AdBrite

AdBrite offers a way for publishers to convert their site’s traffic into advertising offers. By posting “Your Ad Here” spaces on their sites, publishers can link site visitors to the advertising opportunities that they are currently offering and therefore generate more interest in the site’s ad spaces than would have been possible through only AdBrite’s marketplace. AdBrite also allows publishers to set their own ad rates and to approve and reject ad offers, giving them more power over what goes on their site and for what price than many other networks allow. With 547 million impressions per day on 20,758 sites and numerous advertising and customization options, AdBrite is a large network that offers flexible and innovative ways for publishers to monetize their ad spaces.

Features

AdBrite offers its publishers a lot of control over their advertisement spaces by allowing them to sell ads through their own site and to approve and reject offers, but it also offers an alternative to doing this. If publishers choose, they can set an initial price and have AdBrite adjust it automatically based on the demand for advertisements on the site. This makes less work for the publishers, but also diminishes their control over the ads.

One form of advertisement that AdBrite offers is text ads, which are sold both as CPC and CPM, depending on the offer. These ads can be customized to fit the theme of the site in which they are being embedded.

AdBrite also offers a couple of other kinds of advertisement. Banner ads are available on a CPM basis. The minimum bid for these kinds of ads is $0.10. They also offer active interstitial ads on a CPM basis. Inline ads use the words in the site’s text as links for advertisements. Publishers can use HTML coding to mark the portions of their site on which they would like to allow inline ads, but they cannot choose which words specifically become links. No more than 8 words, or 1.6% of the site’s total words, will become inline ads. These ads only work, however, when site visitors are using Internet Explorer as their web browser.

BritePic and BriteFlic are the final methods of advertising that AdBrite offers. These services present ways to make videos and pictures on a site interactive. In addition to embedding advertisements, publishers can use these features to add links, captions, and other extras to the media. This service offers many options and is still being expanded according to AdBrite’s website. BritePic only works for JPEG images at the moment, and is available in both JavaScript and non-JavaScript versions. BriteFlic is only compatible with flash videos, but AdBrite’s site provides links to tools to convert videos into this form from other formats.

All of AdBrite’s features are managed through a single account, and this one account can handle all of a publisher’s sites. They also support international sites that are not operated in English and say that they are currently expanding their international content so that they can offer more advertising opportunities to these users. If AdBrite cannot meet a publisher’s minimum requirement for filling their ad space, the publisher can choose to show an ad from another network. They can also choose to only show ad campaigns from AdBrite that they have specifically approved, and to fill the ad space with another ad network’s ads at all other times.

AdBrite offers two ways to sell ad space. Firstly, sites are indexed by category and tags so that advertisers can search for certain kinds of sites in AdBrite’s marketplace. They can then make a bid on that ad space which will compete with any other bids made. Secondly, they offer users the option of posting “Your Ad Here” on their sites, enticing their traffic to choose to advertise. About 50% of most AdBrite users’ sales are generated through each method.

Flat rate ads pay the price that the publisher approves for that specific ad. CPC and CPM ads in auction mode are paid at the rate of $.01 over the highest bid.

Controls

AdBrite publishers are notified of new advertising offers for their site via email and also on the AdBrite homepage, which is also where they can log into their control panel to manage their account. If an offer is not approved or rejected after seven days, AdBrite reviews the offer on behalf of the publisher and acts according to their filter preferences and past behaviors.

AdBrite’s control panel is tabbed and easy to navigate. The “Manage Ad Zones” tab includes most of the tools publishers need. It shows the types of ad zones currently approved on the site and produces codes for the ad campaigns, as well as allowing site owners to edit and delete the zones.

There are many features of an ad zone that can be edited. Publishers can choose what kinds of ads they would like to run and what ads they would like to be shown if AdBrite cannot fill the space. They can also choose whether to allow advertising offers to be manually approved or auto-approved, and whether they will manually or automatically set the prices for the ad zones. Additionally, AdBrite lets its publishers customize their text advertisements, choosing the color of the title, ad, and background color so that the ads will be better integrated with the overall look of the site. Site owners can also specify whether or not to allow “edgier,” although still not specifically adult, ads or to stick to family-friendly content only.

Through the control panel, publishers can also create a site description that advertisers will view in the AdBrite marketplace. They can write tags saying what kind of site they run, what products they believe would sell well on their site, and what kind of visitors they get. The “View ‘Your Ad Here’” link allows publishers to see the information that is presented to advertisers about their site, including basic traffic information, the ad types available, the publisher’s average response time and membership length, and what other advertisers have paid for CPC ads, broken down into categories by company type.

Finally, the control panel is where publishers can approve new ads and add videos and pictures to utilize the BriteFlic and BritePic features of AdBrite.

Available Types and Formats

AdBrite offers text link, banner, interstitial, in line, BriteFlic, and BritePic ads. The text and banner ads are available in a 728 x 90 leaderboard, a 468 x 60 banner, a 160 x 600 wide skyscraper, a 120 x 600 skyskraper, a 300 x 250 medium rectangle, and in a customizable size with no fixed dimensions that cannot display banner ads. BriteFlic and BritePic fit the site’s media.

