Google AdSense is the current leader in content-sensitive web-based
marketing. Webmasters can place Google AdSense JavaScript code
on their web pages in order to allow Google's servers to show context
sensitive advertisements (Google Adwords). The left hand side of
this page shows an example of a Google AdSense skyscraper
displaying a text or image ad.
Google's terms and conditions are very strict such that many web publishers cannot use adsense adverts on their sites. They are either denied from joining the Google AdSense program in the first instance, or in a situation that is becoming more and more common do not wish to do business with Google. A number of publishers are also finding their Adsense accounts are being disabled for reasons that are completely beyond their control. The problem is that most of the alternatives to Google's Adsense are pretty useless.
Most of the good ones (such as doubleclick) are only interested in very large volume customers and so are not interested in the little guy with his blog who wants to earn a small income on the side. For this reason I have compiled my Top 10 alternatives to Google's Adsense that are ideal for the small time publisher. Has your adsense account been disabled? Then try these
top 10 alternatives. - AdBrite
- Bidvertiser
- Infolinks
- Chitika
- Clicksor
- Pocket Cents
- Exit Junction
- Yahoo Publisher Network
- Target Point
- Fastclick
Note: The descriptions are based on personal experience and
do not represent any form of endorsement.
AdBrite, is currently one of the best alternatives there is to Google's adsense. While they do not offer the same large selection of ad formats that Clicksor and Google Adsense provide you they do offer the most commonly used ones. In addition they offer inline page links with have some greatClick through ratios as well as interstitial full page ads which offer an excellent way to monetize all traffic to your site not just traffic that Clicks on your ads. Their payouts are also very competitive. They have more relaxed terms and conditions than Adsense and are much more accepting of smaller publishers including bloggers.
If you're a publisher, use AdBrite to set your own ad rates, and approve or reject every ad that's purchased for your site or just have AdBrite auto accept ever ad. AdBrite enables you to instantly sell ads to your visitors via a "Your Ad Here" link, in addition to selling through AdBrite's marketplace and sales team.
Revenue is typically split 75/25 in your favor. Through a small snippet of HTML placed on your site, they handle serving, scheduling, billing, customer service, and sales. About half of AdBrite's sales are generated from the marketplace and sales team, while the other half are generated from users clicking "Your Ad Here" on your website.
While AdBrite can provide publishers with more revenue and better ads than traditional ad networks such as Google AdSense, they work fine along-side them as a way for you to generate additional ad revenue by selling ads directly to your visitors -- something the other ad systems don't do. Ad Brite also lets you select your own minimum bid prices and give you the option of showing an alternative ad service such as Clicksor when bid prices fall below your minimum.
If you're using AdBrite on your website you also have the option to turn off AdBrite's "run-of-network ads" and AdBrite will only display ads that have been approved by you allowing you to prevent competitors ads being shown on your site. If you have no ads running, AdBrite will display nothing but "Your Ad Here" or your alternative ad provider.Note, from my experiences it can take a day or so from when you
signup with AdBrite and put their code on your website to actually
start seeing relevant ads showing up. So if you see the message
"Advertize on this site" just be patient and give it a day or so and
you should start seeing relevant ads showing up.
Bidvertiser can be a useful alternative to Google and offer some intriguing ad formats including what they refer to as free design. This lets you specify the look and dimensions of your text ads. While a useful feature I have not investigated how well it works but imagine that while it sounds good on paper it could result in lower priced ads being displayed. I.e. most advertisers will probably want to keep control of the layout of their ads and so turn off support for Free design ads. Bidvertizer pays you either in $25.00 increments by check or $10.00 increments by PayPal.
A relative newcomer to the scene Infolinks specializes in In-Text Advertizing. That is it indexes your page looking for keywords and phrases that are not currently links and converts them into advertizing links. When a user places their mouse over the link a box opens up showing the ad. If they click on the link you get paid. It is very simple and works very effectively. The nice part is that you can use Infolinks to compliment an existing advertizing campaign on your website. For example you can show banner ads with AdBrite or Bidvertiser and show text links with Infolinks. Or you can even show text links with both AdBrite and Infolinks together on the same page to maximize your revenue. Infolinks claims to be leading the industry with the most relevant in-text advertising links and the highest revenue share - guaranteed. I am not sure how they 'guarantee' this but having used them for several months I can attest that their payouts are indeed good compared to other In-Text advertizing options.
In-Text advertizing is also useful if you have a site under construction. For example, suppose you have built a list of links but have not added all the links yet. Infolinks will parse your page and convert a lot of these into links. People then think these are part of your site, click on them and you get paid.
The unobtrusiveness makes it a very attractive way to monetize your site without inundating and alienating your visitors with flashing banners, pop-ups etc. Infolinks' features:· Quick and easy setup with no changes to your website· Ads are tightly integrated with your content - no additional space required· Free sign up with no commitments or risk· User triggered, less intrusive advertising that won't distract from your site's content· Highly relevant In-Text ads for your site visitors with record high conversion rates
Chitika - The Leader in Impulse MerchandisingChitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka) was founded in 2003 and is the industry's leading impulse merchandising company.
