30+ TOP Ad Networks — Best Highest Paying Advertising Networks [2024] for Websites, Bloggers and Apps

So you are a new blogger, you have a website with some regular traffic, or you have a mobile application that has quite some users, and you want to make some extra bucks out of it. Fret not, because this is already solved for you. You are at a stage where you want to monetize your blog, website, or app, and what better way to monetize it than displaying ads to your visitors?

We have gathered all the information you need about earning money with ads. There are two ways you could go about doing it: Direct ads or Ad networks. Direct ads happen when you display a customized ad for somebody who directly contacts you. On the other hand, Ad networks are more common ways of getting ads displayed on your website while you enjoy the passive income. This is exactly what this topic is about, so brace yourself.

What are Ad Networks and How they work

You can think of Advertising networks as platforms that connect advertisers and publishers. Advertisers need to gain more traffic, so they pay the publisher (indirectly through the Ad network) to drive traffic to their platforms. In this process, the publisher (being you) gets some revenue share from the traffic driven to that website. Simply put, bloggers and webmasters get paid to display ads on their websites.

Ads displayed on these websites can be of different visual types, banners, videos, push-notifications and push-ads. The way that advertisers get to place such requests for traffic and ad publishing on the ad network is by bidding. Advertisers bid based on the country, region, time of the day, type of ad, etc. Based on their bids, their ads will be displayed on suitable blogs or websites.

What ad networks have to do with publishers is that they have to check your website, app, or blog to figure out which ads are suitable to be displayed on your website and whether it meets the requirements to be monetized, which takes us to the next section.

How to Earn Money Using an Ad Network

When you feel like your platform can be monetized, you can consider opting in for an ad network to make money, but how do you actually get to the point of getting checked and validated for the type of ad that you can display? How can you display these ads?

The Process of Making Money with Ad Networks

First of all, choose the ad networks you want to work with. This will be covered in the next sections of this article. Anyhow, when you’re done choosing, you need to fill out an application to be accepted into the ad network. Depending on the network, this may require them checking your publishing website or app to check if it meets their requirements and what type of ads can be displayed on it.

After all the checks are done and you are finally approved for it, you can go on and place the code provided by the ad network on your website, blog, app, etc. This depends on the type of ad, which could include display ads, video ads, audio ads, or text ads.

When your ads are running, you can simply wait for traffic to be driven to the advertiser platform. Of course, you can optimize your website in a way that the ads become successful, but that’s another topic later on discussed in this article. Now, you can collect your payments when they reach a specific withdrawal minimum. Some networks could require you to collect enough payment to be allowed for withdrawal, so keep that in mind. The reason this both makes sense and can be frustrating is that the pays are low because many ads can be automatically displayed on your website, and it’s more of a regular passive income rather than direct ad orders with a one-time higher price.

So you could be getting 1 dollar per every 1 000 views of an ad, but that’s just the beginning. Plus, there is not only one payment model involved in ad networks. There are actually a few of them.

Payment Models

You might be familiar with some payment models, but the ones most common in ad networks include CPM, CPC, and CPA. Let’s learn about each in detail.

• CPM. This stands for Cost per Mille, which means that you will be getting a revenue share for every 1000 views of every ad on your publisher website. Many networks offer this payment model, and they might pay you up to 10 dollars for every 1 000 impressions of the advertisement.
• CPC. This stands for Cost per Click, which would enable you to get paid every time a user clicks on an ad. This is a particularly good model for publishers that have visitors that actually engage with their website. So if you know your audience and they know you, we suggest going for this type of networks and ads.
• CPA. This stands for Cost per Action, and in this case, action means clicking on the ad and then completing an action on the advertiser’s website or app, such as signing up or making a purchase. Every time a user is redirected to the advertiser website and signs up through your website, you will get paid. This is similar to affiliate marketing in the sense that people actually might trust you enough to click on your website ads or have enough incentives or needs to do so.

Types of Ad Networks

There are generally two main types of ad networks: horizontal and vertical.

