Top Ad Networks of 2016 for Every Website Type
Coming in after a successful first quarter of the year, our team at MonetizeMore has decided to roll out a favorite topic: the list of the top ad networks! To make it even more helpful to publishers, we’re categorizing them based on their most relevant vertical — or website niche.
So without further ado, here are the Top Ad Networks of 2016 for every Website Type:
Top Ad Networks for Social Viral Sites
1) Undertone
They have demand not just for desktop, but also tablet and mobile. Fill rates may start low on your first week but you just have to hang on and you will be surprised of how well it can help you put that much needed pressure in your existing DFP stack.
Various ad formats are available depending on what you need — standard and non-standard ones alike. You have to get their Run On Site Billboard tags which performs great! And of course their PageGrabbers! These work like interstitials that can run on all devices at 100% fill in the US geo. It is perfect for viral articles!
One very important metric they have is CTR — so best to get them running on high viewable placements and high CTR zones.
2) PubGalaxy
PubGalaxy performs really well when trafficked correctly with the right frequency capping and geo targeting. They can monetize your EU traffic without any issue. The magic is in setting the right floor pricing to get the sweet spot of optimized fill and performance at the same time. Plus, their customer support is just awesome!
3) Teads.tv
Teads is a perfect incremental revenue stream on top of your standard IABs. We see really great success running their In-Read format in social viral sites. They can monetize desktop, tablet and mobile impressions. Their tags are responsive so no need to have a specific set up per device. Fill is strong in desktop and tablet. Mobile is in the acceptable range.
Top Ad Networks for Tech Sites
4) Criteo
This is a situation where it’s actually worth running criteo at the top of your ad stack. We’ve noticed a great increase in your overall CPM once they are at the top. Keep an eye on the fill rate and adjust the frequency cap according to what they passback but it will work.
Related Read: Best Strategies for your Remnant Ad Inventory
5) Komoona
As mentioned in previous installment in this series It’s best to setup this ad network with a min CPM around the average ad inventory CPM and serve towards the top of the ad hierarchy. Give them about 2 weeks, it’s worth the wait, they can ramp up the CPM’s once they have time to get used to your traffic.
6) CPX Breal-time
Here’s another 100% fill ad network! Decent CPM’s for tech verticals. Not as high as Developer Media but definitely more consistent
Read: Brian Weigel of CPX Brealtime answers: Are we Ready for Header Bidding?
7) Developer Media
Fills 100% in all countries and can have some excellent campaigns to run at a high fill. You want to make sure with them when campaigns are running because the CPM’s can go down without warning if their campaigns run out.
8) BuySellAds
Link this with your DFP account and advertisers can bid on your ad spots given the flat CPM that you set on their interface. This is an easy set up and once implemented you just wait to receive notification emails and accept or reject the offers they send your way.
Top Ad Networks for News Sites
9) Evolve Media
CPMs are excellent particularly with the 728×90 ad spot however they have a low fill rate so it is imperative to send the passback tags for the Ad Rep to implement. Beware that their reporting may be lagged but it’s almost worth it due to their performance on our with our news publishers.
Related Read: 5 Ad Optimization Experiments that You Should Try
10) Sonobi
They can offer 100% fill rate and can work very closely with you in helping with setup and ongoing concerns you may have. CPMs have been ranging from $0.50 to $1.20 with our news sites and at 100% fill, this can be quite attractive.
11) Komoona
It’s best to setup this ad network with a min CPM around the average ad inventory CPM and serve tier tags and setup tier 2 tags for other countries at a lower setup in our ad server.
Related Read: Dynamic Allocation and How it Can Make You Rich
12) Specific Media
They only work on flat CPM basis. Not revenue share. They can be very picky at approving you, or even replying to you. However, we’ve seen flat CPMs at 100% fill up close to 0.60 and they are also able to offer higher than that at less than 100% fill. Definitely worth a shot but don’t get your discouraged if they are hard to get ahold of.
13) TOK Media
We have been very impressed with this ad network. The best things about TOK is towards the top of the ad hierarchy. Only target US, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany for top that they are eager to add publishers and actually perform extremely well! Note they have Net 90 payment terms and they only run a video ads on a 300×250 ad unit. But this can be user initiated sound so it’s not distracting and the CPM”s are great!
Top Ad Networks for Gaming Sites
14) Livegamer
First and foremost, their interface is bad. Very non-user friendly. Once you get passed that, their CPM offers are actually quite attractive. Not a 100% fill ad network by any means but as long as you have a decent passback behind this, you can rest assure that they will fill decently and is a great addition to your gaming site’s performance
Related Read: Easy Steps: Setting Up a 100% Fill Ad Network Behind Ad Exchange
15) Epic Game Ads
This ad network offers your standard display ads at CPC and pop-unders at CPM. If your audience won’t be driven away by pop-unders, this has one of the best CPM offers in the industry. They can be very specific with which publisher they work with (their campaigns can be very niche) but it’s well worth it if you can get accepted.
