web properties, they could offer the content to their readers for free while still turning a profit.
Even better, unlike the old days when ad placements were sold manually (which required a lot of back and forth negotiation between the parties), the ads could now be placed and managed automatically using software.
This gave rise to what are called Display Ad Networks.
What Is A Display Ad Network and How Does it Work?
Ad networks are companies that use technology to facilitate the buying, selling, and displaying of ads between advertisers and publishers.
Ad networks are the middlemen of the online display ad world. Although I usually tend to think of “middlemen” in a negative way (providing little value and taking too much profit), I feel different about these ad networks.
While the internet has democratized the widespread sharing of information so that everyone has an opportunity to have their words read, the ad networks have made it possible for everyone (not just large publishers) to make ad revenue from their content.
Ad networks work by allowing advertisers to pick and choose which websites they’d like their ads to appear on then having them compete for those ad spaces. The competition is won by whoever is willing to pay the most for a particular ad slot at any given moment.
This is all facilitated by the use of programmatic advertising.
What Exactly Is Programmatic Advertising?
Programmatic advertising is the use of technology and software to decide in a matter of milliseconds which ads will show on which websites and in what locations as the end user begins to load the page content in their browser.
In other words, programmatic advertising connects buyers and sellers of ads digitally, finds the highest bidder (it’s actually an auction), and places the winning advertisement within the content of the website.
Programmatic advertising uses raw computing power and some pretty complex algorithms to make this all happen. It’s not something you could easily do yourself as an online publisher. These middlemen earn their keep.
How To Get Ads on Your Website
As mentioned earlier, you don’t need to be a large publisher to get the benefits of using an ad network. Many small and independent bloggers and website owners are profiting greatly by creating and sharing information online for free and getting paid with ads.
In order to get ads on your website, you’ll first need to:
- Create a website – Most ad networks can work with a variety of content management software systems (CMS). Popular content management software includes platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, Wix, Squarespace, and many others.
- Publish good content – Publishing a lot of useful, helpful, and/or entertaining content is necessary to get enough traffic to make ads on your website worthwhile.
- Traffic – Once you’re getting regular traffic to your website (this can be as little as a couple thousand visitors a month, all the way to hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors or more) it’s time to find an ad network.
- Apply to an ad network – Different ad networks have different ways of working with publishers and different requirements so you’ll need to find the right ad network for you.
Which Ad Networks Are The Best & How Do You Choose?
There are a ton of different ad networks out there, so I’ll give you a quick run down of four of the most popular ones. They’re all great in their own way, so check them out and then apply to the one that interests you and where you meet their baseline traffic requirements.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is without a doubt the largest ad network there is and is one you’ve probably heard of. AdSense serves ads to literally millions of websites across the web.
Google AdSense is fairly easy to get into if you have a decent website design (doesn’t need to be great) with a dozen or more pages of quality content.
Once approved, you’ll add a small bit of code to your website (easy) and then you’ll either manually create and place the advertisement locations, or you’ll click a button to turn on what Google calls “Auto Ads.” This will automatically populate your website with ads.
Here are a few AdSense pros and cons:
| AdSense Pros | AdSense Cons |
|---|---|
| – Easy to get into – No minimum traffic requirement – Monthly payments – Easy to set up – Cost: Free to use (AdSense keeps 32% of ad revenue while you keep 68%) | – Relatively low earnings – No support other than forums |
AdSense is a bare bones (no frills) ad network. While many people do quite well with AdSense, it requires a huge amount of traffic to make a good income. You can find out more details and sign up for Google AdSense here.
While Google is where I started my web ads journey, it wasn’t long before I found there were more “Premium” ad networks around. A premium ad network is a much more full-service experience. With better earnings and very helpful support options, the following three ad networks are great choices.
Ezoic
Ezoic is the first premium ad network on the list and the one I’m using to monetize my websites. Ezoic is in fact, much more than just an ad network, they provide all kinds of technology based features and functions. They also increased my ad revenue earnings 380% over AdSense right from the start. You can check out my full Ezoic vs. AdSense comparison here.
Ezoic uses an advanced level of artificial intelligence to place ads and maximize publisher earnings. On top of that they have the best data reporting of any ad network I’m aware of. Their detailed reporting data will show you which pieces of content and kinds of traffic are earning you the most so you can concentrate on doing more of what’s working.
Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons at Ezoic:
| Ezoic Pros | Ezoic Cons |
|---|---|
| – Excellent earnings – Low traffic requirement (10K page views a month) – Quick approval (get started in minutes) – In-depth analytics reports (best in the biz) – Great support (Dedicated account manager & support desk) – Complete technology partner – Monthly payments (net 30) – No contract – Cost: Free. Ezoic keeps the revenue from a single ad at the bottom of each page | – Can be a bit more technical with a lot of options, however you can have an account manager set up and optimize the whole thing making it quite easy. |
Ezoic, in my experience, is doing a great job with my websites and is the perfect choice to start. You can find out more and sign up with Ezoic here.
MediaVine
MediaVine is another premium ad network with an excellent reputation. Many people swear by MediaVine and they have a lot of publishers clamoring to get on their platform.
Whereas Ezoic handles a lot of things using technology, MediaVine (while still having a lot of technology running behind the scenes) does a lot of the set-up and optimization of the ads on your site manually. This is both good and bad.
It’s great to have the attention of someone who is manually optimizing your ads, but it’s because of this hands-on approach that MediaVine has a traffic requirement of 50K session visitors a month before you can apply.
They can only handle so many accounts at one time, and they want to make sure that their existing publishers are having a great experience. And that’s commendable!
| MediaVine Pros | MediaVine Cons |
|---|---|
| – Excellent earnings – Terrific support – Cost: Free. MediaVine keeps 25% of the ad revenue. | – High traffic requirement (50K sessions a month) – Slower payment terms (net 65) – Less reporting detail than Ezoic – Approval process can take 30 days or more – Requires a high percentage of U.S. visitors – Exclusive contract (60 days) |
If you’d like to check out and apply to MediaVine, you can do so here.
AdThrive
AdThrive is well-known in the web publishing space to be a top tier ad network. They seem to be significantly more picky, however, when it comes to accepting new publishers to their platform and require a minimum of 100k pageviews a month to apply.
Picky is good though as it means they only want to take on publishers and websites that they feel they can improve on existing earnings. Once you’re onboard at AdThrive, they have a program where you can add additional sites early, once they hit 30k pageviews a month.
Here are some of the pluses and minuses with AdThrive:
| AdThrive Pros | AdThrive Cons |
|---|---|
| – Excellent earnings – Wonderful support – Additional sites added at 30K pageviews – Cost: Free. AdThrive keeps 25% of the ad revenue. | – Very high traffic requirement (100K pageviews) – Slower payment terms (net 45) – Less detailed reporting – Requires a high percentage of U.S. visitors – Exclusive contract |
You can find out more and apply to AdThrive right here.
Which Ad Network Pays The Most
The thing publishers want to know most when choosing or aspiring to get into an ad network is: Which ad network makes the most money for the publisher?
It’s safe to say that Google AdSense pays the least, while Ezoic, MediaVine and AdThrive pay the most. Having said that, from my point of view, the answer to the question of which ad network pays better is: It depends.
While one ad network might do better for you than another, there is no clear winner in terms of earnings across the spectrum. I’ve seen case studies from all three premium sites where publishers make more (or less) at one network than someone else makes at another.
If you think about it, all three of these premium networks get their ads from the same places, so they are in fact mostly showing the same ads. I’ve seen people on AdThrive and MediaVine, for instance, that are making far less per thousand visitors (CPM or ePMV) than I am at Ezoic.
Just because a network is harder to get into than another really has nothing to do with how much revenue you can make or how good that network is.
So in my mind it really comes down to two things. First, can one network provide a better experience than another. And second, are you willing to really dive in and take advantage of all the optimization and earnings options available from that ad network.
And finally, you’re not stuck with any one ad network. There are so many variables between publishers and their websites that the only true way to know which ad company will pay you more is to try them out with your own website.
Publishers move between ad networks like shoppers move between stores at the mall. Its human nature to think that the grass may be greener somewhere else. So if you move from one to another, you can always move back if the prior ad shop worked better for you.
Final Thoughts
Placing ads on your website for the first time is an exciting prospect! Although there is a lot of technology going on behind the scenes, it’s a relatively easy process for a publisher to do.
The best way to figure it all out, is to earn while you learn. So pick a company that you qualify for and go sign up. By this time next week you could be earning a substantial income for your valuable content and audience from online display ads.