Are Ad Servers Dedicated Only for Publisher or Advertiser Still Necessary?

Publisher ad server. Advertiser ad server. Does it really matter anymore?

As ad servers on both sides of the digital media aisle look to buy and sell, ad serving capabilities would, in theory, appear to be on the verge of merging - especially as demand-side platforms, sell-side platforms, and exchanges take over the delivery of real-time biddable ad impressions.

AdExchanger reached out to executives in the data-driven ad ecosystem and asked the following:

"Are Ad Servers Dedicated Only for Publisher or Advertiser Still Necessary?"

James Avery, CEO, Adzerk

"No. As a product guy it baffles me that they have continued as separate products for so long. The difference between a publisher side ad server and an advertiser side ad server is small enough that many small and medium size advertisers currently use publisher ad servers (especially the free ones). Adding to the pressure for these products to combine is that the modern ad network tends to be a half publisher and half advertiser - on any given day they might be optimizing the traffic that comes from their publishers or placing ad buys through the exchanges or through other publisher side ad servers. As publisher side ad servers continue to add the features that these networks and small advertisers are looking for the feature gap will close and advertiser side ad servers will start to see more and more competition from the publisher side ad servers."

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Sebastiaan Schepers, COO, BannerConnect

Today, yes. In the future… probably not. The rise of RTB changed the landscape; people now talk about “bidders” instead of ad servers. Many seem to forget about challenges like: scale, learning and prediction. The RTB landscape is also relatively young and it will take a while for it to mature and to have all the necessary tools to suit both buyers and sellers.

There are a couple of challenges, though:

• Premium: integrating features like mobile, video and rich media
• Data: managing data and making it ‘exchangeable’ should be as easy as managing campaigns
• Hands-on tech: many agencies and web publishers just don’t have the resources to spend on today’s hands-on tech marketplace. Outsourcing is still a big reason why for example SSP’s are successful.
• Attribution: many have tried, but few are successful when it comes to multi-channel attribution. We need to be able to account for all digital channels, not just display and search.

It's very likely that ultimately we'll serve ads dynamically across multiple screens (think of TV, outdoor, tablets) from just one platform. The term ad server will no longer do, so let’s give the investment firms a new acronym to jump onto."

Dean McRobie, CTO, annalect (Omnicom)

"Despite the current emergence of 'full stack' players (a la Google and Adobe) I believe publisher side ad servers are still incredibly relevant. I firmly believe that the best ad tech architecture, has to be open source, pluggable, and ideally best of breed. If the software world has taught us anything it's that open ecosystems innovate faster than big stacks."

Ben Kneen, Director of Ad Products, WebMD

"Maybe the same companies provide ad serving to both sides, but in terms of a dedicated product offering and client service organization, my answer is most definitely, yes. In my opinion, publishers and advertisers have fundamentally different requirements when it comes to ad serving, and will for the foreseeable future. Publishers have complex needs, for example, when it comes to targeting ads, reporting, and forecasting by their own inventory segments, usually at a much more granular level than they actually sell. Publishers are also much more focused on latency, since so many assets today are ad served on their pages, beyond just your standard display units. The advertiser challenge on the other hand seems more focused on creative and campaign performance measurements.

To me, these seem like very different needs, even if both sides rely on some of the same technical processes to make an ad show up on a page. I can see a time in a few years where many services converge to support a cross-channel RTB environment, allowing advertisers take a more active role in directly controlling their own targeting, or want to use one tag for mobile and desktop placements, for example, but that won’t cover all the bases for the digital ad business, there will always be different needs."

Eric Simon, VP Business Operations, [x+1]

"Ad servers are still critical components of the ad-tech stack on both the buy and sell side. Media buyers still need an ad server to buy media in the digital space. And Ad Serving companies are in a great position to add value to their current offerings. Yes, core ad serving is commoditized, but this represents an opportunity for ad serving companies to evolve and add more features and functionality. MediaMind seemingly came out of left field over the past year for agency buys. Why? They added analytics and dynamic creative optimization functionality as part of their suite of tools. For publishers, it’s less clear. So far, the ad serving companies on the sell side are not evolving to address real publisher needs. Long tail pubs could join an exchange, SSP, or network, but if they have a direct sales force, they also need an ad server as no exchange, SSP, or Network is going to help manage multiple sources of demand. For example, I met with a publisher recently who is using DFP to serve, DemDex to manage their Data, Right Media and ADX for exchange demand, Metamarkets for analytics, and two engineers try to make sense of it all."

