What is the best advertisement service to put on your site?

Question

Duplicate of: What's the best online advertising Network and Deciding on a Revenue Model for a Web Application

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I have a site I'm currently building and I want to make it free, but support it with advertisements. I see a lot of sites using Google's Adsense program and others using Ebay & Amazon. But I noticed with StackOverflow, it looks like they're partnering up directly with sellers. I have Google's adsense on my blog, but I still haven't made a cent from it. Not saying I have a great number of visitors, but I'm starting to wonder if Google is not the way to go.

What experience have you guys had with advertisements and what do you recommend?

With the new closing rules in place, I can finally get my answer. ;-)

Answer 1

From what Jeff has mentioned a couple time on his blog and on the podcast, a direct relationship between you and the advertising party is the only real way to go. You'll get stuff that's much more targeted towards the type of users your site has, and you'll have completely control over exactly what ads show up on your site. You'll also know upfront, exactly how much money they are going to pay you.

Answer 2

It takes a lot of page views to get good advertisers. It's generally agreed upon that TribalFusion offers the best rates but they required 2,000 unique page views per day. Doubleclick, Fastclick and Valueclick are good too but they also require a lot of page views.

Google Adwords is generally hated by top publishers. Their rendering requirements are strict and they swipe a LOT of the ad revenue. On the plus side, they integrate quickly and easily with any site.

I work for a top 1,000 internet site - a MSM publisher. We get 5 million page views per day. We have our own ad ops department. That's the only REAL way to make lots of money online. Hire ad ops people that negogiate directly with advertisers. You can sell "ad buys" that sponsor the site for periods of time. We sell "above the fold" ad buys for $10,000 per day depending on the placement and vendor.