Hi HN, We created a widget that goes on publisher website. We have been modestly successful but have a few big name publishers. So far our widget gets about 100 MM views a month. We have 154x250 space within the widget to monetize for ourselves. What's our best approach here in terms of ads. Is there a list of ad vendors (other than ad sense) that might be interested in this inventory? We are new to the display/native ad game so any suggestion is welcome. AD's can be displayed within a lightbox (to keep users within the pub site) or just can be directed to the ad page on click. Thanks in advance!
Wow - what an opportunity. Honestly - you have something great here.<p>I hope this doesn’t come across as an insult as you’ve already expressed your dislike for Outbrain and Taboola but you’ve stepped right into their market and have a huge opportunity to shake things up.<p>I’d say you’ve figured out what every publisher loves - or should love - keeping traffic and keeping the audience engaged. I assume most smaller publishers >10m views would make more money keeping readers clicking around their own site several times compared to losing them to a “click-bait” sponsored content ad.<p>I would however recommend after spending a decent amount of time on your site to take a look at Taboola and Outbrain - the copy and design of their sites are very to the point and informative - to publishers and advertisers. I don’t really get that from your site. I’d try to be more like them in those areas - they have a knack for grabbing both publishers and advertisers.<p>As for getting the advertisers, get on LinkedIn - search for people with job titles like Manager of Digital Marketing - poke around their profiles see if their company might be a good fit for you then fire them off a quick email.<p>Just my two cents!
If you haven't considered affiliate programs, that would be a good direction to go. You'll have to do more testing but once optimised you'll get a higher ROI than you would from most non-adsense ad companies.
If you're just testing the waters, an inventory marketplace like BuySellAds.com might be worth checking out.<p>You can browse through the inventory of similar sites to get a gauge of what you can expect, CPM wise: <a href="https://buysellads.com/buy/allsites/" rel="nofollow">https://buysellads.com/buy/allsites/</a><p>Later on, you might just want to strike one-off deals with interested advertisers, or build in a more "native" ad solution into your platform, etc.
I'm surprised no one has suggested you to just simply take donations or suck it up. After all, according to most HN users, all ads are bad and adblock is a God's gift. You have no right getting revenue on the content you create.