Brian Tomasette, VP Media Products, DoublePositive Marketing Group

"Adserving has become a tricky messy segment of the industry where most players in the game have packed up and quit, been acquired or have become satisfied with good enough. I'm not too familiar with the publisher side but many companies focusing on the advertiser side are marketing themselves as tag management, attribution modeling, landing page optimization tools, or even DSP's. The truth is each of them are fundamentally an adserver or ad tracking device. The differences are that they either dip further into the publisher side of the equation or dip further into the conversion funnel side of the equation.

De-duplication and ad control are becoming less important as people wake up to the fact of imperfection in cookie distribution, big data aggregation, and the shear volume of impressions it takes to get a conversion and are starting to focus on effectiveness which lends to linking the adserving deeper into the conversion funnel and the advertisers customer analytics. So my thoughts are that the common adserver is a waste of money, but the evolution of the adserver which links ad serving and interaction with site analytics and consumer analytics, then yes, they are more relevant than ever."

Larry Allen, SVP Business Development, 24/7 Real Media

"Hell yes! Ad Server requirements differ significantly for buyers and sellers who evaluate inventory and manage it from different vantage points.

Buyers have very focused campaign goals that they track across each media partner. They look to the buy-side ad server to make the deployment of each creative ad unit, and the reporting, more efficient. Most of the buy-side servers are integrated with agency media planning tools to help automate the trafficking process. Attribution and downstream performance tracking are also an integral part of the ad server that helps buyers with creative and media optimizations.

The publisher (sell-side) ad server is more complicated. The seller needs many more advanced controls over inventory, placement, targeting criteria, pacing etc. and must optimize the delivery of creative units across numerous connected devices. The seller needs detailed information, about which advertisements are delivered where, and must show detailed inventory forecasts based on target audiences, performance and placement. Additionally, with the move to greater automation (RTB) publishers need to have the ability to segment inventory based on price, content and audience. They need to allocate it either to all buyers or specific private buyers and yield optimize inventory based on price, relationship and target."

By John Ebbert

Effective and Cheap Advertising

Effective and Cheap Advertising is possible and great for start-ups to take their business to the next level. As most people believe in traditional advertising companies such as Facebook and Google, AdServers that seek to connect Advertisers with Publishers directly are making the advertising business more effective and satisfying for all parties.

Our AdServer connects advertisers and Publishers directly and worldwide. This makes advertising cheap and targets. Advertisers pay 125% less the cost they pay on the same keywords on Google. on the other hand, Publishers get 85% commission from the Advertising income which makes them more revenue compared to Adsense.

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Advertisers registration  HERE

A guide to Cheap Advertising for StartUp

The following is a guest post by Rob Walling.  Rob Walling has been an entrepreneur for most of his life and is author of the book Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup.  He also authors the top 20 startup blog Software By Rob, that's read by tens of thousands of startup entrepreneurs every month and he owns the leading ASP.NET invoicing software on the market in addition to a handful of profitable web properties.

Imagine that you've just completed version 1 of your product and you're preparing for launch. You’ve greased the wheels with a few bloggers, targeted some keywords with SEO, created a bit of link bait, and scheduled the press release to launch in the morning. At this point, your co-founder turns to you and says: “What are we going to do with the $300 we have stashed away for advertising?” Consider this your lucky day. The goal of this article is to provide you with the core of what you need to know about cheap startup advertising as quickly as possible so you can start spending that ad budget wisely. Let's get started.

Two Key Advertising Strategies

The half-life of advertising traffic is zero. This means that the moment you stop shelling out cash, the traffic stops. The problem is that with typical conversion rates of 1-2% you're paying for 98 or 99 out of every 100 people to walk away and never come back to your site. To combat this inherent wastefulness of advertising, I have two key strategies I recommend no matter which method of advertising you use.