Reporting

Reports are available through the control panel, which shows the publisher’s total earnings, average daily earnings, ad views, clicks, month-to-date earnings, and earnings for past months. Zone stats are also displayed showing each ad zone’s total and daily hits and clicks. Links from this page break the statistics down by individual ad campaign. Finally, the earnings tab documents the publisher’s payments and earnings, broken down by ad zone and type.

How to Get Started

To become an AdBrite member, site owners must complete a simple online application. There is no minimum traffic requirement for this ad network or any requirements regarding the site’s content.

After their application is approved, users can then specify their preferences in the control panel, choosing the types of ads that they would like to run. They will then begin to receive offers from advertisers, which they can either accept or reject. Text ads operating on a site-specific flat rate basis appear on the site on the next earliest available date. Site-specific CPM ads and keyword targeted CPC ads appear up to a few hours after being approved, or on the date specified by the advertiser. Banner ads are posted on the site when AdBrite has reviewed and approved them. Active interstitials show up on a site after a visitor’s fifth click and are capped at once per day. Publishers can start referring site visitors when the referral button appears on their site.

Referral Program

AdBrite’s referral program allows publishers to put links to the ad network on their sites as a way of generating a bit of extra revenue. If a new publisher signs up for AdBrite through one of these links, they receive 50% of AdBrite’s profit’s from this new user for the first three months, and 10% for nine months after that.

Payment

AdBrite gives its publishers 70% of the revenues generated from their ad spaces and keeps 30%. Payments are made to publishers by checks in U.S. dollars, and the minimum payment amount is $5, although users must change the default $100 minimum in order to receive checks this small. Earnings under the minimum amount roll over into the next month. AdBrite pays at the end of each month for a publisher’s earnings in the month two months prior; for example, revenues made in March will be paid out at the end of May.

More Information and Support

AdBrite’s website is cheerfully colored and has an extensive FAQ section with a lot of useful information and tools. The ad network also maintains a blog and runs a forum where its users can help each other and share tips.

Support is available by phone Monday-Friday 9 AM—5 PM PST or by email at any time. Responses are sent out within 24 hours.

Summary

AdBrite offers its users unique ways of advertising and is both easy to use and reliable. It is compatible with other services and can be customized to match a publisher’s site theme. Overall, this network is a good alternative for publishers who wish to monetize their sites, especially if they feel that they could easily sell ad spaces to their visitors through on-site ads.

Bidvertiser

Launched in 2003 by Bpatch, Ltd., Bidvertiser burst onto the CPC ad network scene by trying to differentiate itself from the many other contextual networks available. Their innovative business model was, and still is today, to sell their publisher’s ads to the highest advertising bidder on a price-per-click basis.

As such, advertisers bid against each other for a publisher’s ad space, with the highest bidders always getting displayed on the publisher’s website.

Features

Competing in the CPC market is not easy for an up-and-coming ad network with the giant Google AdSense towering over its competition and monopolizing the market. However, Bidvertiser has stepped up to the plate and actually offers publishers many benefits over AdSense.

The first is that Bidvertiser offers an extremely low minimum payment of only $10. This is one of the smallest minimum payments in the industry, and coupled with the fact that publishers can withdraw via PayPal, Bidvertiser immediately becomes a viable solution for many publishers. Compare this to AdSense which requires a minimum withdrawal of $100, and does not offer payment via PayPal.

Another advantage Bidvertiser has over most other ad networks is that their ads are completely customizable. While many other networks including AdSense allow custom colors, Bidvertiser also allows users to customize additional features such as font and text size, and even the actual size dimensions of the ads. This effectively allows publishers to create ads of any custom size for superlative integration.

The last major perk Bidvertiser has over AdSense and other networks is their ease and speed of signing up. Within 5-minutes, a brand new publisher can sign-up to Bidvertiser and have integrated ads up and running on their site.

Bidvertiser also serves ads based on their 3rd-generation bidding-based system, which allows them to accept all sites including: flash sites, sites with little content, and password-protected pages.

In addition, Bidvertiser recently (early 2008) launched ads for RSS feeds due to the large increase of webmaster bloggers. In order to display the ads, Bidvertiser requires publishers to switch to a new feed URL hosted on Bidvertiser's servers. This can be troublesome for some publishers as they would have to redirect subscribers of their old RSS address to the new feed, but is easy for anyone using Feedburner since the source RSS address can easily be changed.

Unfortunately, Bidvertiser excels in all areas except for one: payouts. Sadly, this is arguably the most important element of an ad network.

Most publishers report rather poor earnings and conversion rates with Bidvertiser when compared to other CPC networks such as AdSense. This is most likely due to the almost unfair advantage AdSense has with massive advertiser base; while Bidvertiser has a decent advertiser base of their own, Google simply has a lot more, and more advertisers results in higher competition, and thus higher payouts.

Signing Up

Bidvertiser offers one of the fastest and easiest sign-ups available. Registration does not require W9 or W8BEN tax forms to be signed and sent in, and after confirming their e-mail address with an e-mailed confirmation code, applicants will receive instant activation and approval.