Horizontal

Horizontal networks are ones where advertisers really don’t have a say in which publisher gets to promote them, and most of the time, they don’t have to spend a ton of money either. As a publisher, you can easily get into these ad networks since they are not that strict. All you have to do is show them your traffic. You will immediately be accepted afterwards and you can display their ads on your website. However, you might want to double-check your standards, because this type of ad networks pay mostly per click, so you want to really make sure that your audience is genuine enough. These ads are going to be random as well, so don’t expect to get a ton of attention driven to them if you work on a niche that is completely irrelevant to the ad.

Vertical

This type of network is more focused on which ad suits which blogger or publisher better. The ads will be checked for their niche and you need to be verified whether your niche matches the ad’s niche. Even though the process of getting approved for having ads on your website might be longer, when you actually do get to the end, you can be certain that your audience is actually interested in it, and the network might be paying you per impressions, because your audience actually matches what your visitors are looking for, so you are not going to have a hard time earning.

How Ad Networks work for Mobile Apps

Now, we know that there are different types of ads you could have as a publisher. For example, bloggers and webmasters can have display and text ads, and podcasts can have audio ads. In this sense, Mobile apps can have video ads that will be displayed for a few seconds and if the users click on the ad or even just view it, you will get paid as a publisher or creator of the app.

Choosing the Best Ad Networks

When trying to choose the best network, first you will have to check your own publisher platform, and ask yourself the following questions.

• What is my niche?
• Do I have an engaging audience?
• Do I get a reasonable amount of traffic?
• What payment model would be most profitable considering my current visitors?
• Would certain types of ads damage my website’s reputation?

When you have the answer to these questions, you can choose a network. Create a list of networks that you can work with and then check some information about them. You have to narrow down your list based on the payment model offered by the network and also based on their pricing. You can also take into consideration the payment threshold you have to reach to be able to withdraw from their platform.

What to Consider when Earning Money with Advertising Networks

It is all fun and games until the ads are not performing as you expected. So you may want to be prepared for what to expect.

First of all, as mentioned before, the pay in ad networks is rather low. For example, you could be driving 100 000 impressions of an ad a month, and still only make $1 000 from it. So this might not be a reliable solution to your livelihood, and rather just a side hustle.

We know what you’re thinking. You don’t even think you’ll be able to reach 100 000 visits in a month, so what can you even expect for your income, right? This is exactly why you need to upgrade your blog, website, or app, and start implementing ways to gain more traffic and optimize the way the ads display so you’ll get paid for them all.

This is still not a full-time job unless you have millions of views. So, think of ad networks as something you can add to other activities for moneymaking, such as affiliate marketing. This way you might find yourself more traffic and more income to rely on.

As you can see, many other affiliates and publishers are already making money this way, such as Wander Her Way, as she explains in their latest income report.

Tips for Making More with Ad Networks

You could always optimize the way you work with ads as a publisher, so why not. Let’s see the ways you can make sure you’ll get paid even more.

Increase the number of ads

As you might have thought, a quick way for earning more revenue while displaying ads is displaying even more ads. That is a good solution and of course, you would want to do that ultimately. However, keep in mind that you don’t want to display way too many ads on your website or videos on your app. You want to keep it balanced, so neither would the users freak out and run out nor would you sacrifice your revenue.

Ad placement

For ad networks that offer CPM payments, you should make sure every single user counts, even the ones that simply visit your website and immediately leave. So you want to place some of the ads on the top of your pages, so users that don’t scroll down to other parts will be counted in the impressions as well. Also, keep in mind that some users might miss the ads placed on the sidebar, so you want to have your ads somewhere right in the center of attention, and where is better than in the middle of your content? Keep in mind that it might get annoying for users, so don’t use too many ads in the middle of your content. Spread them wisely.

Try various ad networks

There are no limits to what ad networks you can use. If your website has good traffic, you can use different ad networks so they’ll have to pay more to have their ads displayed on your website or app. This way, your revenue increases as well.

A/B testing

This last tip is probably the most important one as well. A/B testing means having two versions of your publisher website compared with each other including the way ads are placed in each plus the corresponding number of visitors or revenues made using each. This way, you can analyze the ad placement to help you decide where on the page is the best, both for users and your earning.

Conclusion

Ad networks are usually the first things that new bloggers, publishers, and app creators think of in order to make money. That is why it’s important to know where you stand and how you could benefit from this way of moneymaking. Now that you know what you need and what you have to do, go on and choose an ad network, marking the beginning of your journey as a publisher on an advertising network.