Strategy #1: Try to Get Permission

Seriously consider offering something in exchange for a visitor's email address. It can be a free trial, a free report, or maybe even a free book. But gaining the means and permission to contact that customer again will increase your conversion rate over time in most cases. There is great power in an email list.

Strategy #2: Use Advertising to Test

Use advertising as a testing tool rather than a long-term stream of customers. Very few startups can withstand the cash outlay required to turn advertising into a marketing activity with positive ROI. Even if you figure it out, advertising is a volatile marketing medium. Prices increase rapidly in online advertising as new competition crops up or prospects grow bored of your ad and your click through rate drops. When this happens, all of the time you invested in optimizing your ad campaign is *poof*...gone. So instead of relying on ad traffic as an ongoing stream, use it for what it's best at: the ability to generate a slew of visitors very quickly, and to be turned off just as quickly. This kind of traffic source makes it great for split testing and user behavior testing using tools like Clicktale and Crazyegg. It also gives you insight into how certain traffic converts for you. With properly tracked conversions and an ad on Facebook, you can determine that men from 35-45 convert at a rate 15% lower than women of the same age. This is valuable information, especially early in your marketing effort when you're still trying to figure out the ideal market for your application. Often this is not the largest market; it's the one to whom you can market for the lowest cost. As another example, with AdWords you can learn in a hurry which keywords convert for you, and which don't. This is insanely valuable as you invest the time and money on the long-haul of search engine optimization. Knowing the keywords that really convert for your business, as opposed to the ones that you think will convert, can save you piles of cash and many months of SEO effort.

The "First Five" Advertising Options

With the above strategies in mind, let's look at the first five advertising options you should consider.

Option #1: Niche Advertising

As a startup, there are hundreds of general advertising options available and thousands of more niche opportunities. Depending on the niche you're catering to you should be able to find a forum, blog, magazine or website in which to spend some ad dollars. The tighter the niche the better. Remember that niche sites tend to be cheaper to advertise on and drive more targeted traffic, which makes a huge difference in your conversion rate. (And if you're not targeting a niche because you want your audience to be the "whole world," you're going to need a lot more than $300 in your ad budget). In general, if you are marketing to a niche you will know the sites to target. If you don't it's time to pound the pavement and find out what they are. By "pound the pavement" I mean search on Google and contact people in the niche to find out where they hang out online. Two reputable niche ad networks I've worked with in the past are:

• InfluAds - With an increasing number of advertising "communities" covering design & UX, startups and entrepreneurs, work & productivity and web development, InfluAds can work with budgets as small as the $300-400 range. They sell a minimum set of granted impressions, and if more traffic is available during a month then existing advertisers receive it for free. Image ads only.
• - Though they've traditionally focused on the design & UX space, BuySellAds is in the process of branching into many other niches. This image-only ad network was the primary source of traffic for a design-oriented website I owned, and made the difference between a few hundred dollars a month in sales, and a few thousand. Advertising is purchased by impression or on a monthly basis from individual advertisers, meaning each offers different pricing. But the minimum buy is very cheap - in the $10-$20/month range.

Option #2: Google AdWords

• Ad Format: Text or image
• Ad Components (for text ads): 25-character deadline, 2 lines of body copy @ 35 characters each, 35-character display URL
• Approval Process: Automated, with manual review if you trip a filter

