Random short reviews on various ad networks

Add your own if you like - Adsense included

[Evan Salamanca]

So here are short reviews of Ad Networks that I work with or have worked with.

Google Adsense: Still one of the better ones but not my top earner anymore. Best if you use just one link unit and two ad units from my experience. Great in premium positions, terrible in non-premium positions.

Nativo: Good-looking native ads. If placed in high-CTR positions, it can beat Adsense. Currently my top earner.

Sekindo: Non intrusive video ads. Very high RPM for desktop and tablet and can be placed in low ad positions.

Media.net: low rpm at first but leave an ad in a premium spot for 2-3 weeks and the RPM skyrockets if your account rep stays engaged and knows what they are doing. Good for non-premium ad placements.

Kixer: Requires a good deal of experimentation but can produce gigantic RPM if your site has heavy mobile traffic. Best non-intrusive interstitial I've seen.

Connatix: just started with them. Okay to mediocre RPM. Ads are like a cross between Nativo and Sekindo. RPMs are supposed to climb substantially after awhile like media.net so I'll wait and see.

Content.ad: good RPM for a "clickbait" sponsored content provider but ads can be a bit #*$!y unless set to "PG" instead of PG13 or R.

Adblade: used to be as good as Content.ad but gone severely downhill as far as RPM.

Newsmax Feed Network: killer CPC (double content.ad) but only tried the links-only unit with no images. About to start experimenting with the images unit. Will see how CTR is.

Taboola: garbage RPMs. Can't see why it's so popular. Rumor has it that more premium publishers get better RPM than small and medium timers.

[Evan Salamanca]

Correction - media.net should say ALSO good for non-premium ad placements, as it is good for premium ones as well

[netmeg]

SOVRN (formerly Lijit) - pays okay, but video ads are WAY slow to load; had to drop em. Also got an occasional warning from my anti-virus about an ad or two, which was troubling.

Vertoz - might be a spinoff from former Media.net employees, not sure but in my opinion they ripped me off for a couple thousand bucks when their reporting failed for weeks and weeks and they ended up not paying me for a few days at peak traffic, even when I could provide my own logs and reports. Wouldn't recommend.

Facebook Audience Network - I'm pretty happy with them, and I think it will only get better

Disqus Reveal (native ads served with their commenting platform) - surprisingly good earnings, but they pay net 90 days and don't aggregate earnings (i.e. each site has to earn minimum $100 for it to be paid out, instead of entire account)

Outbrain - never used them as a publisher, but they piss me off as a user.

[CommandDork]

Adsense - Still my best earner by far; responsive ads, good ad reach, can place below-the-fold and on-time payments though, like others have seen, it's taken a tumble since December 15th, 2015 - so always on the lookout for 1st tier alternatives.

Exponential Media / TribalFusion: Does really well as a second to Adsense (mostly direct site-wide header traffic). Above-the-Fold restriction and no responsive ads available. Always pay on time though and there are good-to-great days/months throughout the year.

IndexExchange/CasaleMedia - Use to be a good second-third tier earner. Fell off dramatically in early 2015, was also Canadian-based so still did the paper checks in the mail thing with them. Replaced with Media.net which at least does direct deposit (for a $15 fee) but earnings are night and day with them.

Media.net - Working excellently (great earnings) in place of Casale though I dont see a responsive ads capability with them.

Amazon Product Links - Mediocre returns for my audience and site topic.

RythymOne / BurstMedia - Never really had success with them; small advertiser pool that only got worse. Used them for years before dropping them. Revisited in March 2016 and it proved worse than before.

[Evan Salamanca]

Since the censor screwed up my content.ad review, it was supposed to say that the ads can look too adult when the content rating is set to PG13 or R. Enough that I would worry about Google canning my Adsense account for it.

[edited by: engine at 3:49 pm (utc) on Aug 1, 2016]
[edit reason] edited to alternative word "adult" [/edit]

[anefarious1]

Thanks for the valuable information Evan. Can you explain what you mean about Kixer requiring a good deal of experimentation? I just signed up because I have a lot of mobile traffic.

