Interactive Marketing & Ad Networks

Welcome to my first interactive marketing and ad network lens.

Ad networks serve advertising on your website and share advertiser revenue for qualified clicks each time your site visitors clicks on ads. An advertising network (also called an online advertising network or ad network) is a collection of (often unrelated) online advertising inventory. When it is clear that the environment involved is the Internet, companies who run or administrate such networks are also called Advertising Agents or simply Agents.

Online advertising inventory comes in many different forms. This inventory can be found on websites, in RSS feeds, on blogs, in instant messaging applications, in adware, in e-mails, and on other sources. Some examples of advertising inventory include: banner ads, rich media, text links, and e-mails. (This is not an exhaustive list.)

Large publishers often sell only their remnant inventory through ad networks. Typical numbers range from 10% to 60% of total inventory being remnant and sold through advertising networks.

Smaller publishers often sell all of their inventory through ad networks. One type of ad network, known as a blind network, is such that advertisers place ads, but do not know the exact places where their ads are being placed.

In most cases, ad networks deliver their content through the use of a central ad server.

Large ad networks include a mixture of search engines, media companies, and technology vendors. Some of the larger networks include AdBrite, Casale Media, Google's AdSense, Pulse 360, Right Media's Remix Media Network, RealTechNetwork, Tribal Fusion,ValueClick, FeedBurner's Ad Network (FAN) and Yahoo! Search Marketing.

There are two types of advertising networks: first-tier and second-tier networks. First-tier advertising networks have a large number of their own advertisers and publishers, they have high quality traffic, and they serve ads and traffic to second-tier networks. Examples of first-tier networks include the major search engines. Second-tier advertising networks may have some of their own advertisers and publishers, but their main source of revenue comes from syndicating ads from other advertising networks.