A few years ago, Google AdWords was great for startups. Many niches were untouched, and 5 and 10 cent clicks were commonplace. But these days, the vast majority of niches worth pursuing have ever-escalating click prices as more advertising dollars move online, including dollars from large corporations that don't blink an eye about spending $5 to produce a single visitor to their website. With a 1% conversion rate you need a $500 lifetime customer value to break even. This is more than a stretch for most startups who are scraping by on 0.5% conversion rates and sub-$100 lifetime customer values (at least to start with). But with Google carpet-bombing $75 AdWords coupons to every business in the civilized world, the number of advertisers, and thus the competition, is increasing. For the most part, the days of cheap clicks are over. The $1-2 per click I used to pay to advertise my invoicing software has become a negative ROI for me at $4-5 per click. But all is not lost. There is still a place in the backwoods of AdWords where the wild-west mentality (and cheap clicks) reign. That place is the content network. People traditionally think of Google AdWords as the ads that appear to the right of the search results. But the lesser known cousin of search ads are the ads that appear in every AdSense block you see around the web. These are ads placed through the Google AdWords content network. The content network is less targeted, higher volume, and typically much cheaper to advertise on, than the search results. While we don't have time here to delve into specifics of how to place ads on the content network, the most consistent approach I've seen that works over the long-term is to use their cost-per-action tool called the Conversion Optimizer. There's a great write-up of how it works from Patrick McKenzie of Bingo Card Creator fame, here. There are also some helpful tips on advertising on the content network here. And if you're willing to drop a few bucks, by far the best AdWords book available is the Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, which includes a section on using the content network.

Option #3: Facebook

• Ad Format: Text with required image
• Ad Components: 110x80 image, 25 character headline, 135 characters of body copy
• Approval Process: Manual (sometimes slow)

Facebook is still viable for startups with its ability to deliver 10-15 cent clicks under the right circumstances. But it's a bit like the Wild West: if you approach Facebook advertising incorrectly you will pay a premium, around 75-90 cents per click. The value of Facebook is its ability to show your ads to exactly who you want to see it based on information in a user's profile. You can easily segment on gender, age, location, relationship status and a number of other fixed parameters, along with thousands of interests and occupations you can target using keywords. The key to low cost Facebook clicks is having a high click through rate (CTR). The key to a high CTR is a combination of a powerful image, an engaging headline, and laser-focused targeting. Due to space constraints we're not going to cover the basics of choosing a powerful image or writing an engaging headline. Not when there are perfectly good articles already written on the subject for those who would like to know more: choosing an image / writing a headline. But once your ad is written, there is a trick to achieving those 10 cent clicks. Based on a tip from my friend JD, I now use the following method with Facebook ads:

1. Target your demographic information so tightly that you can write a headline that addresses them specifically. Example: if you are selling shoes online to the U.S. market, create 10 different versions of the ad, one for each of the major metro areas in the U.S. Also include the qualifying "interests" keyword: shoes. Now make each ad headline address its group specifically, using a formula like "Need Shoes in [city name]?"
2. Start the ads with a modest budget of, say, $5-10 per ad per day.
3. After 12-24 hours review the ads. Some will have high CTRs and costs per click around 10-15 cents. Others will have low CTRs and clicks in the 80-90 cent range.
4. Pause the higher cost ads and increase the budget for the low cost ads to whatever you can afford; $100 per day or more per ad.
5. For a few days you will receive extremely low-cost, targeted traffic. But since you've chosen a small group of people, they will start to tune out the ad rather quickly. At this point your CTR will drop and your cost will climb. Pause the ad, and start over with new cities, new images or new headlines.

This approach requires ongoing maintenance but if you can generate targeted, 10-cent clicks it's worth the effort.

Option #4: StumbleUpon

• Ad Format: not applicable
• Ad Components: just your URL
• Approval Process: Manual

I recently advertised my developer's guide to launching a startup on StumbleUpon. The plus side of StumbleUpon is that all clicks are 5 cents. The downside is the bounce rate is high since people are basically channel surfing. I achieved a 96.88% bounce rate in my experiment, with an average stay of 2 seconds. I wonder if it was something I said? In my test, only 25 visitors stayed longer than 5 seconds. I paid $50 for 1000 clicks, but since only 25 of them stayed long enough to read anything, I effectively paid $2 per click. Your mileage may vary, but through this and other experiments I've gathered the following tips for advertising on StumbleUpon:

• Your #1 goal is to get stumblers to stay longer than 5 seconds. Your #2 goal is to get them to up-vote your page. Paying $50 for 1000 clicks is one thing. Having it go viral and receiving 10,000 clicks for the same price is another.
• Don't send StumbleUpon traffic to a landing page that asks for an email address. StumbleUpon users are notoriously fickle about providing their email.
• People stumble to be entertained, so if your page doesn't have the potential to go viral or turn into link bait, you will not likely fare well.
• Blog-like content and videos seem to work best. Anything that resembles a traditional landing page will bomb.

