
Ask HN: Google Adsense Alternative? - thescribbblr
Let&#x27;s face it, Google has monopoly in the ad space business. Many times, they terminate the account without any clarification and cease the earned amount too. So, is there any good adsense alternative available out there?
======
seddin
I too lost my Google Adsense account exactly when I had reached the minimum
quantitiy to be able to get a paycheck, they banned me and kept my 100 €,
which took me months of doing SEO, writting content, and much more.

So what I have been trying lately, is contacting directly clients that might
be interested in placing an ad on my website, maybe we need some sort of a new
social network for people to sell ad spots on their websites.

~~~
zubspace
Selling ad spots on your website yourself has many drawbacks:

* It's time consuming for the seller and buyer.

* You need to give the buyer reliable statistics. Page-Views, Click-Trough rate, demographics and what not, before and after you sell the ad spot.

* You need to define the price, which is not that simple.

* You need to provide the technical means to manage and display the ads.

* You need to prevent abuse.

* You need a contract for each buyer.

* The buyer needs to trust you.

* You need to trust the buyer.

I think that ship has long sailed. It would be tremendously cool, if there was
some kind of self-hostable ad software, which takes care of the technical
details and would act as middle man, connecting buyers and sellers. Some kind
of open marketplace based on open software. But I doubt, this will ever
happen. Would be a cool thing to disrupt the current industry though.

~~~
thescribbblr
What things does this software need to care of like logging clicks, ip
address, geolocation, ctr etc?

~~~
zubspace
Just take a look at the google ads API to get an impression about all metrics
you can get from an ad [1]. It's frightening detailed and complex.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/google-
ads/api/fields/v2/metri...](https://developers.google.com/google-
ads/api/fields/v2/metrics)

------
rchaud
I'm curious to know what kind of solo websites make money from Adsense. Of
course giant publications like NYTimes and Buzzfeed do, but they are
publications, so are constantly putting out new articles and have tons of
staff to do that work.

To be honest, every non-media site I've seen Adsense ads on have been fairly
low-quality aggregator blogs that cover a wide variety of unrelated topics,
have no clear identity/differentiator and appear to exist solely to generate
AdSense revenue. These are the types of site you come across once, and never
go back to again.

I'm in the nonprofit space and have been thinking about building a site
focused on fundraising strategy. Adsense is likely not the right match for
this, but I'm curious to know how people have monetized it with single-subject
websites.

~~~
fourstar
The future is BAT/Brave with incentivized browsing.

~~~
rchaud
I'm a happy user of Android Brave browser, and even I know that there will
never be enough users for BAT to take off. BTW, the desktop Brave browser on
Mac OS is horribly slow and has compatibility issues with Chrome extensions
that it says it supports.

Fortunately the Android browser's adblocking is very good, and the ability to
turn scripts off with a single toggle means I won't be switching anytime soon.

------
dguo
For programming related websites, CodeFund[1] is an option. I tried both
Carbon and CodeFund for one of my websites[2], and CodeFund paid out
significantly more.

CodeFund is also open source and seems committed to desirable principles, like
not doing any user tracking through cookies.

In a feedback survey, I said that I hope they can one day expand beyond
programming websites and become a general alternative to AdSense.

[1]: [https://codefund.io/](https://codefund.io/)

[2]: [https://www.makeareadme.com/](https://www.makeareadme.com/)

~~~
thescribbblr
Do codefund pay well?

~~~
cavneb
CodeFund charges a fixed price to advertisers based on geolocation and
audience [1]. We pay on average between 65% - 80% of all gross revenue to our
publishers.

This month (Oct 2019), we brought in approximately $75K in revenue. Of that,
approximately $53k will be paid out to publishers next week.

If you follow our newsletter [2] you can see our MTD stats (including
financials) each week.

Unlike the other ad platforms, our mission is to grow and sustain open source
projects. We do this through _ethical_ advertising (no cookies, tracking,
collecting data, etc).

[1]
[https://codefund.io/advertiserkit2019q4.pdf](https://codefund.io/advertiserkit2019q4.pdf)

[2] [https://us16.campaign-
archive.com/home/?u=e95ff716114dbc939f...](https://us16.campaign-
archive.com/home/?u=e95ff716114dbc939f8ef6100&id=f036681f65)

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of CodeFund

~~~
thescribbblr
Awesome! So, how do you guys keep tracks of clicks? When you don't log users
data? Also, mind giving an interview for a blog (related to tech and people
changing it) that i am thinking to start?

------
seanwilson
Carbon Ads ([https://www.carbonads.net/](https://www.carbonads.net/)) are
decent if you've got a developer or tech audience. I've seen them used on
CodePen and Smashing Machine I think.