There are no traffic or demographic requirements, and publishers can get started immediately, adding their ad code to their sites the second their accounts are activated.

However, it is important to note that in order to help prevent offensive websites from joining their network. Bidvertiser manually reviews and approves each site, usually within 48 hours. During this time, publishers’ ads will display the default Bidvertiser ads.

Control Panel

Bidvertiser sports one of the most impressive control panel’s available. It is extremely user-friendly and straightforward, while both lightning fast and visually appealing at the same time. And, of course, it offers many great features as well.

First, Bidvertiser gives publishers absolute control over the look and feel of their ads, allowing them to customize everything including colors, font and text size, and even the actual dimensions of the ads themselves. This makes Bidvertiser the perfect network for publishers who require a specific or custom ad size that no other network offers.

In addition, the way Bidvertiser’s ad code is created and managed, publishers never have to update their ad code on their sites. For example, with AdSense, when a publisher wishes to modify the color of their ad, they need to update their site with the new modified code. But with Bidvertiser, the code never needs to be changed, as it is automatically done within the control panel. This offers a major convenience.

Publishers can easily filter out any unwanted ads, although each ad has already been pre-screened by Bidvertiser’s editorial team. Publishers can also easily add their other owned websites to their account as well.

Bidvertier’s stats are calculated live; impressions are displayed up to a 4-hour delay, but click statistics are updated immediately.

Payment

Bidvertiser pays in monthly installments on Net-15 Payment terms, and offers one of the lowest minimum payouts in the industry at only $10. However the $10 minimum payout is for PayPal withdrawals only. In addition to PayPal, Bidvertiser can also pay by check, but the minimum payment for check is $50.

Compared to AdSense, which does not offer PayPal as a payment option and has a much higher minimum payout at $100, Bidvertiser easily wins in the payment category.

Referral Program

Bidvertiser offers a referral program and all existing publishers are automatically eligible, only needing to activate it by clicking a button within the referral section of their control panel.

All referral earnings are tracked in a separate referral control panel which contains detailed reports and a wide selection of various banners of different sizes and colors. Like their main publisher control panel, Bidvertiser’s referral control panel is extremely easy to use and offers pretty much everything publishers need.

Bidvertiser allows publishers to refer both advertisers and publishers, and their payouts are as follows:
For the first $10 a referred advertiser spends, the referring publisher will receive $5. When that same referred advertiser spends $50, the referring publisher will receive an additional $20.
For the first $10 a referred publisher earns $10, the referring publisher will receive $10. When that same referred publisher earns $50, the referring publisher will receive an additional $40.

Earnings from referrals are included and paid out with the publisher’s main account with the same monthly payment cycle and payment methods and terms.


Customer Support

In addition to a ticket support system, Bidvertiser also offers phone support Sun-Thurs from 7am-9pm with toll-free numbers available for USA, Canada, France, and International users.

Their phone support was contacted as part of the testing and research for this review, with Bidvertiser responding quickly with minimal waiting times. While they satisfactorily answered our questions, they could have been a bit friendlier.

Additional Information

Bidvertiser has no limit as to the number of allowed ads per page, and there have been no reported issues with publishers running both Bidvertiser and AdSense on the same page.

Summary

Bidvertiser excels in every area such as their great control panel and superb level of ad customization. Their greatest feature is arguably their payment options, offering payment via PayPal as well as an incredibly low minimum payment of $10.

Unfortunately, Bidvertiser’s targeting is not as powerful as other contextual networks such as AdSense, resulting in poorer conversion rates. In addition, Bidvertiser’s smaller network of advertisers leaves the competition not as strong as their Google counterpart.

However, despite their lower payouts, Bidvertiser is still a great company and useful for publishers seeking low minimum payments, custom ad sizes, or simply an alternative to AdSense.

AdGridwork

AdGridwork.com is a free advertising exchange network where instead of receiving monetary payment, publishers are compensated with free advertising instead.

Originally conceived in November 2006 by Nick Mazza and Kyle Johnson, AdGridwork has already served over 80 million impressions across a network of over 6,500 websites. AdGridwork uses contextual technology similar to Google’s AdSense to display and target their ads.

In addition to AdGridwork, Mazza and Johnson also run ReviewBack.com, a free blog review and exchange service.

Exchanging ads in return for site traffic is not a new concept, however previous networks were almost exclusively banner exchange networks. AdGridwork appears to have married the idea of an ad exchange network with the robustness of contextual advertising to revitalize the genre.

Ad exchange networks have two main benefits over traditional advertising networks. First, they are a good resource for publishers without an advertising budget. For example, a publisher can leverage the muscle of one of their larger sites and use it to help drive traffic to one of their smaller ones.

Secondly, ad-exchange networks are theoretically cheaper than buying ads directly since there is no middleman taking a portion of the cut.

Features

One of the biggest obstacles ad-exchange networks face is accumulating a large-enough publisher base. After all, the entire business model is based on there being enough other websites to exchange links with. Fortunately, AdGridwork.com has tackled this obstacle with its already large and growing user base.