Option #5: Reddit

• Ad Format: Text with optional image
• Ad Components: 70x70 image, title, URL
• Approval Process: Manual (two-day lead time)

Reddit uses an interesting approach for their ad pricing: advertisers bid a certain amount per day, all of the money goes into one big pot, and each advertiser receives their share of the impressions based on the percentage of funds they contributed. It's a simple system, but it means there's a bit of uncertainty about what you're going to get for your money. However, Reddit has the potential to provide some very cheap clicks - I've seen as low as 3 cents - if you play your card right. Similar to StumbleUpon, Reddit provides your ad with the potential to go viral. Gabriel Weinberg has a great write-up of the 20,700 clicks he scored for 3.14 cents each for his new search engine Duck Duck Go. His eye-catching image and tech-focused startup served him well with the audience. As he says:

First, a search engine ad is a good fit for reddit ads in general. It has broad market appeal and redditters in general like trying out new technology. Second, I think the ad is particularly well structured. The circular duck icon draws your attention, is contrasting to site colors, and sticks out because it is a circle (as most images are square). I believe the title also has appeal.

Gyutae Park also has a nice write-up of the 434 clicks he purchased for 9 cents each here. One of my recent experiments was a bit more pricey: 187 clicks at 40 cents each. My lackluster performance was a combination of landing on a competitive advertising day, and using a poor-quality header image. In retrospect, I have no idea what I was thinking using this unreadable

Reddit ads are so simple (just two visible components) that the only tip I have is self-evident: your image has to rock and so does your title. It's all about choosing an image and headline that makes people click.

Conclusion

To conclude, I want to reiterate what I said early in this article: unless you have deep pockets think of advertising not as a long-term traffic strategy, but as a testing tool to improve your website and find out more about your ideal visitor. Few bootstrapped startups can withstand the cash outlay required to turn advertising into a marketing activity with a positive ROI, but that shouldn't keep you from testing the waters to find out for yourself. I look forward to hearing about your advertising experience and recommendations in the comments.

Written by Dharmesh Shah

Monetizing your Website or Blog the right way

Webmasters and Bloggers are constantly searching for more ways to monetize their websites or Blogs or simply great content that they create daily. If you are one of those webmasters trying to monetize your website and increase your income, You may have just come to the right place. we have created a platform that connects Advertisers and Publishers globally in order to optimize the art of advertising.

Our publishers are given over 75% commission on clicks while Advertisers are getting the best value for their Ads budgets. Visit us at adstargets.com and sign up for Free

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Connecting Advertisers and Publishers

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Our goal is to connect Advertisers and Publishers for best Ad Serving results. A platform where both Advertisers and Publishers will truly benefit Equally. Learn more at adstargets.com

If you Own a website or a blog and want to monetize it, We are simply your best option and we guarantee you will have a lot to gain working with us. Sign up for FREE

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A Comprehensive Guide to Ad Server

Running ads is one of the main ways websites monetize their content. And advertisements need to be managed, replaced and tested constantly for improvement. This where an ad server comes in. It helps webmasters manage all of their ad space on one or more sites from one central console.

In this post, we’ll explore some of the most popular ad serving platforms and help you to decide which one is best for you.

But, first let’s understand how ad servers work in a little more detail.

What is an Ad Server?

An Ad server stores information about ads and delivers them to one or more web sites for display to visitors. Ad servers also track ad displays, clicks on ads, and generate statistical reports. Ad servers can also selectively display ads to site visitors based on predefined criteria.

Ad server platforms are broadly of two types, hosted versions that are run and maintained on an ad server company’s site, and self-hosted versions that you install and maintain on your own server.

We’ll be looking at DFP, OpenX, Broadsreet, adColt, Adzerk and AdButtler hosted ad servers as well as Revive and OIOPublisher self-hosted ad servers.