Big positives for me are:

\- You can securely include them on your page without having to run third
party JavaScript or inject third party HTML. They have an API that just
provides a JSON feed of the ads to show (each ad is a heading + description +
logo + tracking pixel, no HTML) so you can write your own (non-bloated)
JavaScript for displaying them. This approach is good for Chrome extensions
too as there you're not allowed to include external JavaScript files.

\- This also means you can customise how the ads are displayed so they don't
look out of place or bloat your pages. I was surprised they let you do this.
My contact there pretty much told me I can make them look however I want (e.g.
size, colours, fonts).

I'm using Carbon Ads on this page for example (see just above the first
subheading, make sure you have adblock disabled):

[https://www.checkbot.io/guide/](https://www.checkbot.io/guide/)

------
latest-release
Google rejected my very organized
site([https://www.nmmapper.com](https://www.nmmapper.com)) for now good reason
at all. And yes I got an alternative which has good payout.

Now I use revenuehits.com

~~~
thescribbblr
Do revenuehits pay well?

------
sct202
If you know what your readers would buy, you can sign up for affiliate
programs that they might be interested in and basically serve rotating ads
yourself. It's definitely a lot more work, and becomes more worth it the
bigger and more targeted your audience is.

~~~
thescribbblr
Tried affiliate marketing with no luck in the past. Don't know if it's easy
now a days to sell products easily?

~~~
sct202
I've found products are hard, but services can be easier especially ones with
free trials/free tiers. But like, I had one going pretty well and then it
dried up. For me personally, I find it harder to want to do affiliate programs
because it seems more like a personal endorsement of the product/service than
Adsense.

------
djzidon
Consider AdThrive, MediaVine, Media.net, and Monumetric

~~~
thescribbblr
Does these services pay similar to Google Adsense?

~~~
djzidon
I'm only familiar with AdThrive and MediaVine, and certainly it depends on the
niche, but most folks make significantly more. I know someone who jumped 5x
when they switched. Just a heads up though, the requirements are higher:
AdThrive requires 100,000 monthly views and MediaVine requires 25,000
sessions.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Adthrive and Mediavine promise more revenue per page, and do achieve it, but
mainly by putting more ads on the page, and then refreshing them after a set
period of time. A typical Mediavine page might have 5+ ads on it.

------
agnelvishal
You can join the waitlist for Brave ads at [https://brave.com/brave-ads-
waitlist](https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist) Brave Browser is made By
Brendan Eich who created the javascript programming language and the cofounder
of Mozilla Foundation.

------
jptoor
Look into affiliate marketing. If your niche has any businesses in it, chances
are you could potentially get as much if not more on a revshare model.
Slightly more upfront setup with partnerships, but a learning opportunity
nonetheless.

------
markliber
That are not porn ads? No, I haven't found any.

But you're 100% right, google is a dangerous predator monopoly.

------
soared
FYI you’re looking for a “supply side platform” or ssp. Adsense will have the
best payouts most likely, unless you find an ssp specific to your niche or are
willing to put in some effort.

The suggestions in this post are old but it gives a good intro on the subject.

[https://medium.com/adngin-s-all-things-content-blog/too-
smal...](https://medium.com/adngin-s-all-things-content-blog/too-small-for-
most-ssps-top-5-supply-side-platforms-to-try-c5c82b9a5fa9)

------
kikukanone
According to [https://ethical.net](https://ethical.net) there are privacy
focused alternatives: Intravert[0] and ContextCue[1]

But I don't have any experience with both of them.

[0] [https://intravert.co/](https://intravert.co/) [1]
[https://contextcue.com/](https://contextcue.com/)

------
dana321
Taboola, A9, industry brains, outbrain are a few.

Take a look at the list of providers on the google amp-ad tag..

[https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-
ad/](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-ad/)

------
mkr-hn
There's WordAds for WordPress-based sites.

[https://wordads.co/](https://wordads.co/)

I used it years ago and it worked okay. I don't know what it's like now.

------
edoceo
Carbon ads, if your site meets their quality requirements.

~~~
thescribbblr
Do carbonads pay well?

------
PaulHoule
There are other services that look similar but pay 10% as much, if that, and
look sleazier...

~~~
thescribbblr
Like?

~~~
technotarek
e.g., JuicyAds Tried them for a NSFW-lite Apple parody website. Never saw a
penny, but the site didn’t take off either.

------
technotarek
Carbon ads? Tech space only from what I understand.

------
Dolores12
facebook, yandex, instagram, snapchat, bing, aol, yahoo. not centralised, but
there are still some traffic.

~~~
thescribbblr
Didn't get

~~~
Dolores12
oh yeah my bad. yandex
[https://yandex.com/support/partner2/joining.html](https://yandex.com/support/partner2/joining.html)