Another benefit AdGridwork.com offers is targeted traffic. The majority of past ad-exchange networks simply threw publishers ads into one giant mix, but AdGridwork lets publishers define which categories they wish to have their ads appear on.

In addition, AdGridwork has also implemented a Merit-Based Ranking System which helps encourage publishers to promote their AdGridwork ads and not just place them on a rogue page. With the Merit-Based Ranking System, websites that generate more traffic are displayed more often on other sites.

The following is an example taken from AdGridwork.com:

”Bob's High End Sporting Goods and Al's Athletics are both websites that distribute sports apparel and products and who are both participating in adgridwork. Bob has taken the time to strategically place his Ad Code so as to maximize its exposure and click-throughs. On an average day, 100 of his visitors will click on one of the ads on his site. Al, on the other hand, is looking for a free-ride with adgridwork, and places his Ad Code on the seldom visited Frequently Asked Questions page of his site. If he's lucky, 1 or 2 users will click an ad on his site. Because Bob generates many more ad-clicks then Al, his site will have a higher rank. And what does this mean? Bob's site will be displayed much, MUCH more frequently on other user's sites.”

Lastly, as mentioned in the introduction, AdGridwork offers publishers the possibility of using one of their higher-trafficked sites as leverage by converting it into traffic to one of their smaller sites.

Signing Up

Signing up and getting started literally takes several seconds. Once the small application form is submitted, approval is automatic and instant, redirecting the publisher to their control panel.

Publishers with AdGridwork must be at least 18 years of age, and part of the User Agreement stipulates that publishers may not display advertisements on any error page, registration or "thank you" pages.

Control Panel

AdGridwork’s control panel is very simple given the limited nature of being an ad-exchange network. It is fast and easy to use, however could use a bit of rearranging for better usability.

The Campaign Overview page, which displays the statistics of the ads, is rather confusing the way it presents the data. It is not clear which data represents incoming ads and which represents outgoing ads. It would be recommended for AdGridwork to make this clearer, perhaps by creating two separate “incoming” and “outgoing” columns.

Stats are live, and will start updating the second a publisher’s ad code is added to their site. Stats and campaigns can be viewed by date, and publishers can edit their site details and description at any time.

Ad Creative

All ads on AdGridwork.com are textual, displaying as purely text-based ads, but in traditional ad creative formats such as 468x60 and 120x600. This is similar to how Google’s AdSense and Bidvertiser handles ads.

Unfortunately, AdGridwork offers absolutely no ad customization, even though it would be relatively simple to implement since all ads are text-based.

Publishers are able to take advantage of the AdGridwork’s Site Exclusions feature, which allows publishers to block out specific websites. This is useful to block out competition or any other unwanted ads.

AdGridwork automatically adds a line of HTML above all their ads, displaying the linkable text “Free Advertising”. Unfortunately, this is not optional, and as a result of display above the rest of the code, it will create major formatting problems on any site that has a fixed space for their banner slot.

It would be recommended for AdGridwork to insert the “Free Advertising” link within the actual size constraints of the ad, as otherwise it makes using fixed-sized ads pointless. Better yet, this should definitely be an optional choice to publishers.

Another ad creative issue concern is that ads do not display properly in Internet Explorer 7, although they do in FireFox. For example, the bottom line of text in 468x60 banners gets clipped off in Internet Explorer, but displays fine in FireFox.

AdGridwork does permit the use of adult sites and ads, but restricts them to a private adult-only network, so they will not display on general sites.

Referral Program

While AdGridwork.com technically does have a referral program, it currently offers no incentive nor purpose other than simply helping to grow the size of their network.


Customer Support

Currently the only way to contact support is by e-mail or through a contact form, although there is a helpful FAQ listed within the member’s area.

AdGridwork states on their site that they will respond within 48-hours, but when we tested their support for this review under an unknown alias, they responded within an hour.

Summary

While AdGridwork needs to address the ad creative issues highlighted in this review, they’ve managed to provide a completely-free contextual ad-exchange network and populate it with a large network of sites.

As long as AdGridwork.com continues to improve their features and grow the size of their publisher base, they will remain near the cream of the crop of free ad-exchange networks.

TNX.net

TNX.net is an independent text link brokering service which helps advertisers and publishers buy and sell text links.

Although relatively new to the market, TNX.net has already experienced enormous growth, boasting over 30,000 publishers and advertisers, 30 million text links sold, with an average sale speed of 23,000 links per hour (at the time of this writing of November 3rd, 2007).

Features

Similar to most text link networks such as Text Link Ads and Text Link Brokers, TNX.net displays text links on publisher’s web pages through special ad code which is added by the publisher. However, TNX.net differs from these networks in two major ways:

First, TNX.net sells links on an individual page basis. A publisher can put the TNX ad code in the footer of their forum which may contain several thousand pages, and if an advertiser is interested in advertising on the forum, all of those pages can potentially be populated with paid text links. When seeing if any text links would sell on one of our forums as part of the research for this review, we found TNX sold close to 500 text links within a couple days.

Selling links on an individual page basis differs from how most text link brokers work, which is to sell text links on a sitewide basis.

The second way TNX differs from other text link networks is that instead of working directly with actual dollars, they use a point system (explained below) which can then be traded or converted into actual dollars.

