Advertising network

Aksana Shakal
Sep 14, 2024
8 min

What is advertising network (ad network)

Advertising networks play an important role in affiliate marketing, acting as an intermediary between advertisers who are looking for advertising space for their ads and website owners who do not mind hosting ads and thus monetizing their resources. All they need is an ad inventory in between.

Publishers (the owners of websites) and advertisers both benefit from ad networks in digital advertising. Network is a technology platform that make it easier to buy and sell advertising space through their inventory which helps to place ads on the proper ad placements.

Ad network have technologies that collect ad space from publishers and sell it to advertisers. As a result, publishers can easily monetize their sites. And advertisers get access to a large amount of ad space at once, where they can find customers.

What’s the difference between ads networks and ads servers

There’s a big difference between ads networks and ads servers. Both technologies are used for advertising, but they serve different purposes.

Advertisers and ad networks use ad servers to manage, track, and run advertising campaigns. An ad network is also an advertising technology, but it’s used exclusively to intermediary buys between publishers and advertisers.
RichAds advertising network team

The best known networks

The best known networks are Google Adsense and Facebook Ads which have a lot of restrictions. However, there are other advertising platforms on the market as well: some show ads in social networks or messengers, others in mobile applications, and others on various websites. Let’s discuss them in greater detail.

Facebook Ads Alternatives For Affiliate Marketers

Type of ad networks in online advertising

Each network has its own toolkit that allows to place advertisements on websites. Networks are divided into several types depending on how they organize the purchase of advertising or what type of ads they sell.

Ad campaigns can be set up on the:

Self-service advertising platform where the advertiser chooses all the settings themselves. The majority of networks are of this type.
An automatic campaign setup enables you to set the country and the desired CPA, and the network will set the other settings automatically. This type is rare.

Networks can also be categorized based on which verticals are best for launching ads there (for example, Gambling, Dating or travelling).

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.

How ad network works

Networks make it easy for advertisers and publishers to interact and conduct meaningful business. Is there a way to explain exactly how they work? Yes, of course.

The network starts by aggregating a growing list of publishers that offer ad spaces.
Advertisers who are looking for ad spaces, create a campaign with their requirements. Ad networks have campaign management panels that they can use to create campaigns directly.
The advertiser’s campaign contains details about the country, target audience, budget, frequency caps. His ads are displayed on publishers’ websites if his bid wins the real-time bidding (RTB) auction.

Advertising is usually sold according to the two most common models: CPC (Cost per click) is a payment for clicks on the ad or CPM (Coat per Mille) is a payment for 1000 ad impressions.

For easy optimization of ad campaigns, each network offer their own hierarchy of sources to bye traffic from.

The smallest element in this hierarchy of sources is a website.
Sites from the same publisher tend to have similar topics and audiences, so sites are grouped by publishers.
There can be many publishers in an advertising grid, so they are combined into subscriber lists.

*Structure of traffic sources at RichAds advertising network*

Pros and cons of ad networks

Advertising networks have their own set of pros and cons, however, the pros will outweigh the cons.

The advantages of using networks include:

There is a lot of traffic gathered in one place.
Affiliate marketers must pay attention to this point. Now, you do not have to develop a website or blog to attract new customers. Furthermore, the advertising network’s traffic cannot be compared to any large site. Several ones offer 5-10 billion ad impressions per day;

A variety of advertising formats are available.
There are a variety of formats available on advertising networks, including banners, native advertising, pop-ups, and push ads. Are you looking for mobile advertising? You’ll find plenty of it. Is computer traffic something you’re interested in? Nothing to worry about. In this way, marketers can experiment and find the most effective way to reach their audience;

Platforms for advertising are user-friendly.
Networks create intuitive platforms where advertisers can easily launch campaigns. Furthermore, many platforms offer a dedicated account manager and 24/7 support;

Ready-made advertising materials.
The fact that some networks assist advertisers with creatives is a notable advantage. This makes ad platforms an ideal point to start affiliate marketing;

There are fewer restrictions than with Google and Facebook Ads.
In some cases, this point is the deciding factor in choosing advertising networks. Alternative networks often don’t have the restrictions that the super-famous ad providers have, making it much easier to launch ad campaigns.

Networks have the following cons:

There is too much traffic.
An advantage can become a disadvantage in this situation. If there is a lot of traffic, you will have to spend enough time testing and optimizing. You can ask the manager for a list of the best sources for your offer, some networks offer this service;
Bot traffic is present.
Even though networks clean their traffic, bots can still be found. When choosing a network, pay attention to how they protect their traffic from bots.

