Matt Paulson reviews ad networks to pair with Google AdSense, including Taboola, RevContent, Media.net, and Conversant. He covers typical CPM rates, placement strategies, and qualification thresholds like 500k monthly pageviews for Exponential.
Questions this video answers
Approximately $1.50 to $3.00 per thousand views (CPM).
About 500,000 pageviews per month.
Approximately $0.50 to $1.50 per thousand views (CPM).
An example cited is roughly $100 per month for a spot.
Chapters
Hey everyone, Matthew Paulsen here. I want to talk a little bit about what ad networks you should run on your website in addition to Google AdSense. So Google AdSense is kind of the 800 pound gorilla in the space. They, you know, are the biggest advertising network, but you know up until recently that you could only put three of those units on your page. So you might want to run other net ad networks in addition to Google AdSense. And in this video I want to talk about some of those networks. So the first kind of type of network is kind of these contextual sponsored content ads. These are companies like adblade and Taboola and Rev Content. These are three networks that offer these kind of sponsored content advertising units. I personally work with two networks. One is called Rev Content and then the other one is called Dianomi or Dionomi or something like that, which is a finance specific sponsored content ad network. And these are typically large square ad units that you put below your post. They'll be kind of a checkerboard of stories that people can click on and they tend to work pretty well. Some of them are kind of click baity, you know, more than I'd like. But you can kind of tone down some of the sexually explicit ads, which I definitely don't want running on my website, and limit it to the PG or PG13 ads that are more family friendly, I guess is a great way to put it. Some of these ads are like 20 times Kate Middleton showed up more than she should. Or like this is the one second video. Hillary never wanted people to see stuff like that. So you do have to be careful about the content of these ads. Most of it's fine, but there are some ads that I would never want that on my website. But you can kind of pick and choose which ads and what types of ads you want to see. And then these networks, you can typically make between a buck fifty and three dollars for every thousand views. And that tends to be pretty good money in terms of your overall kind of layout of different ad networks on your website. So there's also the Amazon CPM ads network. It's a relatively new network. They've kind of lumped it in with their Amazon Associates program. It's a relatively new product offering of theirs, but they tend to pay pretty well in terms of other CPM ad networks. Probably not going to beat out AdSense, but you could just throw these kind of lower on your page in the sidebar or below your content so that they're not taking up your most valuable ad real estate. They offer all the kind of standard IAB AD network sizes. So you could run 728 by 90 units, 336 by 280s, 300 by 250s standard. Still pretty early for this network. But my early numbers that I've seen testing this are very good. So I encourage you to check that out. Maybe lower on the page. There's also blog ads. So blog ads are ads that specifically cater to bloggers. They're not a traditional advertising network where they will sell inventory for you and just have a big pool of advertisers that put ads on your website. They're effectively blank spaces that advertisers can see on your website and then go in and buy. Typically these will run for like a fixed fee per month. So you could say 100 bucks a month. You can have this spot on my website. And these tend to work for very kind of more Nichy sites, you know, maybe not as big traffic, but have kind of a very loyal and specific audience that you know will come and go to your website to read a very specific type of content. I've seen that work very well. Next is conversant. They used to be called Value Click Media. They're an advertising network. They've got about 5,000 brands that run campaigns through them. They do all the standard IAB ad network sizes, text rollovers, rich media ads, interstitial. So they have some other kind of creative units in addition to those standard ad units. Next is media.net, it's kind of a more popular secondary network. I've never had good luck with it personally, but some people have. They brand themselves as the Yahoo Bing contextual ad network. Now they've got some deal with Yahoo and Bing to kind of be their ad network of choice, I think. Did Yahoo buy them? I guess I don't remember. Somebody bought them recently. But they support all of the kind of usual IEB ad sizes. You know, the 720x90s, 336x280s, 300x250s. They have a pretty big pool of advertisers. Some people have been able to make this network work well. I've never been able to get good results from it, but that's just my experience. Lots of bloggers and people use this network, so check it out and see if it works for you. Two other ad networks that are worth checking out. One is Exponential, used to be called Tribal Fusion. They offer some of the best kind of cpm, cost per view, cost per thousand view ad rates available. You get a dedicated account Manager. You know, it's a really good ad network, but in order to qualify, you have to get half a million page views a month. And, you know, a lot of publishers won't kind of reach that threshold and qualify. But if you do, it's definitely worth checking out. Then finally, there are two other. I guess this is a different category, but the two companies in it are Vibrant Media and Infolinks. And these are ad networks that create kind of put links in your content that kind of highlight out, and then when you mouse over them, something pops up and you can see an ad network, see an ad there, and then you can click on that ad or not. They don't actually take up any ad space, which is kind of nice. They just add some extra links to your page. I've seen These pay between $0.50 CPM and $1.50 CPM, which is not bad at all for something that doesn't take up any space. So these are kind of a sample of some of the other networks that are out there in addition to Google Adsense. Right now, what I'm doing on my website is my websites are Google AdSense is kind of at the top. Then below the post is a dynomic sponsored content unit. Then there's another rev content unit sponsored before that. Sometimes I'll run Vibrant Media, sometimes I won't. And then in the sidebar I've also got another sponsored content unit from Dianomi and then kind of a CPM ad from one of the CPM ad networks, depending on the site. So that's kind of what I do. It is definitely worth testing out other ad networks in addition to Google AdSense and really just seeing what works for you. So I would encourage you to check out some of those other ad networks and see if you can ramp up the amount of money you earn per every thousand people that are on your website.