Point System

Unlike the vast majority of ad networks, TNX.net utilizes a point system in lieu of working with actual dollars directly. Both publishers and advertisers work with the TNX point system; advertisers purchase an amount of TNX points before advertising, and publishers receive TNX points which can then be cashed in for actual dollars.

Unfortunately, publishers cannot set their own prices for links. Instead, the price of each link is automatically calculated by TNX according to its SEO value, working off of metrics such as Google PageRank.

With TNX points, publishers can purchase text links on other sites, hold onto their points and wait for the base value of them to increase, sell their points to another TNX member, or sell their points to TNX directly.

See the Payment section below for more information on points and payment.

Signing Up

Signing up to TNX.net is fast and easy, taking only seconds to submit a username, password, and e-mail.

The same account allows members to function as a publisher, advertiser, and affiliate, eliminating the unnecessary need for multiple accounts.

While signing up an account at TNX is fast and easy with instant approval, all websites must still be individually approved. To get a website approved into the TNX system, publishers must first add the TNX code to their website. TNX will then approve (or reject) the website within 1-3 days.

TNX requires that your website must be indexed by Google in order to be approved.

It is important to note that once approved, nothing will appear on the on the website until the pages get indexed by TNX and are sold to advertisers.

Like most text link networks, TNX’s ad code is only available in PHP, Perl, or ASP. Thus, publishers must be able to run one of the above languages in order to use TNX.

Control Panel

TNX’s control panel is fairly well laid out and easy to use. It is separated into three main sections: Webmasters, Advertisers, and Affiliate Program. The webmasters section is then divided into four smaller sections: Get Code, Add New Site, Site List, and Sell TNX-Points.

Within the Site List section, publishers can view each of their website’s statistics individually including the number of links sold and pages indexed. Publishers can also view the individual pages that are running links, see how much each link is paying per page, and manage ads.

Publishers are able to block ads, delete them, or ban the entire website which is advertising. However, TNX has a fairly strict advertising policy and does not allow ads relating to drugs, pornography, or illegal activities, ensuring that most ads are family-friendly.

Unfortunately, there is no way to view how many TNX points are made per month or set period, nor how much a particular website has made; instead only a grand total is displayed. This is a basic yet vital feature that TNX definitely needs to implement in the future.

Payment

TNX points can be traded into dollars at any time and publishers may choose between selling their TNX points to another member privately, or back to TNX themselves at the current base price.

The value of TNX points changes constantly, similar to stock value, but at the time of this review (November 3rd, 2007) the current base value is $0.66 per 1000 points.

TNX.net automatically prices pages according to PageRank. While the prices most likely fluctuate, when using TNX on one of our sites as part of our research for this review, we received 12 points (~$0.008) per link on pages with 0 PR; our PR1 pages received 600 points per link (~$0.40), PR2 pages 1200 per link (~$.80), and PR3 pages 2400 per link (~$1.60).

Assuming the price doubles as PR increases, it would mean that PR4 pages receive 4800 points per link (~$3), PR5 pages 9800 per link (~$6.50), and PR6 pages 19,600 per link (~$13) per link.

Unfortunately, TNX does not allow publishers to cash out all of their points at once. There is a maximum transfer rate of 300,000 points per day (This was actually increased from 150,000 as a result of this review), which equates to around $200 at the current point value. And the withdrawal must not be more than 50% of the total points in the account; thus a publisher with 90,000 points would have to withdraw 45,000 points the first day, 22,500 the second day, 11,250 the third day, etc.

TNX states these limits are set for security purposes, but they are much too strict and discourage larger publishers from joining. Removing or lightening these restrictions would go a long way to improving their network.

Payment is paid via PayPal with a minimum payout of $5, and takes up to three business days to process.

Referral Program

TNX.net has a referral program and pays out 13.3% of all TNX-points generated by a referred publisher, and 5% of all payments made by referred advertisers, for life.

This is a very generous referral program for a text link network, especially since it pays for life, and thus is highly recommended to join.

Referrers can link to TNX through banners or a text link, however this is unfortunately only one banner creative to choose from at this time.

Within the control panel, members can see a list of all their referrals, along with how many points they have made off of each referral.


Customer Support

Support is available through either live chat support or through their forum. We’ve received help both via their forum and live support, although their forum generally takes longer to respond.

Their live support is often available and they have been fast in their responses, helpful, and friendly.

Additional Information
For larger or higher ranked websites, TNX offers buying ad space directly for a fixed price. Publishers interested can contact their support team.
Publishers are pre-paid for text links up front, one month in advance. As such, TNX has a strict policy that the TNX ad code cannot be removed from a publisher’s website without prior notification and coordination with TNX. Failure to do so will result in the permanent ban of the publisher’s website.

Summary

TNX.net is a relative newcomer to the text link brokering market, but has been growing at an alarming rate. Its unique way of functioning as an ad network by using points and selling links on an individual basis offers both pros and cons to publishers.

While the largest drawback to TNX may be its limited withdrawal restrictions, other caveats include having to pre-arrange the removal of TNX ad code in order to avoid being banned, and not being able to set minimum link prices.