Digital ad units: banner, native, popunder or push ads

Advertising professionals should choose the format in which their ads are displayed first. Advertising on websites can take a variety of forms. We’ll talk about the most popular ones.

1. Banner advertising ad units

Banner advertising is the most familiar to everyone format that an ad network can help buy. The banner is located in a specific place on the site, and owners of the site change the design to place advertising space if it wasn’t planned at the time of its creation.

Advertising with banners is popular, but it has some disadvantages as well. The first and most significant problem is banner blindness, which has developed in most users and allows them to ignore the places where banners are most commonly displayed. In addition, online ad networks that offer display ads have many restrictions.

2. Popunder ad units

Popunders or pop ads are the second advertising format to emerge after banners. It is a separate tab in the browser, which immediately shows the advertising landing page. In addition, there are no banners, so it is easier to launch. The format is noticeable and has been used for years.

It is important for advertisers to make the fastest landing pages possible, so that they have time to load before users close them. Additionally, this format is easy for publishers to use: it doesn’t require modifications to the design and is easy to integrate (a couple of lines of code are all you need).

3. Push ads units

Push ads are perhaps the most unusual type of ad. This notifications look very much like those from messenger. However, push ads are delivered to users through their browsers. A small pop-up form on the site is the only method by which they can consent to receiving such ads. They will continue to receive push ads even after leaving the site.

Ad campaigns in this format are visible and have minimal restrictions. Furthermore, they are convenient for publishers since there is no need to change the design and the whole process can be regulated by a few lines of code. Here is how you can make money by offering push subscriptions.

4. Native ads units

A native advertisement is a form of advertising that appears as an article. The widget is integrated as naturally as possible into the interface of the page on which it appears. In most cases, such advertising is hidden inside a useful publication that unobtrusively informs readers about the product or service. There are a few negatives, but at the same time they are a plus – it isn’t aggressive, doesn’t disrupt users, but it’s not effective for every offer.

Что такое нативная реклама — *Native ads examples*

Choosing an ad network: what to pay attention to

There is a wide variety of advertising networks that confuses many advertisers. Choosing the right one will be easier if you know what to look for.

Choose the right ad format or several formats.
Estimate the traffic volume. In general, the larger they are, the better. for example, RichAds advertising network offers 5+ bln impressions a day.
Pay attention to what methods of traffic verification the network uses.
Read the restrictions on advertising. Advertisements for dating, casinos, or 18+ are not available everywhere.
Evaluate the network’s targeting options. The more options are available, the easier it will be to find your audience.
See what tools for optimization the advertising network offers.

To make it easier for you to choose, we have listed 21 ad networks suitable for affiliate marketing. In addition, you can read about 20 pop-under ad networks and 10 best push ads networks.

Top 21 ad networks for affiliates

The best ad networks examples

1. RichAds

The RichAds advertising network is one of the biggest ad networks that was founded back in 2018 as a push ad network RichPush. The network now has 5+ billion impressions a day and works on the CPC and CPM models with the minimal price per click starting at $0,005.

RichAds offers the following ad formats:

push notification (including in-page and calendar);
pop traffic (including popunder);
native ads;
domain traffic.

RichAds has traffic all around the world. In the RichAds blog you can always find the best converting GEOs for each type of traffic and vertical. The top verticals are Gambling, Betting, Finance, Dating and Utilities.

The minimum deposit in RichAds is $150 that you can use to start your first ad campaign immediately. If you deposit more than $500, you will also get a personal manager who will help with setting the campaign and optimizing it. The deposit can be made via a bank transfer, Wire transfer, Capitalist or other payment methods.

Ad network’s features for easy optimization

The advertising network developed its own features to make campaign optimization much easier:

Performance Mode is especially useful for newbies and allows to optimize the campaign easily with the help of black- and white lists;
Automated rules will automatically create white- and black lists to save time;
Micro bidding will correct the rates within one campaign;
Target CPA will set a desired price for a conversion and a daily budget to optimize the campaign automatically.

The quality of the traffic is constantly being assessed by both internal tools and an external one – Adscore. Besides, the traffic is divided into 4 categories based on performance: Premium, Standart, Remnant and New. This allows affiliates to test offers with the best traffic in the network.

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Aksana Shakal

Aksana Shakal has been in affiliate marketing for more than 5 years and is currently the Head of Content at RichAds, an ad-tech holding company. Her sphere of interest lies in affiliate marketing and SEO copywriting. In her articles, Aksana provided in-depth expertise in gaining traffic with different ad formats (push and in-page push ads, popunders and native ads) and verticals (Gambling, Dating, Nutra, Finance and much more). Aksana also loves reading novels and watching interviews on YouTube.