[Evan Salamanca]

I should have said "patience" probably. Because oftentimes with the stationary ad units it can be very boom-or-bust by day. You will still see daily clicks and CTR though so maximize CTR and the income will follow

[Blackadder99]

Thanks for sharing! Will have to give some of these a try myself, not found a good alternative to AdSense for my sites yet.

[Evan Salamanca]

A note on Nativo for potential users: their fill rates are not high but their RPMs are VERY high. The more active views and clicks their ad units get, the more attractive your site will be to their clients, thus the higher your fill rate will be. Plus the fill rate skyrockets during the second and third week of the month, then tends to drop in the first and fourth weeks of the month.

Update on Newsmax: Adsense level CPCs so far - like 20-30 cents. Terrible CTR but that is something that better ad positioning can potentially fix. Updates will be given as things develop.

[Evan Salamanca]

MORE UPDATES:

Newsmax: CPCs were a false positive as their revenue reports are before taking out their share, not after. Beyond that they #*$! the bed even further, and they rolled out new, "responsive" ad units that completely suck. Customer service also quit responding. No longer recommended.

Connatix: couldn't ever get the RPMs to go too high but you can put it low on the page and get ok results like Sekindo.

Monumetric: just started with them so we'll see but I hear very good things about their income compared to Adsense. Formerly known as The Blogger Network.

Contribusource: Another content.ad clone that has ok CPC and mediocre RPM.

[anefarious1]

Nativo: Awful experience. Implementation is a pain in the butt and, in the end, results were absolutely pathetic.

Has anyone tried MobFox?

[Evan Salamanca]

Haven't tried them yet but I'll attempt to sign up if one of my other experiments fails. I'm surprised to hear Nativo performed poorly for you. Message me if you want some tips on how to get big results from them

[breeks]

Good post thx for the info Evan and Net :)

[IanCP]

I found it more profitable to pay greater attention to my long standing affiliate programmes. Solid ones I have been with even before AdSense was invented.

[devangel]

Here's who I am currently using:

Adsense - still my strongest network. recently started using link units and vignette ads with excellent results

Rubicon - programmatic/cpm network - good performance for desktop, not so great for mobile

Casale/IndexExchange - programmatic/cpm network - average performance

Sovrn - programmatic/cpm network - average performance

Media.net - Contextual/Link Units - high RPMs but terrible reporting and spotty support

Facebook/FAN - hard to get working...still trying to figure it out.

Disqus/Taboola - paid content - low value but consistent

[Broadway]

I've become so disillusioned with Media.net.

For a year or longer this had been a decent network for me.
I never gave them all that much volume, or much in the way of good page placement, yet rpm was reasonable enough.

Then I noticed they were dumping auto-start video (with audio) ads on my site.
Ads that were so resource hungry that they actually froze up my browser (reapeatedly, consistently, I couldn't even accomplish doing any work on my pages).

I asked to opt out of those. Their response: We don't offer any way to do that. It's either all image/video ads or none. So I opted out. RPM plummeted.

I asked for help in knowing exactly what code to use for https (2 separate emails to my rep and one to generic support). Their response: Absolutely no response at all.

After I switched to https I though possibly the problematic auto-start ads might be filtered out because they didn't meet SSL standards. Nope. As the web moves forward, they're dragging all the crap from web 2000 forward. And still not offering a way to opt out of that garbage.

As a consolation, they did suggest I start using interstitial ads. Gee thanks, more crap for my site, no thanks.

I'm getting ready to move on to serving pages via AMP. I haven't gotten to the point where I've figured out how to configure ads yet, but I do see Adsense mentioned in AMP documentation but not Media.net.

My impression is these people are the knuckle-draggers of the ad network universe. They're milking every last dime out of tired, outdated practices. And doing nothing toward moving forward with the web and or contributing to its progress. This company is what installing ad blockers is all about.

Everything they do (implementation, support, the ads they allow) is just making it so I have more and more reason to give more ad space to Adsense.