As such, TNX is probably not the best network for larger, quality sites with high PageRank, content, and traffic.

However, TNX is perfect for websites with a large amount of pages. Forums are the perfect opportunity to use TNX on. Since TNX sells links on a per-page basis, literally hundreds to thousands of links can be sold within days.

In addition, TNX code can be placed anywhere on the page, so placing it at the footer of a forum yields fairly good results considering the small amount of exposure it requires. On the test forum where we conducted part of our review of TNX we received 12 points per link per page on our forum, which equates to just under 1 cent at the current point value. While this certainly is a small number, when multiplied by 4-links per page and 1,500 indexed pages, the total jumps to 72,000 points, or close to $50 a month for 4 small links at the bottom of a forum.

Websites with hundreds or thousands of pages with PageRank can make a lot of easy money from TNX. This is where TNX.net shines and is a valuable resource for publishers.

AdToll

Launched on June 18th, 2007, AdToll is a brand new ad network on the scene that attempts to help webmasters market and sell ads on their websites to prospective advertisers.

Similar to other ad networks such as AdBrite and AdEngage, AdToll acts as the middleman between publishers and advertisers. What makes these types of networks differ from the majority is that publishers can set their own prices, and advertisers can purchase ads on specific sites.

Features

With AdToll, publishers have the ability to set their own prices (or use their Autopricing feature which uses a special formula that takes a number of key factors and calculates an appropriate price). This is beneficial for sites with very targeted niches or specialty demographics, as advertisers are always willing to pay a premium for targeted traffic.


Publishers have complete control over the content and relevancy of the ads that appear on their sites. When first setting up their account, publishers are asked to provide an allowable ad rating and select the industries they wish to restrict (if any). There are currently three ad ratings: ‘Safe’, ‘Safe & Teen’, and ‘Adult’.

In addition to the ad ratings, publishers can deny an advertiser for any reason, but most do so within 24 hours.


One small and simple, yet useful feature is the ability for publishers to optionally remove the ‘Powered by’ and ‘Advertise Here’ text shown at the bottom of AdToll banners. Publishers can even customize the ‘Advertise Here’ anchor text (but not the URL). Both the ‘Powered by’ and ‘Advertise Here’ texts contain the publisher’s referral link.

AdToll provides all of its publishers with rate cards, which provide advertising information such as prices and traffic. This is a nice little feature that publishers can link to from their website to help encourage prospective advertisers.

Signing Up

One of the major perks with AdToll is that it is extremely fast and easy for a publisher to sign-up and get started. There are no site prerequisites such as minimum traffic, and all sign-ups are instantly approved, with no waiting period.

In fact, a publisher from start to finish can sign-up, add their site, throw up AdToll ads, and start earning income within 5-minutes.

While sites that are added in a publishers account do need to be approved, publishers are still credited for the traffic they receive during this time and are shown RON (Run of Network) ads. Note, however, that if not approved, they will not receive payment.

However, sites generally get accepted fairly easily and promptly.

Control Panel

AdToll’s control panel is very simple and user-friendly, but at the same time provides pretty much everything a publisher needs.

Publishers have the ability to rotate multiple ads in one slot, up to a maximum of 30.

One great aspect of AdToll’s control panel is that their statistics are all in real-time. Within seconds of adding an ad to their site, a publisher can start seeing their impressions immediately within their control panel. Many other networks claim to update in real-time but actually update hourly or every 10-15 minutes.

AdToll also combines their control system to handle both publisher and advertisers; users who use both can administer either through the same control panel.

Payment


AdToll likes to boast their 75% payout, which is indeed more than the majority of ad networks pay.

They send out payments on the 15th of every month for the previous month's earnings, and provide the following methods of receiving payments: Cheque, PayPal, Bank Wire, or account credit.

Cheque and PayPal payments require a minimum of $20 in earnings, Wire Transfers require a minimum of $1,000 in earnings and account credit payments have no minimum. There is a $12 fee on cheques and a $30 fee on Wire/Bank Transfers.

Publishers who are also advertisers at AdToll have the option of using AdToll's account credit, where funds can be held and used at a later date to book ads; they can choose to have their publisher payments paid directly to their account credit instead of PayPal, for example, and then use that credit when paying as an advertiser.

Miscellaneous

In the situation where publishers ads are not filled with sponsored ads, Run of Network (RON) ads will be displayed. Publishers can also create default ads for their banner slots and set weighting to them as well.

Referral Program

AdToll has a referral program, to which they have recently improved greatly as of November 14th, 2007.

Their new and improved referral program now allows referrers to refer both advertisers and publishers. Previously, they only paid for referred advertisers and not publishers. They added publishers partly due to our original review.

Their new payout structure gives:
20% commission on profit made from Advertisers for 90 days
10% commission on profit made from Publishers for 365 days


This is a fantastic improvement; previously they only paid out 5% to referred advertisers for the first 30 days of their membership.

If the ‘Powered by’ and ‘Advertise Here’ links are displayed within AdToll banners, publishers automatically earn commissions as an affiliate through these links.