Related Read: 10 Best Ad Networks of 2015
16) Venatus
Let me be clear: If you have a gaming site with a decent amount of UK traffic, you *must* run Venatus Media. They fill at 100% in the UK and offer excellent CPM’s. They can run other countries too, but from my experience their most attractive offers are for UK traffic.
17) Intergi
Not 100% fill but offer great video and standard size ads with great CPM’s. They are very responsive and exclusively work with gaming sites.
18) Ad Exchange
Google Ad Exchange continues to be at the top of the list for virtually every vertical and gaming is no exception. It’s reach, fill rate and CPM’s are second to none.
Top Ad Networks for Mobile Monetization
19) Komoona
Komoona does well on mobile in a sense that their 300×250 tag is compatible across any device. Passbacks are self-service including the CPM floor setting. It is highly recommended that you monitor the fill rate closely so you can adjust the CPM floors accordingly without jeopardizing the setup. Starting with a volume cap in place should do the trick and open up traffic once everything is confirmed to be working well.
20) PixFuture
PixFuture tags are also compatible across devices but they are also able to provide separate tags for mobile for more granular reporting. Fill rate is usually good with CPMs being satisfactory. Although fill rate is not readily provided in the reports, you can check by comparing your ad server’s (e.g. DFP) data versus the monetized impressions.
21) Optima Network
Optima usually buys Tier 1 traffic for $1 flat CPM at 100% fill and would prefer at least 100k impressions daily for 300×250 placement only, both desktop & mobile. If you could send them at least 250k impressions daily, they would be willing to ramp the offer up to $2 flat CPM. Make sure to closely monitor for discrepancies though.
22) Glam Media
The mobile performance for US is potentially awesome but erratic for the rest of the other geos. Run the mobile tag targeting Tier 1 geos initially, and keep an eye. When running the report, make sure to go to Custom Reports section in order to view a more granular data.
Additional revenue streams:
- Trion’ mobile anchor;
- Say Media’s mobile twig/anchor;
- Sharethrough’s native ad;
- AdBlade’s native ad
Top Ad Networks for Header Bidding
23) Amazon
Amazon has one of the most widely used header implementations, and they claim their strength comes from their ability to innovate and work at scale. They are standardized in a sense that they return a uniform count of bids per page. Amazon’s Header Bid Solution implementation presents some nuances. For instance, you’ll see ‘7×9’ as shorthand for 728×90.
Amazon offers heavy retargeting demand, though they are picky and prefer to work with private exchanges.
24) CPX Brealtime
More demand means higher yield. Brealtime makes the process easier by providing APIs and aggregation. Site speed can be an issue with header bidding but Brealtime has devised a solution to address this: timeout threshold.
25) Index Exchange
Index Exchange’s header bidding takes about 200 milliseconds or less. According to their study, header bidding outperforms waterfall ad rates by 166% in open exchanges, 46% in private exchanges. Between Q1 and Q2 this year, Index Exchange data shows 68% growth in header tag use among publishers.
26) Sovrn
Sovrn just released their Header Suite to publishers as of December 3, 2015. The tool allows publishers to choose the solution that fits their needs:
- Header API — for those using DFP as the decisioning/auction machine
- Header Code — create the tags straight from Sovrn’s meridian platform for DFP
- Header Adaptor — for the open source code project, Prebid.js
- Header Complete — Meridian’s complete integration solution, including 3rd party. This won’t be available until January 2016.
Sovrn’s strategy is to put the control back into the hands of publishers. You can learn more at www.headersuite.com. To apply for Sovrn’s header bid solution, go here.
Related Read: How Does Header Bidding Fit into your Overall Ad Ops Strategy?
27) Yieldbot
Headquartered in New York, Yieldbot was among the pioneers of header bidding technology in 2011. To date, they have completed about 750 integrations. Last November 10, 2015 they announced the launch of Pubfood.js, an Open Source Software (OSS) that empowers publishers to understand, manage and easily measure bid partners.
28) OpenX
OpenX has access to a wide range of advertisers and offers one of the best header bid solutions to date. An increase of 57% in programmatic revenue was claimed by Townhall Media when they started using OpenX’s header bidding technology to sell ads on their site.
The entire process is a breeze. Publishers must meet the main requirement of at least 100 million ad impressions per month to qualify. They’re hands on with their implementation. It begins with a call, at which point you provide them access to DFP. They then set up line items and orders. You provide them a test page with the header script implemented and once they approve, you can push it live and watch your revenues rise dramatically. Image Credit