Chitika was founded in May 2003 and is based in Massachusetts.
Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka) helps web publishers generate
revenue using innovative publisher-side advertising and
merchandising solutions and services.
Chitika began, not as a stand alone advertising solution but instead as way to compliment existing advertising / publishing programs through the use of additional Ad Units which were altogether different from the standard ad boxes, pop-unders etc that everybody else provided. Instead of displaying these 'industry standard' advert boxes with text and image ads that all look the same Chitika instead provided active boxes that showed targeted products from different manufacturers. If you ran a blog for example and discussed a product you might have found the Chitika box showing links for this product and competitors products. If people purchased these products you would get paid a commission. This was referred to as impulse marketing in the form of Premium Ad Units (eMinimalls).
Chitika has now progressed, however, into a fully fledged advertizer service. The eMinimalls initially evolved into advertizing units that would show adverts based on what people searched for to get to your site. This is subtly different from the standard keyword driven advertising since it shows ads that are more relevant to the original intent of your visitors search. This greatly increases the chance that someone will click on an ad. This type of advertising is still offered by Chitika and is a good addition to a site containing traditional banner ads. For example you could use it to compliment another advertizers service.
However, Chitika now goes beyond this, also offering what are termed premium ads. Chitika uses it custom "Click Prediction" technology to show select ads when there is a greater chance they will be clicked on. This is obviously a great way to improve your revenue. For advertisers and media buyers, Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. For all publishers, Chitika is an easy-to-use platform for earning daily ad revenue. If you visit a site showing Chitika's ads from a search engine then the Chitika premium ad unit kicks in showing you ads that are specific to your searching - otherwise you can have it show an alternative ad provider, such as adsense, or you can just have it collapse away to show nothing.
Chitika's search based advert units allow you to display targeted products based on what people searched for to get to your page and you get paid for clicks. Chitika offers payment by PayPal (with a $10 minimum) or via Check (with a $50 minimum).
Clicksor is one of the current leaders of the small publisher Adsense competition. They have payouts upto a market leading 85% and unlike a number of alternatives the cost per click bid values are high enough that you can earn a decent income. They are also, in my experience, much more tollerant than Google. Their terms and conditions suggest that you should only place one copy of their code on a page but as long as you only place a single pop-up or DHTML code on a page they seem happy to let you place many context sensitive ad blocks on a single site.
Clicksor also has a big advantage over a number of the lower ranked alternatives on this site in that their ads are truly context sensitive. Thus while you can provide keywords they have technology that will also show ads targeted to the content of your site. This means your visitors are exposed to ads of the same subject as they were searching for when they reached your site and thus vastly increases the click thru ratio and thus your sites earning potential. The context sensitive nature also saves you the hassle of having to specify keywords for all of your sites and decide in advance what people might be looking for.
The online stats provided by Clicksor are not perfect but they are enough for you to keep track of the trends with your site. They also allow you to add as many sites / domains as you want under a single account. You also only need the root page of your site approved. Once this is done you can place ads on all of your sub pages.
The payment schedule with Clicksor is also much better geared to the small site owner. In any pay period in which your earnings exceed $50.00 ($20.00 with PayPal), payments are made either by check or instantly through PayPal ($20.00 minimum for PayPal). Revenue totaling less that $50 (PP $20) will rolled into the following period. The pay period is based on a 15 day schedule so you can get paid much more frequently. Clicksor also do not require a Social Security (SSN) or Individual Tax Identity Number (ITIN) to join and so while this 'technically' does not help US site owners with their tax liability it does make it much easier for non US citizens to join up and start earning revenue. That said I have had several reports of late about Clicksor
becoming more picky about who they accept and rejecting accounts.
This is especially true of sites not based in the USA, Canada or the
UK as well as sites not predominantly in English. I have also seen
issues with their reporting of earnings, especially referrals not
working properly. Thus I have moved them further down the list
but I still recommend you to try them. Multiple formats available including text, image and animated ads. - Text Links
- Image Ads
- Flash Ads
- Animation Ads
- Banners
- Pop unders
- Interstitial Ads (NEW)
- Dynamic (DHTML) highlighting
Click here to visit Clicksor's website and sign up for an account to try it out. There is no obligation and no fees ever. Note, once you start adding the advert code to your site it can take up to 24 hours for Clicksor to get up to speed as it were so initially you may see some ads that don't appear to be relevant. Once their contextual engine kicks in, however, the relevance quickly improves.
A relative new comer to the field is Pocket Cents. Pocket Cents has been built from the ground up as a Click Banner provider. Specializing in automatic focus on local markets Pocket Cents offers an intriguing alternative to adsense/adwords. While unlikely to replace your entire creative portfolio,Pocket Cents does off an attractive alternative for banner ads. It could also act as a good alternative ad provider for backfill from one of the larger networks.