They have banner creative available in various sizes, as well as basic text links.

AdToll's affiliate system is far better than most ad networks, with details of each referral including their country, referring URL, and if they came an AdToll banner.

The affiliate earnings reporting displays the date, average payment, total sales, and total payment.

Customer Support

Currently, AdToll’s customer support is only available through their contact form. However, they have fast response times and are both friendly and helpful.

Summary

While AdToll is still brand new on the market, with their high 75% payout, AdToll only needs to prove that they can amass a decent advertiser base for their publishers.

One of their greatest strengths is the fast pace they've set for themselves on growing and improving their system by listening to their users. Within two months after the original posting of this review, AdToll has already added flash ads for advertisers, 300x250 video ads, and improved their affiliate program.

Also due to their high payout, AdToll should also be considered by anyone using a similar network such as AdBrite and AdEngage.

Tribal Fusion

Tribal Fusion is a very large, respected ad network in its fifth year of profitable growth. They are a popular CPM solution for high volume sites due to the high quality publishers they attract.

One of the largest networks on the Internet, Tribal Fusion currently serves over 19 billion monthly impressions and is viewed by over 160 million unique visitors. Because of its size, this network has the advantage of drawing advertisers from many different industries, and there are many advertisers in all categories. Tribal fusion enables its publishers to choose the ads they serve and different ad formats carry different publisher CPM rates.

Features

All of Tribal Fusion's advertisements are on a CPM basis and they have no CPC or CPA advertisements in their network. You can choose from a variety of ad formats to display on your site. They allow various rich media and expandable advertisements to get the attention of the visitor. Tribal Fusion's ads are all written in English and only support sites written in English.

Controls

After you sign up and are given the capability to login, you simply visit Tribal Fusion and login with your information. After logging in, you have the ability to do a variety of things.

The most important is the ability to choose your advertisement category and choose whether you want it filtered from sexual and offensive content to suite your site's content. Once logged in, you may also view your ad performance statistics. Their statistic-reporting facility enables you to view your CPM earnings from the date and the specific time you choose so you can see how different ads have been performing. The rate you receive for the ads in the network is given to you. In the menu, you also have access to your profile information and have the ability to change certain information you have submitted in the application.

Overall, the menu is easy to use and navigate and if you need help your dedicated customer helper can answer any questions.

Available Ad Types and Formats

Currently, Tribal Fusion has a large variety of ad types mainly focusing on rich media ads with flash and dynamic content to grab user's attention. These ads feature moving objects and possibly even banners that make noises so they may grab user's attention better.

The rich media ads that Tribal Fusion supports are banners in the following sizes: 728x90 leaderboard, 468x60 banner, 336x280 square, 300x250 square, 120x600 skyscraper, 160x600 leaderboard, and pop-unders which carry a higher CPM rate.

Reporting

Once logged in, publishers may view their statistics by pressing the reporting button in the publisher menu. Using this menu is very straightforward in letting you enter specific dates and times. It’s a simple thing to view how individual advertisements have performed with an impression and click count displayed by the date you have chosen..

How to Get Started

Click on the Smart Publishers section and go to Apply. There, fill out the form and proceed. They will send you an email letting you know whether you have been approved or declined as a publisher within a few days. There is a list of minimum requirements for publisher sites to meet in order to be accepted.

For example, users are not allowed to use any type of robot or fake traffic mechanism to boost revenue or they will be removed from the network. A minimum of 2000 unique visitors is required each day to the site where the ads are placed. Sites with users must have an active user base and must have a professional site design with updated and good content relating to the category of ad they display. If all these requirements are met, you will likely be approved and can go ahead and earn high CPM rates with this network.

New users have to follow a rather lengthy procedure of setting up their account information into the system, and while it can take a little while to do, it's also very easy with their help system guiding you along step-by-step.

New publishers must put Tribal Fusion's ads on their site and wait for activation before being fully activated into the network.

Payment

Tribal Fusion pays Net-45 meaning every 45 days when the minimum $50 payment has been reached. Tribal Fusion only pays Publishers 55% of the revenue they generate for your site, meaning you get only 55% of the revenue share, which is lower than the industry standard.

Offsetting this is that Tribal Fusion has some of the highest CPM rates for a CPM Ad Network, meaning that even if you only receive 55% of their revenue, you might still get a very decent rate depending on your category.

Currently, Tribal Fusion only supports paying its publishers via cheque.

More Information and Support

Tribal Fusion's support is usually very fast but can sometimtes take between 3-4 days which is still pretty good. In addition, their support staff is friendly, helpful, and informative.

They do allow ads on forums, but require publishers to tag them separately with their ad code in order to better serve their advertisers, as many advertisers prefer not to advertise on message boards.

Summary

If you have a high-traffic website, Tribal Fusion is definitely a good way to monetize your site. With high CPM rates and good customer support, Tribal Fusion is an ad network to consider using if you want to display CPM advertisements. With targeted ads that give you full control over your own ad filtering, you will receive better results and fill your ad inventory quickly. Even without a referral program, this network is definitely one of the best solutions for Large Volume Websites seeking to display CPM advertisements.

