Network Ads

What is an Ad Network?
An ad network is a technology platform that serves as a broker between a group of publishers and a group of advertisers. Ad networks were one of the first pieces of advertising technology that appeared in the mid '90s when online advertising first began. They were responsible for the very same things they are today—helping advertisers buy available ad space (aka inventory) across multiple publishers. While you would expect the term "ad network" to include all sorts of media (printed media, television, radio), it is used exclusively to refer to online advertising. Ad networks traditionally collect unsold ad inventory from multiple publishers and offer this pool of impressions to advertisers at a much lower price than a publisher’s direct sales. This kind of inventory is often referred to as non-premium, or remnant.

Today, however, some networks take a more strategic approach and lean towards offering their advertisers more exclusive deals at premium prices. They cherry-pick and pre-buy inventory from a number of top-tier publishers and then resell it at premium prices. While this arrangement may be more expensive for the advertisers, it ensures premium placement of their ads.

Here's how an ad network works:

• An ad network aggregates a large number of publishers to provide the required amount of inventory to the advertisers on an auction basis.
• The advertiser can set up the campaigns directly using an ad network's campaign-management panel, or set up pixels from a third-party ad server for verification purposes and consolidated reporting when running the campaign across multiple ad networks and in direct deals with publishers.
• The advertiser sets up the campaign parameters (such as targeting, budget, frequency caps, etc.) and the publisher installs the ad-network ad tags on their site by inserting these tags directly into the page or by using a first-party ad server.
• When the ad is published, the advertiser can rotate multiple banners on the website using the ad network’s campaign-management panel without having to contact the publisher.

Advantages of Ad Network:
Dedicated support: A professional team uses a great variety of marketing tools, such as mobile ads, pop-ups, etc. and different avenues of promotion, so they will easily help you to choose the right traffic source.

Convenience: You don't need to add hours and days of study time to your busy schedule, and then spend days, weeks, and even months to implement these strategies. The experts will do it for you.

Affordable and efficient: Ad networks usually work on a cost-per-click and cost-per-install basis, allowing you to more accurately calculate your average revenue per a user and guide your investment through a cost-benefit analysis.

Five benefits of ad networks:
Instant money: As soon as your site is ready and you have allocated space for advertisements, you can enroll in some ad networks and start making some money instantly. This is a huge benefit for a lot of website owners, especially those in need of some quick money to cover their operational costs. The stress of finding and managing advertisers is non-existing, but, so is the chance to make some lucrative and long lasting contracts which can turn into much larger ad revenue.

Easy startup: Website owners have enough to worry about without having to stress out about managing ad campaigns or performing ad serving tasks. Time can be better spent enhancing the page with more content or working on SEO. Using ad networks and exchanges is usually as simple as adding a little snippet of code to your site. You generally choose the dimensions of the ad to fit your space, and then paste in the code that is automatically generated for you. The whole process can be done in a couple of minutes.

More advertisers: There is generally a vast array of ads available through the popular ad networks, which can help fill any blank space you may have on your site and provide some welcome income. Ad networks want the ads on your site to perform well so they will try to provide high quality and well targeted ads, which makes them all the more attractive to the visitors of your site. The bigger the mix of advertisers and advertisements you have on your site, the more views and clicks you will hopefully generate, translating to more money in your pocket.

Monetize a wider audience: Having your own advertisers is great, but they often place certain restrictions on the type of traffic that they want to receive. That is fine in the case that they want US visitors and your site is catered towards a domestic audience, but it does not help your bottom line if you are selling in the global marketplace. With ad networks, you can supplement your directly-sold premium ads so that those shown from the network can be displayed to a wider group of visitors and generate revenue from all visitors.

No selling skills required: If you have no experience in selling, you might very well find it hard to negotiate with advertisers. The ads that are delivered via an ad network typically come with a non-negotiable fixed rate. Yes, this will be less than what you get from a direct advertiser, but you also get to take out all the haggling and hassles.