Publisher Ad Serving
For the majority of sites which are part of Gourmet Ads, most will simply drop our ad tags into the code of the site and we’ll run 100% of the impressions. Gourmet Ads runs on the Adify platform which in many ways is a huge ad server so sites don’t need the added complexity of their own ad server as well as all the business rules associated to get going. From a monetization perspective this is the most ideal solution as we are selling your ads around the globe.
However for a limited numbers of publishers (we tend to see this on bigger sites only) this isn’t the most ideal solution. We’d recommend using an ad server to give you significant control on how ads are served on your site. It also means that you run multiple ads through the one ad space. We see a lot of the food blogs that are part of our network think that they need to run a number of ad units on a page, like running 3 skyscrapers for example. Not only does this look terrible, but the clickability of the page also decreases which means your page isn’t performing and we could optimize you out of the buy. But this isn’t the case anymore, as most ad servers are free these days.
Unlike other ad networks, Gourmet Ads is non exclusive with our publishers which means you can run other networks. However, we do ask that you provide us an equal allocation to any other network running within your adserver. So sites wishing to use an ad server typically will fall into one of these categories;
- Have an internal sales team and using Gourmet Ads as part of the ad serving cycle.
- Wish to use Geo Targeting, i.e. running Gourmet Ads in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ and other providers in the other countries.
- The need to run a different ad provider in each category of the site ie Gourmet Ads in the Food section and another provider in each category like Auto, Travel, Small Business etc.
- Prefer to use multiple sources of advertising such as Gourmet Ads and say Google Adsense.
The ability to run multiple ads from different providers will be very appealing to some publishers. We personally don’t recommend any one ad server to our publishers, but here are a few ad server related links to help you navigate the next step.
- Openx hosted – free, plus great geo targeting features and simplicity of use.
- Google Ad Manager – Very complex to setup, only suitable for very large sites with complex rules.
- Blog about Free WordPress Ad servers
- 7 Great Ad Serving Solutions
Finally, if you’re a publisher and not part of the Gourmet Ads network, you can apply to join here.