Casale Media

Casale Media is a large, well-respected advertising group and a viable choice for someone looking to generate extra earnings from their site by hosting advertisements.

One of the largest networks in existence, Casale Media’s ads are seen each month by over 170 million unique visitors worldwide. Because of its size, this network has the advantage of drawing advertisers from many different industries; at the moment, more than 6,500 companies choose to sell advertisements through this agency.

Casale Media also allows publishers a good degree of control over the advertisements that they host, and in turn is generally well liked by these users.

Features

Perhaps the most recognizable characteristic that Casale Media possesses is that they boast a 70% payout to publishers which is one of the highest payouts in the industry.

All of the advertisements provided by Casale Media pay on a CPM basis; no CPC ads are available. A variety of ad sizes are offered, in addition to pop unders, and the ads are generally both image and text, often with simple animation.

When Casale Media cannot fill an ad space for whatever reason, it will display a default ad which can be selected by the site’s owner, or a public service announcement, but it does not pay site owners when these types of advertisement are viewed.

All ads provided by Casale Media are written in English, and the network does not cater to any other languages at this time.

Controls

After logging into their control panel, site owners can edit a variety of options to adjust the advertisements that they are hosting on any of their sites, as multiple websites can be managed through one account.

To control the type of advertisements being shown their website, site owners can scroll through a list and deselect companies whose advertisements they do not wish to host, which is a useful feature for weeding out competitors’ advertisements. Also on the control panel, publishers can decide whether to auto approve sites in what are deemed “sensitive categories,” including alcohol, gambling, and sexually suggestive ads. This is also where the default ads and links to third party URLs for default pop unders can be set. These options give publishers a good degree of control over exactly what is being displayed on their site.

Additionally, advertisers can choose to set frequency caps for the pop unders that they display, with options ranging from 12 hours to one month. Minimum CPM rates can also be set for each ad type so that, if there are no ads available above that CPM, default ads will be displayed.

Available Types and Formats

Currently Casale Media offers three different sizes of stationary advertisement: a 728 x 90 leaderboard, a 120 x 600 skyscraper, and a 300 x 250 medium rectangle. In addition to these ads, a pop under is also available, in a size not exceeding 720 x 300.

Reporting

To view their earnings, users need simply to log into their account and browse the variety of reports offered by Casale Media. Updated in real time, a publisher’s earnings are reported both by site and by ad type.

Publishers can examine what time of day they make the most money, as there is an hourly report, as well as what days of the month, and which months of the year, so changes in earnings are clearly identifiable and can be precisely pinpointed as to when they occurred. These reports only apply, however, to a site’s total earnings; reports by ad type are only available in a monthly form, not hourly or daily. Additionally, Casale Media provides graphs of earnings so that publishers can get a more visual feel for how their advertising profits are changing.

How to Get Started

To begin hosting advertisements through Casale Media, site owners must complete a simple online application on the company’s website. They are then contacted on the status of this application within 24 hours and told whether or not they may begin setting up their advertisements.

To do this, users simply log in to their account, choose the ad format they wish to display on their site, customize the list of advertisers that they will accept ads from, and enter that information into their account. Casale Media then generates an html code that users can paste into their page like any other code. They will then immediately begin hosting the advertisements provided by Casale Media.

In order to be accepted as a publisher by Casale Media, site owners must have a quality site that receives more than 10,000 unique visitors per month. It must be hosted under a root domain and have a primarily English-speaking audience. Site owners cannot spam other websites, email accounts, or forums in order to get enough hits, and they also cannot put anything of a profane, adult, or illegal nature on their site. If these rules are violated, Casale Media will not accept the application.

Referral Program

In addition to paying advertisers on a CPM basis for their ad space, Casale Media also rewards publishers who refer others to their network. In addition, they allow you to refer both advertisers and publishers.

As of April 7th, 2007, referrers receives 5% of the referred publishers monthly earnings each month, or in the case of a referred advertiser, 5% of the amount the advertiser spends each month. Casale Media was contacted for this review and stated that there is currently no time limit on earning referral income (as opposed to some ad networks that only pay for 6-months for example).

Payment

Casale Media pays its publishers either through PayPal or by check, giving them a 70% cut of the earnings generated from the CPM advertisements on their site. These earnings must exceed $25 in a month in order to receive a payment; if they do not, they are rolled over into the next month; this continues to happen until the earnings reach $25 and the publisher is paid. Payment values are assessed at the end of each month, and payments are issued within 30 days.

More Information and Support

While Casale Media’s website is not as informative or straightforward as would be desirable, this is not a problem after one has all of the necessary information on the ad network, given that most of a publisher’s needs are met by the control panel, which is very simple and easy to navigate. In addition, their support, reachable by email, is friendly and helpful. They usually reply within two days.

Summary

Casale Media’s size works in its favor because, with so many advertisers, it is unlikely that this media network will be consistently unable to fill a publisher’s ad space. It is relatively user friendly, with a simple and functional control panel and good support team. Finally, its referral system provides an opportunity for publishers to make even more money, if they can involve other publishers. Casale Media provides an easy way for publishers to monetize their sites without expending much time or effort.