"Location based advertisements generate precisely targeted traffic
to your website increasing internet sales and decreasing
advertising costs." It remains to be seen how effective this will ultimately be but the idea, from a publishers perspective is that it gives you a higher click through rate and therefore better earnings from CPC ads. They also offer a flat rate on clicks meaning as a publisher increasing your website revenue simply means optimizing clicks. The following shows an example banner ad from Pocket Cents. Need Money? Get Loan Now$4500 Cash Loans, Flexible Payments
Faster, Cheaper, Better - Apply Nowinstantapprovalcashloan.info | Make quick easy money onlineMake a free acount. Advertise anything you want the more clicks your ad gets the more money you makewww.pocketcents.com | Flat Rate Movers Rated #1Excellant Relocation Services at Reasonable Rates
(An all inclusive relocation company)Rated #1 in Customer Satisfaction | YOURS FREE!Get up to 50 FREE MONEY-MAKING EBOOKS... ABSOLUTELY FREE...with NO-STRINGS attached!www.ebookdivision.com |
Exit Junction is relatively new and, I believe, a spin off from the now defunct Revenue Pilot. While Revenue Pilot has stopped running, however, Exit Junction is going from strength to strength. Exit Junction offers a unique approach to advertising that is compatible with all the other Ad Networks included Google Adsense. The key to Exit junction is that they focus on showing ads to users as they leave your site rather than as they arrive or as they browse. This approach offers you an additional way to monetize your traffic and also capture ad revenue from those that stumble upon your site from a search engine and then immediately leave. By adding a small piece of Exit Junction code to the header section of your site users are shown an advert as they hit the back button. For example, if a user came to your site from a Google search and then immediately hit the back button to return to that search they would be shown an Exit Junction Ad in between your page and the Google search and you get paid for this impression. The ad is directly targeted to the search term that brought the visitor to your site in the first place. Hence Exit Junction is an ideal way of complimenting your existing ad services and so increasing your sites revenue without having to switch from your current ad provider. Exit junction also covers all countries. You get paid for all traffic
exiting you site regardless of its origin. They offer fee free payout via Check or PayPal with earnings of as
little as $25 on a monthly basis.
Yahoo are currently playing catch up to Google and are trying to
release their own context sensitive advertising service. This promises
to be an excellent alternative to Google Adsense but in reality is
likely to be a simple copy with the same restrictive terms and
conditions as Google, including $100 minimums on payouts.
The system seems to have been in beta test for several years now,
perhaps explaining why Yahoo as a company is suffering.
Unfortunately while you can visit their site and sign up to register
for an account don't expect to actually hear back from them. They
are either extremely selective or are simply not accepting new
publishers and advertisers, either way they won't even bother to get
back to you to let you know this and most applicants won't even
receive a reply saying their application has been rejected. Thus until
it goes live and it becomes clear what type of website owners Yahoo
will be targeting I cannot place it any higher in this list.
Advert wise Yahoo Publisher Network will feature: - Display ads related to the content on your site. You'll earn
revenue from qualified clicks.
- Integrate other Yahoo! services into your web site, including
Add to My Yahoo! (RSS), Y!Q and much more to come...
- This beta program is just the beginning. Our mission is to
deliver products and services based on the needs of the publishing community.
Targetpoint's services are particularly publisher-oriented, you have
absolute control over the appearance of your ads. They provide
supervision over ad content. The payouts tend to be reasonable but
they can be quite choosey regarding which sites are accepted.
Advert wise Target Point provide:
- Adpoint generates content-relevant, revenue-evaluated ads.
- Exitpoint helps utilizing the full capacity web exit traffic.
- Imagepoint serves visual ads. Known to the rest of the world as
Image ads.
- Underpoint serves pop-under ad windows.
- Searchpoint (beta) features enhanced search capabilities, which
enhance your users� experience and generate additional profit.
Registration is free and they pay back a minimum of 60% of the total on-click revenue. Payment options include Bank checks, PayPal and Wire transfers (if eligible).
At first look FastClick would appear to be one of the better alternatives
to Google's Adsense however, they are one of many online
advertising companies that tend to favor the large customers.
You'd think companies would have learnt from Google's success
and accepted that the way to make money is to target both large
and small. Remember Excite? They went the way of the dodo
because they only targeted the top 100 companies rather than the
small guys who can't afford large TV adverts and have to advertise
on the Internet instead. Anyway, I digress. If you can get yourself
accepted to FastClick (now called ValueClick) then you will
probably be able to run some reasonably high paying adverts on
your site but most small website owners will find that FastClick
simply aren't interested.
Advertising wise FastClick (ValueClick) offer an industry-average 65-percent monthly payout on all advertising revenue your website generates. Fastclick pays by the 25th of the month for the previous month by check or PayPal. Formats include: - Text Ads
- Image Ads
- Interstitial
- Pop-Under
- InVue
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