Hosted vs Self-Hosted Ad Servers

Let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of both hosted ad server platforms and self-hosted ad servers.

Hosted Ad Server Pros

• No Installation: Nothing to install. You just sign up for service and everything is already installed for you.
• Updates: All updates to the platform are installed for you.
• Support: In general support is of a higher quality with hosted platforms and is more readily available.
• Speed and Reliability: Most hosted platforms are monitored for problems on a continuous basis. So speed issues and problems are solved quickly. Usually, before you are even aware of them.

Hosted Ad Server Cons

• Price: The cost of a hosted ad server is higher than self-hosted.
• Customization: Most hosted ad servers can’t be customized to your exact needs. A few do offer very limited customization.
• Data Control: Your data is stored on the hosted ad server and is not 100% under your control.

Self-Hosted Ad Server Pros

• Price: The price of a self-hosted ad server script is a one-time fee. Your only ongoing cost is that of the server you are running it on.
• Customization: You can modify or hire a programmer to modify a self-hosted script to meet your exact needs.
• Data Control: Your data is on your server and under your control.

Self-Hosted Ad Server Cons

• Installation: You need to install the ad server script on your server. This takes a little technical knowledge.
• Updates: You have to watch for updates and install them yourself.
• Technical Issues: If a technical issue with the script or server arises, you have to fix it yourself.

Now that you’re aware of some of the pros and cons of hosted ad servers and self-hosted ad servers, let’s take a look at some of the popular hosted ad server platforms available.

Hosted Ad Servers

Here are the most popular hosted ad server platforms.

1. DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP)

DoubleClick for Publishers is owned by Google. Google purchased DART for Publishers back in 2008 and renamed it DoubleClick for Publishers. DFP is free to use if you’re serving less than 90 million ad impressions a month. DFP also offers premium services for publishers that have large sales teams who need more advanced features. This is one of the most popular ad serving platforms currently available.

Pros

• Free: Use is free for publishers that serve less than 90 million ad impressions per month.
• AdSense Integration: Easily integrates with AdSense. This is a big plus if you heavily rely on AdSense revenue. While using multiple networks, you can maximize your revenue by having your AdSense ads displayed in unsold ad spots.
• Intuitive User Interface: DFP is quick to learn and easy to use. The interface is extremely intuitive and great for beginners.
• Great Reporting: The reporting tools are robust and extensive. They are very flexible and easy to configure just the way you want.
• Targeting and Segmentation: With Google’s extensive data collection practices, DFPs targeting and segmentation features can’t be matched by any other ad serving platform.
• Support: Google has always been known for great support. Their DFP support team is top notch, helpful and friendly.

Cons

• Price: When something is free, you’re the product. And Google could also suddenly start charging with little notice to publishers.
• Owned by Google: Google is known for suddenly dropping products and services. We don’t think they’ll drop DFP, but the possibility exists.

DoubleClick for Publishers is one of the easiest ad server platforms to use. Whether you’re just starting out with ad serving or if you need extensive reporting, this may be the ad serving platform for you.

2. OpenX Ad Server

OpenX Ad Server started out many years ago as an open source self-hosted ad serving script. Over the years, they moved away from being open source to being a paid hosted service. The original self-hosted open source script was reborn as a free product named Revive, which we look at that one a little later in this post.

OpenX is aimed at the larger publisher that serves a high number of ads per month. They seem to be secretive about pricing, but we did manage to find a few quotes others have received from the OpenX sales team.

The fees we heard are the following: $1,000 setup fee, minimum monthly fee of $1,200 (includes 50 million ad impressions), and $17.50 per 1 million ad impressions over the 50 million per month. We’ve also heard that recent quotes are even higher. One source said they were quoted a $20,000 setup fee and much higher monthly fees. As you can see, OpenX is not an entry level ad serving platform.

