10 Best Ad Networks For Publishers 2017

Whenever someone talks about monetization, invariably, the first thing that pops up into the mind is Google AdSense. And while there’s nothing particularly wrong with that—it is, after all, the world’s largest ad network, but to sit on an assumption that AdSense can’t be outdone by anyone isn’t wise.

The ad tech industry is highly disruptive and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Google has competitors who give them a good run for their money. It may take a lot of hit and trial to figure out which ad network, or even combination of ad networks, generate the highest revenue for you, but when you finally do figure it out—it would’ve been well worth the effort.

Here are a few networks that you must check out in 2017.

1. Adsterra Network

Adsterra is a premium advertising network serving over 10 billion geo-targeted ad impression per month. They support publishers from all verticals and guarantee 100% monetization of their ad inventory.

Adsterra offers a vast variety of effective ad formats in all popular sizes for both web and mobile including: Pushup, interstitial, display banners, popunders, sliders, and direct links. Publishers can enjoy on-time payments made bi-weekly via major payment systems, as well as a personal account manager and real-time statistics. They also offer a 5% referral program.

Model: CPM, CPC, CPA
Minimum traffic: 50,000

2. Media.net

Media.net serves ads from the Yahoo! Bing contextual ad network, which comprises of a large pool of national and local advertisers, ensuring a 100% fill rate across all verticals and ad formats.

Some of Media.net’s publishers include Forbes, Elle, Reuters, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and more. The network supports standard IAB sizes and has access to high quality ads from all major DSPs. In addition to display units, Media.net also supports desktop interstitial, in-content native, and mobile docked ads.

Model: CPM, CPC, CPA
Minimum traffic: None

3. AdMaven

In the past year Ad Maven has positioned itself as one of the top alternatives to Google Adsense. Offering their publishers a wide range of monetization methods such as Banners, Popunder, Lightbox, Interstitial, Slider ads and more – they serve over 500 million full page ad impressions per day.

Once you register you will be immediately approved and receive access to Ad Maven’s user friendly platform. Ad Maven identifies your website type and presents to your users ads that are most likely to convert, thereby increasing your revenues for all GEO’s.

Ad Maven also supplies a unique Adblock bypass solution allowing you to present ads to 100% of your users, increasing your revenues by up to 50%.

4. Adbuff

Adbuff is the ultimate AdSense Alternative ad network due to their ability to outperform AdSense for many publishers. Because Adbuff is a Real Time Bidding (RTB) platform, AdSense is competing directly with other advertisers to monetize your site through Adbuff. As a result publishers earn some of the highest page RPMs available in the industry. Their ads are also fully compliant to run along-side AdSense, so you can even double your page RPM by running AdSense and Adbuff together.

Adbuff is an AdSense Alternative ad network that has strict approval guidelines for publishers and advertisers. They are currently accepting publishers who have English sites with a majority of the traffic coming from USA, Canada, Australia and the UK. Publisher sites require at least 2,000 unique visitors per day. Approval times can take between 5 – 7 days and every approved site will receive a $25 welcome bonus for signing up.

For premium publishers who are looking for the best AdSense Alternative ad network, Adbuff is the first ad network you should look at.

5. Infolinks

Traditional banner ads have one big problem that results in big revenue losses: many users either consciously or subconsciously ignore them because ads are usually viewed as an intrusion.

Infolinks is a great ad network that gets around this problem by offering an innovative set of free to use and profitable ad units: InFold (overlay ads), InText (text links ads), InTag (tag cloud ads), InFrame (banner ads in margins and frames) and InScreen (smart interstitial ads). That result in better SEO, less intrusion to your users, increased relevance and better space utilization.

Infolinks generate high monthly revenue for over 200,000 publishers in more than 130 countries today, and they work with the biggest advertisers in the world such as Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Ebay. Their platform is very simple to integrate into your site and is open to any publisher, with no setup fees and no minimum requirements for page views or visitors.

Model: CPM, CPC, CPA, CPV, CPI, Auction
Minimum traffic: None

6. Vibrant Media

Vibrant Media is another ad network that offers specialty ad formats such as in-text, in-image, lightbox, storyboard, mosaic, and brand canvas in addition to the standard IAB display ad units.

Depending on your needs, you can choose to use Vibrant Media as your primary display ad network or you can employ their native ad solutions to increase revenue without changing your existing ad configuration

Ads are responsive so they can be delivered across multiple platforms seamlessly.

Model: CPM, CPC
Minimum traffic: None

7. Revcontent

Revcontent is one of the biggest content recommendation platforms on the internet, currently serving 100 billion content recommendations a month across the globe with a growth rate of 900% last year.

Revcontent is notoriously difficult to join as it rejects almost 98% of websites that apply – focusing more on the quality of its publisher network rather than the quantity. This strategy has helped Revcontent generate higher revenues, better engagement rates, and loyal audiences for their partners.

As part of product improvement efforts, they’ve just launched Revcontent v2, which features an intuitive user interface that enables transparent reporting and easier customization of widgets.

Model: CPC
Minimum traffic: N/A

8. AdBlade

AdBlade is a premium, brand-safe ad network with a focus on quality over quantity. Fox News, Hearst Corporation, Yahoo!, and ABC are among the 1,000 or so publishers that comprise the network. AdBlade supports standard IAB units, as well as proprietary NewsBullets® units that claim to deliver up to 3x better performance.

Model: CPM, CPC
Minimum traffic: 500,000 monthly impressions

9. Undertone

Undertone specializes in providing several high-impact ad formats in addition to standard IAB—including IAB rising stars, several video formats, and its own range of flagship display formats designed for higher user engagement.

This coupled with the fact that many of Undertone’s proprietary ad units use your ad inventory in non-traditional ways, ensuring there’s no cannibalization of existing ad products, means that Undertone can offer CPMs 100%-1500% higher than traditional display ads.

Model: CPM, CPC, CPA, CPV
Minimum traffic: 500,000

10. BidVertiser

Though your mileage may vary, Bidvertiser is an ad network with an interesting monetization model: In addition to earning money for each ad that is clicked, the publisher also earns additional revenue when the click leads to a conversion (i.e. sale) for the advertiser.

BidVertiser supports multiple ad formats including banners, skyscrapers, rectangles, and mobile. You can use the provided point-and-click tool to customize the layout of these units to match your website’s look.

A bidding system ensures that publishers always get the highest possible revenue from each unit. Using the reporting interface, you can easily monitor your ads performance, clicks, click-through rate, and the total amount you’ve earned.