10 alternatives to Google Adsense
May 11th, 2008Google Adsense is the current leader in content-sensitive web-based marketing. Bloggers can place Google Adsense code on their pages in order to allow Google’s servers to show context sensitive advertisements (Google Adwords).
Google’s terms and conditions are very strict such that many web publishers cannot use adsense adverts on their blogs. They are either denied from joining the Google AdSense program, or in a situation that is becoming more and more common do not wish to do business with Google. A number of publishers are also finding their Adsense accounts are being disabled for reasons that are completely beyond their control. The problem is that most of the alternatives to Google’s Adsense are pretty useless. Most of the good ones (such as doubleclick) are only interested in very large volume customers and so are not interested in the little guy with his blog who wants to earn a small income on the side. For this reason I have compiled my Top 10 alternatives to Google’s Adsense that are ideal for the small time publisher.
1. Clicksor
Clicksor is easily the current leader of the small publisher Adsense competition. They have payouts upto a market leading 85% and unlike a number of alternatives the cost per click bid values are high enough that you can earn a decent income. They are also, in my experience, much more tollerant than Google. Their terms and conditions suggest that you should only place one copy of their code on a page but as long as you only place a single pop-up or DHTML code on a page they seem happy to let you place many context sensitive ad blocks on a single site.
Clicksor also has a big advantage over a number of the lower ranked alternatives on this site in that their ads are truly context sensitive. Thus while you can provide keywords they have technology that will also show ads targeted to the content of your site. This means your visitors are exposed to ads of the same subject as they were searching for when they reached your site and thus vastly increases the click thru ratio and thus your sites earning potential. The context sensitive nature also saves you the hassle of having to specify keywords for all of your sites and decide in advance what people might be looking for.
The payment schedule with Clicksor is also much better geared to the small site owner. You can be paid via Paypal or check. If you choose Paypal the minimum amount is $20 and by check you must have in your account at least $50.
2. Yahoo Publisher Network
Yahoo are currently playing catch up to Google and are trying to release their own context sensitive advertising service. This promises to be an excellent alternative to Google Adsense but in reality is likely to be a simple copy with the same restrictive terms and conditions as Google, including $100 minimums on payouts. At present the system is still in beta test and while you can visit their site and sign up to register your interest it appears at present that they are not accepting new advertisers. In fact most applicants won’t even receive a reply. Thus until it goes live and it becomes clear what type of website owners Yahoo will be targetting I can only place it in second place.
3. AllFeed
Allfeeds is another alternative to Google Adsense particularly targetted to smaller publishers. The payouts are not as good as Clicksor and Yahoo but if you have relevant keywords can be fairly good. The only real problem is that you have to get each individual page approved and provide a set of keywords for each page. This can be real time consuming and makes it difficult to accurately target your website’s audience.
4. FastClick
At the first look, FastClick seems to be the best alternatives to Google Adsense, however, they are one of many online advertising companies that tend to favor the large customers. You’d think companies would have learnt from Google’s success and accepted that the way to make money is to target both large and small. If you can get yourself accepted to FastClick (now called ValueClick) then you will probably be able to run some reasonably high paying adverts on your site but most small website owners will find that FastClick simply aren’t interested.
5. Veoda
Veoda can be a useful alternative for small website owners since they don’t require any minimum page views per month. They pay 60% of the revenues generated per click to you and upto 90% if your site has a high traffic rate. They payout at only $25.00 and unlike Google and Yahoo do not require any tax information making it ideal for small website owners who don’t want to have to deal with registering their website as a small business. Something they would have to do if they earnt money through Google or Yahoo where social security numbers are required.
6. Bidvertiser
Bidvertiser can be a useful alternative to Google and offer some intriguing ad formats including what they refer to as free design. This lets you specify the look and dimensions of your text ads. While a useful feature I have not investigated how well it works but imagine that while it sounds good on paper it could result in lower priced ads being displayed. I.e. most advertisers will probably want to keep control of the layout of their ads and so turn off support for Free design ads.
Bidvertizer pays you either in $50.00 increments by check or $10.00 increments by Paypal.
7. Chitika
Chitika takes a different approach to internet advertizing. Instead of displaying the ‘industry standard’ advert boxes with text and image ads that all look the same they instead provide active boxes that show targeted products from different manufacturers. If you run a blog for example and discuss a product you may find the chitika box showing links for this product and competitors products. If people purchase these products you get a paid a commission. This is refered to as impulse marketing in the form of eMinimalls.
8. TargetPioint
Targetpoint’s services are particularly publisher-oriented, you have absolute control over the appearance of your ads. They provide supervision over ad content. The payouts tend to be reasonable but they can be quite choosey regarding which sites are accepted.
9. Revenue Pilot
RevenuePilot would appear to be a very good ad server alternative although I would be careful to take most of their claims at face value. They claim to offer the Industry’s highest bid prices and largest payouts with CPC of $2.00 or more. I find these claims very hard to believe. Indeed why would an advertiser be interested in advertising with a client that essentially claims to be ripping them off. Either way the claims may be true in which case this could be a very lucrative advertising system for your website. Feel free to try it and make up your own mind.
10. ClickThruTraffic
Not the best alternative but if you can’t get accepted by any of the above you can always try these guys. They claim that you will earn between 6 and 20 cents everytime a surfer clicks on an advertisement on your site but in reality I think you are more likely to see rates around the 0.5c to 2c range. However, feel free to try it out and see how you get on. Advert wise they offer text links, buttons and banners.
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