Pros

• Own Domain: This is a big plus. OpenX lets you use your own domain name with their hosted ad serving platform. This way your ads are served under your brand or company name and not the OpenX domain.
• OpenX Ad Exchange: OpenX seamlessly integrates with their own ad exchange where you can sell additional and unsold ad space.
• Forecasting: Access up to 12 months of historical data to forecast traffic and seasonal trends.
• Targeting: OpenX has extensive targeting. You can target ad display by content, geography, viewing device, value pairs, audience and more.
• Platform Integration: OpenX easily integrates with third-party platforms through its open API.
• Support: 24/7 customer support.

Cons

• Little Information: Little information is available on the OpenX website about the actual ad serving platform product benefits. They do have online documentation, but that mostly assumes that you are an experienced user.
• Price: Extremely high priced compared to other ad servers.
• Difficult to Order: They want you to sit through a 1-hour demonstration of OpenX and then deal with a sales person to determine your needs.

If you are a large publisher that needs fast and extensive support, you may want to consider OpenX Ad Server. If you’re a small publisher or have a low ad budget, then OpenX isn’t for you.

One word of caution. If you read comparison articles about ad serving platforms, the majority are comparing the old open source OpenX and not the new hosted incarnation of OpenX Ad Server.

3. Broadstreet Ad Server

The Broadstreet Ad Server hosted service was designed for the needs of news sites. It can also be used on other types of websites, though. This ad serving platform is an affordable option for small publishers.

Pros

• WordPress Integration: They have a WordPress plugin for placing ad zones in the widget area of the theme you use.
• CDN-Based Delivery: Ads are served from the closest cloud-based ad server to the viewer. This helps to speed up load time.
• Friendly User Interface: The Broastreet user interface is easy to use and fast to learn.
• Price: The price is reasonable. You can start with a free plan to see if it works for you. Other Broadstreet plans range from $10 to $50 per month per 1mm served. They have a price estimator on their site.

ALSO READ:  A 5-Step Guide to Increasing Traffic on Your Website

Cons

• Shared Domain: All clients share the same domain for serving ads.
• Limited Technical Support: They only offer a ticket based support system. You can’t pick up the phone and get live technical support.
• Not Feature Rich: This could actually be a pro or a con. It does not have all the features of the larger services but is easier to use.

If you are a small publisher or just starting out with ad serving, Broadstreet should be on your list to check out. Sign up for a free account and see if it has the features you need.

4. adColt Ad Server

adColt is a white label ad serving platform. Their pricing is straight forward and the service is feature rich. This one is suitable for both small and large publishers. adColt also has click-fraud monitoring and live email reporting.

Pricing is a flat .02 CPM regardless of the number of ads you serve.

Pros

• Ad Formats: adColt will deliver a wide variety of ad types. The types of ads include banner, text, rich media, pop-unders, mobile, overlays, pre- and post-roll video ads to name a few.
• Technical Support: 24/7 technical support is available by phone, email, and chat.
• White Label: You can customize the platform with your own logo and color scheme. You can also use your own domain name.
• Click Fraud System: adColts system will analyze each click and ad impression to help determine if they are human generated or computer generated. Invalid traffic is automatically reported to you.
• Reporting Tools: Their reporting tools are real-time, extensive and give you the stats you need to optimize your ad performance.

Cons

• No Discounts: The flat rate pricing is nice for small publishers, but they do not offer any discounts for larger publishers.
• No Public API: adColt does not have a public API for third-party integration.
• No Multilingual Interface: The user interface is in English only.

This ad server platform has a lot of features at a reasonable price. If you are a small or medium size publisher or need a white label solution, we would recommend that you check them out.

5. Adzerk

Adzerk is aimed at larger publishers or those that need extensive capabilities and support. Plans start at $1,000 to $8,000 per month depending on the features and technical support level you need.

Pros

• Free Trial: Adzerk offers a free 30-day trial.
• Own Domain: You have the option to use your own domain name with their ad delivery platform.
• Multiple APIs: Three APIs are offered. A Management API, a Native Ad API and a Reporting API.
• Asynchronous Ad Codes: You have the option to use asynchronous ad codes to speed up ad loading time.
• Real-Time Bidding: Adzerk has a real-time bidding option that enables you to allow direct sold campaigns to compete against real-time bids.
• Technical Support: Full account management support is available at an additional cost.

