
Ask HN: Shall I run my own adserver? - trienthusiast
Hello,<p>at the present time, advertising on my site is managed by a company that sells ads to relevant companies then serves them on my site, filling the remaining inventory with other ad networks.<p>At this time, they do the selling and the serving. I receive a monthly check which is the ad sales minus their commission (50%), minus serving costs.<p>There is no reporting, I never get any other detail other than the final amount.<p>Because of this - I would like to start moving to my own adserver (bonus if I don&#x27;t need to physically host it myself) and just plug the ads that they sell.<p>How complicated is it? Worth the effort in your opinion, counting that I don&#x27;t want to do any selling myself ?<p>Also, a big chunk of revenue is lost because they don&#x27;t do responsive ads. All ads are sold on a desktop pageview basis and I know nowadays you can place some kind of placeholder and it will be rendered with a properly sized ad depending on the resolution.<p>Am i getting into a lot of trouble for wanting to do this on my own?
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jeffmould
First, a 50% commission rate seems a bit high if that does not even include
serving costs.

The biggest question is will they sell the ad space for you and allow you to
serve the ads yourself? Even still, this only reduces your serving costs while
you still would be paying the commission, which to me seems like the higher of
the two costs.

To answer your question about handling the serving of ads yourself, there are
several options out there. Probably one of the best known for a managed
solution is OpenX ([http://openx.com](http://openx.com)). On the other hand
there is Revive Adserver ([http://revive-adserver.com](http://revive-
adserver.com)) which is self-hosted and is actually the open source version of
OpenX.

One caveat of running your own server though will be that you are responsible
for your own inventory on the site. You can always fill any remaining
inventory with Google Adsense or similar though. Long-story short, I would say
unless you have substantial traffic to your site and are making significant
money through ads on your site it is most likely not worth the hassle. If, on
the other hand, your site has high enough traffic and your current ads are
well targeted and have a high action rate for the advertiser you may be able
to start selling your own ad space or find a better ad provider with better
terms.

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trienthusiast
Hey - thanks for the answer.

We do receive approximately 1M pageviews a month - with usually 2-3 ads per
page.

The company who does the selling now has a sales funnel that we cannot match.
Close relationships to big companies to whom they sell very relevant
campaigns.

This said, we make approximately $2/3,000 per month with advertising.

I believe it's really small. They say it's because half of the pageviews are
on mobile so many of their ads don't show.

Even this considered, I am growing tired of having that revenue amount as my
only benchmark. I have been asking for detailed reporting for months and have
not received any...

Regarding the choice - why no DFP? It seems to be the easiest one.

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Dolimiter
I presume that the content on your website is somewhat NSFW, otherwise you
would be using Google Adsense or media.net to server the adverts. They give
full reports, pay well, and in my experience pay higher for mobile browsers.

You say that they send you a cheque, with no breakdown of figures. This seems
almost unbelievable to me.

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trienthusiast
not NSFW at all! Actually our advertisers are as Top100 as they come!

Adsense was not really performing that well when we made the switch, but even
after the switch to the new provider - we haven't experienced the highs we
were hoping for.

But yes, the company who manages our inventory is quite respected in the
industry we are in - simply horrible with their reporting for our figures.

And yes, no breakdown of figures. I guess this is the wake up call i needed to
either start receiving reporting, or sever our relationship.

thanks

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themonk
Would like to learn about company that can pay better than adsense on regular
basis. I am reading this first time.

Edit: I would suggest you to give one more try to adsense, it might perform
better this time.

~~~
trienthusiast
It's an agency. They have actual sales people who have relationships with the
companies and sell them ad campaigns on individual sites (in a certain niche).

~~~
themonk
Thanks, got it, _niche_ is the keyword here.

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Gustomaximus
I would get some detailed reporting. Perhaps try a few alternate solutions on
a couple of pages to see how they compare. A 50% commissions seems steep and
you should probably implement some internal tagging or event monitoring so you
can double check counts.

Overall I'd be inclined to try alternate plugin solutions over running your
own server as it come with time management and generally businesses (I can
know your so take it with a pinch of salt) are best spend specialising on what
they do. If you want some direct cash you can always try to sell some page
takeover or other sponsored events if requested.

~~~
trienthusiast
the idea of internal tagging to start having a better idea of impressions is
good.

I'll have our developer work on it.

The problem here is that the company we work with has access to the big names
in the industry. Having their ad campaigns on our sites actually adds
credibility to the sites themselves.

But I might start looking into cutting my middleman and going to the
advertisers directly.

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skiltz
I would run all the Ads through DFP so you can then track performance.
[https://www.google.com/dfp](https://www.google.com/dfp) \- Its really easy to
setup. You can then also run adsense for any outstanding inventory you're not
using.

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cmdrfred
I have also considered this. It allows you for a lot more freedom and control.

