The Fascinating World of Ad Servers
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I’m writing this post to outline my efforts to find and implement an ad serving solution for my blog network. First I’ll take a look at what an ad server is and when and why you and I might want or need to implement a centralized advertising management system.
Then I’ll try and match up the offerings with my needs by taking a look at some of the common ad server companies and their products.
Hopefully by the end I’ll have chosen a server to install for testing purposes and created a plan for testing and I’ll present the reasons for my choices.
What’s an Ad Server?
In my mind, an ad server is a way of managing the advertising on one or many websites.
2 Types of Ad Servers
1. Ad Serving Service
This is what Google’s AdSense is. A service that supplies ads (and advertisers) to your site. You drop in a piece of code, anywhere you want and AdSense provides an ad every time someone requests your page. Most people think of AdSense as a way to monetize a website, which it is, but it is really an ad server, with built in advertisers.
2. Ad Server Software
Imagine Google’s Adsense system without the advertisers in it. What you’d have left is the code which calls a centralized location everytime a page is loaded. The ad server knows what page is calling it, what size format the adspace is, where in the world the person viewing the page is and much more information that can be used to determine the best advertising to present to the visitor.
The other component of an adserver is the back end which allows you to create and manage advertising inventory. Every conceivable type of ads can be thrown into the mix: pay-per-click, cost-per-impression, localized ads, site targeted ads, private ads and of course your own ads to promote your own sites.
Is an Ad Server Right for You?
If the only form of advertising on your site is AdSense, then you don’t need an ad server. But as soon as your needs get even slightly more complex or your traffic increases past a few hundred visitors a day, you may see advantages to running some type of ad server.
Another great reason to have an ad server is to centralize the advertising across many sites. If you have 10 sites and you’d like to change from AdSense to YPN, you could do it without having to change anything on the 10 sites…you just drop in the YPN code and disable the AdSense campaign on the ad server.
Things you can do with an ad server:
- easily manage advertising on multiple sites from one place
- easily split test on colors or ad formats without having to modify the code on your site
- rotate CPM and CPC ads on the same site without modifying your site’s code
- sell your own private ads
- track your own private ads - impressions, clicks, split tests
- geo-target your ads
- time target your ads
- optimize profitability
Advanced ad servers can really ramp up web site profits as they employ algorithms that match the most profitable ads in your inventory with the specific set of variables being presented by each page request on your site (ad serving):
For example if a web site has 10 different advertisers that have paid for a big square ad, the ad server must decide which one to serve (or display). One advertiser may have only agreed to pay for ads from 9am - 5pm. If it is after 5pm, then the Ad Server must not serve that one. Another advertiser may only have paid to show one ad to each user per day. The ad server must therefore see if a user has seen that ad before, on that day and not serve it again if the user has seen it. Another advertiser may have agreed to a high price, but only if the person watching the page is in the United States. In that case, the Ad Server needs to check the IP address to determine if the user is in the US and then decide which is the highest paying ad for that user, in the US, at that time, given what that user has seen in the past.
My Ad Server Needs
As my network become bigger and larger the needs will become more complex. Currently, with 14 sites it is mostly about having the ability to centrally manage ad code and to be able to easily test on ad color.
One of the long term needs is to be able to offer ad buyers a diverse set of targeting options. With an network of city based blogs I can foresee larger advertisers wanting to upload different ads to target a national audience and other ads for a local readers. Ford Motors when they introduce a new line of car, and also promoting the local neighborhood car dealer. An ad server is necessary to provide this type of flexibility for private ad sales.
Ad Server Offerings
I identified 3 ad server companies to compare for this initial investigation.
1. AdSpeed
- Offers a free 10 day trial.
- Reasonable monthly fees starting @ $9.95 a month for 100,000 impressions, which makes it affordable to try out an adserver, even for a small site.
- combines two solutions, a web analytics and an ad serving platform, into one comprehensive solution. You will be able to see more details about your visitors than just impressions and clicks.
2. Zedo
- ZEDO supports surround sessions where users can see just one advertisers’ ad for a day.
- ZEDO also offers state of the art opt-in targeting that increases the value of your inventory
- Don’t have an mention of pricing on their website - a bad move in my mind…their service looks interesting but with so many other options, I’m always skeptical when someone won’t tell me their prices up front.
3. OpenAds
- Open source software - free, but of course you need to install and maintain it yourself.
- Support for AdSense
- Section Targeting -Display advertising on specific pages of your site.
- Geo Targeting - Viewers from a certain country, region, or city.
- Time targeting - Only display ads at certain times of day, or days of week
- User agent targeting - Just show advertising to viewers with a certain browser or computer operating system
- Referral targeting - Advertise to viewers who have just come from a search engine, or from another site
- IP address targeting - Just show an ad to your computer or your office to see what it looks like on your site
- Frequency capping - Only show ads to a viewer a certain number of times per day or per session
Summary
This is just a preliminary exploration of the rather large topic of ad servers. The 3 presented represent only a small slice of the ad server universe. Primarily, these ones were picked based on simplicity and clarity of their presentation; some of the solutions were costing what would amount to a significant percentage of advertising revenue, so these were dropped straight away.
From this list I am drawn to Open Ads, but I’ve been around software development enough to know the hidden costs of using free software - they do have a forum setup with people who are willing to help out and even people for hire…a good sign. I will investigate further and may run a trial of all three services to get a sense of what they are all like.
It’s a steep learning curve, but for any kind of serious online endeavor an ad server is essential as it accomplishes two major tasks: centralized advertising management and maximization of advertising revenue.
If your business is advertising based you may want to look into this type of set up.
If you know about ad servers, please leave a comment regarding what I should look for and any other servers which may match my needs.
- Jon Symons
Ad Server Surfer
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