Cons

• Price: For small to medium sized publishers, the cost to use this ad server platform could be prohibitive.
• API Driven: You’re going to need a tech guy on hand for integration and modifications.

Adzerk is highly scalable and extensible. It is better suited for large publishers that have technical staff on hand. Adzerk is a major player in the ad delivery platform arena.

6. AdButler

AdButler has been in the ad serving business for over 14 years now. It boasts an impressive list of clients that use their hosted service including Microsoft, MTV, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Allstate. They have extremely fast ad delivery and can handle custom ads of all formats.

AdButler has plans starting at $9.95 per month plus .25 per thousand ads delivered.

Pros

• Price: Their ad delivery service is affordable for small publishers.
• Text Ad Support: Text ad blocks are fully supported.
• Multiple Ad Types Supported: AdButler supports all standard banner sizes, Flash, CSS, pop-ups, text ads, videos, interstitials, as well as complicated script ads.
• 30 Day No-Risk Trial: They offer a no-questions-asked 30-day trial. If you’re not fully satisfied at the end of the trial, they will give you a prompt refund.
• Technical Support: They offer both ticket and phone support.
• White Label Interface: You can brand with your own logo and colors.
• Simple User Interface: The user interface is intuitive and easy to use.

Cons

• No Ad Exchange: AdButler does not have its own ad exchange to help you sell your unsold ad space inventory.

AdButler is a good choice for both small and large publishers. Small publishers can take advantage of the scalability this ad delivery platform offers. Make sure you add this to your list of hosted services to try.

Now that we have looked at hosted ad server platforms, let’s move on and take a look at some self-hosted options.

Self-Hosted Ad Servers

Here are the most popular self-hosted ad server platforms. Let’s take a look at them and explore the pros and cons of each.

1. Revive Adserver

Revive Adserver is a free and open source ad serving script. It has a long history and has gone through several name changes. Its last name was OpenX Source. Even with all its bugs it still remains as a popular choice.

This script was originally a fork of phpAds called phpAdsNew. Who knows how many more name changes are in store for this script.

Pros

• Price: It’s 100% free.
• Extensive Targeting: Revive offers extensive targeting features that allow you to define rules for ad delivery. They include frequency capping, URL targeting, geo-targeting and more.
• Detailed Reporting: Detailed reports are available for ad campaigns. These reports include click-through rates, conversion rates, revenue, eCPM and more.
• No Ad Serving Fees: Your only cost is your server hosting and domain name. There are no fees based on the number of ads delivered.
• AdSense Ad Support: Revive supports the display of AdSense ads.

Cons

• Support: The only support available is a community website. Many support questions are never answered.
• No VAST Support: VAST 2.0 and 3.0 is not supported directly.
• Buggy: This script has been and most likely always will be buggy.
• Server Resource Hog: This is a huge script that uses extensive server resources. It needs to be run on a VPS at a minimum.
• Slow Site Load Time: Many have reported that this script has greatly slowed down the load time of sites displaying ads. Most likely this is because Revive is not being run on a large enough server.

If you’re technically inclined and can fix your own problems, you should give Revive Adserver a spin. Just be prepared to dedicate an entire server to its use.

Revive Adserver is a powerful script but has a big learning curve. If you give it a try, be prepared to have a few sleepless nights learning how to use it.

2. OIO Publisher

OIOPublisher can be installed as a standalone program or installed on a WordPress site. It costs $47 and the license covers all of your websites.

Pros

• Price: The price is extremely reasonable for what you get.
• OIO Marketplace: You get access to their ad marketplace to sell your unsold ad space.
• Flexible Installation: Can be installed as a standalone program or a WordPress plugin.
• One Click Updates: Easy to update as new versions are released.

Cons

• Limited Support: Forum and email support only. No telephone or priority support is available.
• Client Stats: Client stats are very basic.

If you need a basic ad server with just the basics, then OIOPublisher may be the best choice for you.

Now all that is left to do is start comparing your choices and narrow it down to the best ad server platform for your needs. You may want to try several and then make your final decision.
Published by: AdPushup 

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