(This article has been updated as of January 3rd, 2019)
This article is for those looking to monetize their own website or blog by placing display ads to capitalize on their traffic. While it has been nearly 6 years since we originally wrote this post, much of the information has remained accurate. Several of the original networks we included in this article are no longer around, while others are stronger than even. The first thing to note is that banner ads are now referred to as “display ads”.
Google Adsense, for obvious reasons, remains the top dog among display ad networks. There are many benefits to using Google Adsense to monetize your website including the fact that it is somewhat easy to get approved for an account and that it runs on Google tech. But if your goal is profits, we recommend testing with some of the other top display ad networks to see which is best for your traffic and industry. Outside of using Adsense, there are still some other great alternatives to monetizing your blog or website with display ads and you may even consider using a combination of networks to find which works best for your niche and type of content/visitors. The following list is what we feel are the best of the best in 2019:
Banner Ad Network #1 – Adblade
Adblade gives publishers the chance to fill a variety of ad space sizes including standard sizes such as 300px X 250px (rectangle ad) and 728px X 90px (leaderboard). Please be aware that Adblade has a history of being more selective when approving publishers and is only recommended for larger websites with higher amounts of traffic. If you are just starting our or your blog/website isn’t producing large numbers of visitors, you may want to stick with some of the other networks until you grow to the size where you qualify for AdBlade.
AdBlade Additional Details:
- Publisher Traffic Requirement: 500,000 monthly pageviews
- Compensation Types: CPC, CPM
- Payment Methods: PayPal, Check
- Payment Minimum: $100
Banner Ad Network #2 – BuySellAds.com
This was our #1 network when we originally published this review back in 2013 and it’s still one of our favorites, now at #2. Buysellads.com has many different features and tools for publishers and bloggers. Some of these include the ability to approve or reject advertisers; great and simple-to-use dashboards; and the option of targeting specific niche audiences.
Review The BuySellAds.com Program Guidelines Here
BuySellAds.com Additional Details:
- Types of ads offered: Buysellads.com has a variety of advertising options available, including image + text ads; pure textual ads; sponsored tweets; image ads; and feed ads.
- Sharing of revenue: Buysellads.com shares profits with their clients on a 25-75 basis: they keep 25% and they give 75% back to the client. This seems like a large chunk of profits, but it is much less than other companies.
- Subdomains: No subdomains are accepted by Buysellads.com.
- Adult sites: Buysellads.com also does allow or accept adult websites.
- Acceptable sites?: So what is an acceptable site for Buysellads.com? They are pretty picky when it comes to their clients, and typically a site has to have 100,000 hits a month or Buysellads.com will not accept it into their advertising network.
- The good: This company will help you join a large network of great sites.
- The bad: Buysellads.com spends a lot of time focusing on website design and technology.
Banner Ad Network #3 – Media.net
Media.net made the #3 spot on our list because of their size and reach, plus the fact that they have low minimum requirements for joining. Media.net is a combination of their in house publisher platform and the Yahoo!/Bing Ad Network. It replaced the previously failed Yahoo! Publisher Network. They also provide a full-featured dashboard area with real-time data tracking and reporting.
Review The Media.net Program Guidelines Here
Media.net Additional Details:
- Advertising Types: Display.
- Compensation Types: CPC.
- Payment Methods: Wire Transfer, PayPal
- Payment Minimum: $100
Banner Ad Network #4 – Revenue Hits
Revenue Hits serves over two billion ad impressions each day with a of 100% fill rate across all geographic regions. The utilize contextual and geo-targeted ad serving technology – which makes it a favorable choice in the time of GDPR for monetizing websites. Other than display ads, Revenue Hits also lets publishers monetize their website using text ads, pop-ups, apps, widgets, XML feeds, and other custom formats.
Review The Revenue Hits Guidelines Here
Conversant Additional Details:
- Advertising Types: Display, Text Ads, Popups, Widgets
- Compensation Types: CPM, CPC, CPA, CPV, Auction
- Payment Methods: Check, PayPal, Direct Deposit
- Payment Minimum: $25
Banner Ad Network #5 – InfoLinks
Infolinks offers an great selection of profitable ad units: InText (text links ads), InTag (tag cloud ads) InFold (overlay ads), InFrame (banner ads in margins and frames) and InScreen (smart interstitial ads). This combinations leads to better search engine optimization, an increase in relevance, better space utilization and a less-intrusive user experience. Infolinks generates high monthly revenue for over 200,000 publishers in more than 130 countries today, and they work with the biggest advertisers in the world such as Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and eBay. Their platform is very simple to integrate into your site and is open to any publisher, with no setup fees and no minimum requirements for page views or visitors.
Review The InfoLinks Program Guidelines Here
InfoLinks Additional Details:
- Advertising Types: Display, Text, Overlay, Interstitial
- Compensation Types: CPC, CPM
- Payment Methods: Check, PayPal, Direct Deposit
- Payment Minimum: $25
