

Ask HN: Good advertising network for a site with 4M views per month? - LookingForHelp

I&#x27;ve been running a site for quite a few years that now sees around 4 million page views per month. It&#x27;s a large community site with discussions about software. I&#x27;ve only been running Google AdSense on it, since it was what I&#x27;d started with. But revenue is only around $2,000 a month. Based on some reading on HN, it seems I could be doing more with it, but I honestly have no idea where to start looking. Ad networks, CPC, CPM, bidding, etc.  I&#x27;ve started doing some reading and learning, but it&#x27;s a lot to take in for someone with no background in advertising (I&#x27;m primarily a programmer).<p>Any help or suggestions are appreciated.<p>Note that I&#x27;m using a throwaway account instead of my main HN account since I&#x27;m sharing my AdSense revenue numbers.
======
petercooper
I sell six figures of sponsorships each year on programmer-oriented properties
and have been through a similar situation to you in the past. My email is in
my HN profile so I'm happy to give you some context specific pointers over
email, including things I'd rather not say here.

In terms of general advice I can give here:

\- I've always found Adsense to perform poorly the more intelligent or
technical the audience is. Adblocking is one issue, but essentially
sophisticated audience == less likely to engage with weakly targeted ads
(except retargeted ads, but that's another story).

\- A community site that's so popular has great potential to get a small
subset of the audience to pay for some sort of status symbol or internal
advertising. See Reddit.

\- Depending on what the topics are, job advertising could be lucrative if
done right and promoted internally in the right way.

\- If you want to take baby steps, consider introducing some BuySellAds units
and selling your own ad space through them. You get control over your pricing
and if you have an audience an advertiser is interested in, things can work
well, especially if you can sell a site wide sponsorship type thing on a
monthly basis.

\- Do you have e-mail access to your community's members? There could be a
goldmine there if it's treated properly. Email CPMs are way higher than the
Web.

\- Ditto but for having a podcast the community listens to. Podcast CPMs are
even higher, but this is an entire project in its own right.

\- If you're in the right topic area, boutique networks like
[http://adpacks.com/](http://adpacks.com/) might work well for you. In my
experience the CPM isn't particularly mindblowing, but it should be better
than Adsense and little work for you.

~~~
mattm
> Ditto but for having a podcast the community listens to. Podcast CPMs are
> even higher, but this is an entire project in its own right.

Really? I had considered advertising on podcasts in the past but couldn't see
how it would be worth it as I figured most people listen to podcasts on the go
and wouldn't visit the advertisers. Does anyone else have experience
advertising on podcasts or can you share anything more?

------
d12b
It sounds like you are getting very low CPM from google adsense ($0.50 ecpm?).
Are your visitors from the USA?

You should consider DFP (doubleclick for publishers) and than run some
competition for adsense. Rumor has it that it will drive your CPM's up.
competition can be any ad network like Matomi, DSNRMG etc)

You can also contact companies such as the Rubicon project and they will do
this work for a commission of about 15%-20%. They claim to do better than
adsense in certain markets.

My last advice is [https://buysellads.com/](https://buysellads.com/) where you
can post your inventory and ask for more than what you currently get.

Oh, you can also contact adsense help desk and ask them to advise you on how
to improve the location of your ads (if your ads are currently on the bottom
of the page, you won't get clicks or $$)

good luck!

------
davismwfl
Sounds like petercooper would be a great contact to reach out to.

There was also a thread the other week
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709438)
that was how to monetize a smaller site, but the basics are still the same to
a certain point. But without knowing the content its kinda tough to give
specifics.

Some ideas, you can collect data/posts from the site into ebooks and sell
those, or provide training from the site on specific topic etc. And if you
haven't already I would be building the email list for a newsletter, cross
promotions etc, all of which convert at a much higher rate and do really well.

I would think that out of 4M views per month you should be able to monetize it
in multiple ways, so you do not put all your eggs in one basket as well.

------
aslewofmice
What do you mean by discussion about software? Is the readership primarily
programmers or is it software end-user discussion? Having a clear idea about
your user base is step one, and I think that should be easy for you.

How many uniques per month are you seeing?

Have you considered video? You'll need to find that balance between user-
experience and monetization.

Like someone else mentioned, you might want to consider looking into a proper
Ad Server setup where you can then tap into the programmatic ad
exchanges/networks and get more bang for your buck. DFP Small Business may be
best - it's free up to XX million imps and you can manage AdSense through it
as well.

------
jaddison
You should check out Google's Doubleclick service:
[http://www.google.ca/doubleclick/publishers/small-
business/](http://www.google.ca/doubleclick/publishers/small-business/)

Instead of just serving Adsense ads, you can set up various kinds of bidding
(or manually create ads to start with) falling back on Adsense when inventory
'runs out'.

Basically, it will end up being a manageable/overridable layer between your
site and Adsense, which you currently use.

------
fjabre
At 4 million page views per month you have to ask yourself if ads are the only
way to generate revenue from your site.

~~~
LookingForHelp
I've done some branded merchandise. It's done OK.

