Every advertising company runs an ad server and it is not usually necessary to run another ad server to manage the ads on websites. An ad server on the other hand has several advantages (and some disadvantages) over using no ad server.

If you look at most websites you will notice that ads are usually displayed without an ad server in the background. All the webmaster has to do is to copy and paste the ad tags that are supplied by the advertising company on the website or pages the ads should be displayed.

That’s usually it for cpc based advertising solutions like Google Adsense but cpm based banner ads on the other hand require additional configurations. This can be largely attributed to the fact that cpm advertising companies often only display ads for some of the inventory. They do require a backup ad (passback ad) that they transfer the ad request to if they cannot display one. That’s tiered advertising (or ad chaining).

It is up to the webmaster where the passback ads are send to. It is possible to display a local banner, a transparent gif or ads from another company.

It becomes more difficulty if geographic parameters are taking into consideration. Say one advertiser is only offering banner ads for US visitors, one for UK visitors and one offers to display ads for all visitors. Most webmasters chain the ads then to direct all visitors from the US advertiser to the UK and the to the one that is serving all.

This means that the page loading time for visitors that are not coming from the US or UK increases. If you assume that each advertiser has the same loading time it increases by a factor of 3 for worldwide users.

An ad server on the other hand can be configured to take the geolocation of a visitor into account. It can for instance be configured to display ad 1 to US visitors, ad 2 to UK visitors and ad 3 to everyone else. This means that the loading time is always the same no matter where the visitor of the website comes from.

This is one of the biggest strengths of an ad server. It has to be noted though that an ad server that is not hosted locally adds its loading time to all ad displays. Locally hosted ad servers on the other hand require lots of server resources if the website is popular and it is often the case that they need to be hosted on another server because of their performance requirements.

An alternative to using an ad server for distributing ads to geotargeted users is to use a scripting language to do that during page loading time. This again has severe consequences as it increases the server’s load and prevents caching of those scripts since they have to be run individually for every visitor.

Most ad servers provide additional filtering options and ad display options. Google’s Ad Manager for instance can also filter by web browser, operating system and date or time. This opens interesting new options like displaying specific ads to Linux users for instance or Google Chrome users.

The second big benefit of an ad server are its ad management capabilities. It is for instance nearly impossible to sell part of the inventory directly to advertisers as it would be very difficulty to control the ads on the website.

An ad server can be easily used for that. An advertiser might want to purchase 100k impressions targeting Windows users from the UK. That would not be a problem with a proper ad manager which could be configured to run the 100k impressions on the web server disabling the ad after the last impression has been served.

Ad Server Benefits

• More flexibility to serve and manage ads
• Better performance by reducing the effects of ad chaining
• Ability to run highly targeted campaigns and to sell direct advertisement

Ad Server Disadvantages

• Requires some time to configure the ads that are served properly
• Might increase loading time for some users depending whether the ad server is hosted locally or remotely
• Not suitable for smaller websites or sites that display only ads from one advertising company

What’s your experience regarding ad servers? Would you recommend one if you could?

Tribalfusion accepts only websites that meet certain requirements, the most notable is that your site needs at least 2000 unique users per day. The others are an active community, regularly updated content and a professional site design. I would definitely give it a shot if I would be running a blog with at least 2000 unique daily users. It is furthermore possible to run Tribalfusion CPM Ads on the same page as Google Adsense ads.

Tribalfusion offers almost the same advertisement sizes that Google Adsense offers. You have the choice to 728×90, 468×60, 120×600, 160×600 and the rectangles 300×250 and 336×280. One great way of raising revenue with Tribalfusion is to activate the so called Variable Size feature. This displays similar ads if they are higher priced than the initial one that you have selected. It is for instance possible to select the large rectangle as the default size for your ads and use the variable size option to allow Tribalfusion to display 300×250 ads in the same spot if they are higher paying.

You have more option for some ad sizes. You could opt for popunders with some ad types but I found this option to be to disturbing to use. Could be an option on sites that do not care that much about their visitors. Tribalfusion makes it furthermore possible to display alternative ads if Tribalfusion can’t serve them for a particular user / page.

I do not want to disclose how much I’m earning with Tribalfusion but I’m using a real life example to demonstrate the possibilities. (This is actual data from a friend of mine)

He started serving Tribalfusion ads on March, 15th and made almost $140 from ads served on his website with 190000 ad views which means his CPM was about $0.72. Let us take into consideration here that he has chosen a relative weak spot for the Tribalfusion ads and that it is indeed possible to get a better revenue from the cpm ads by moving them to a more prominent position on his website.

The main topic that you are writing about is also important for the revenue that you can make with Tribalfusion. I hope the article gave you an impression of what you can expect from services like Tribalfusion that could be a good revenue source for your website if you meet their requirement.s