Looking for the best Google AdSense alternatives to help you monetize your website?
While AdSense is definitely the biggest name
in display advertising, it’s far from the only option.
Whether you’re looking for something to
completely replace AdSense or just another complementary advertising option,
there are plenty of other services that you can use to monetize your site.
In this post, I’ve collected the best advertising platforms. Some offer almost a 1:1 replacement for AdSense, while others give you something a little unique, like text ads, contextual product suggestions, and more.
Let’s get going so you can start earning…
Note: Ezoic is the best advertising platform for most users. Use it to deploy ads from a large selection of ad networks, and optimize ad layouts for higher ad revenue automatically. It’s accessible and has a low payout threshold. Start your trial.
The best Google AdSense alternatives compared
1. Ezoic
Ezoic is the best advertising & monetization platform for most users.
While it’s not strictly an ad network as such, it’s quite possibly the easiest way to deploy advertising on your website, and increase ad revenue.
This, in part, is thanks to it’s ability to integrate with a large variety of popular ad networks (Media.net and Google AdSense included).
And it’s ability to intelligently test and optimize your ad layouts in the background.
This means you can stop wasting time guessing which ad layouts will work and you’ll improve ad revenue as well.
What I particularly like about Ezoic is that when you start your tests, you can focus on increasing ad revenue, improving user experience, or finding a great balance between the two.
Ezoic used to only be accessible to those with 10K/monthly visitors. However, if you have less than that, you can join via their Access Now program.
2. Media.net
Media.net is the most popular 1:1 AdSense alternative on this list as it’s the contextual ad product from Yahoo/Bing. It will serve up relevant ads based on the content on each page of your site, including both text and display ads
Like AdSense, you can create your own custom
display ads or let Media.net figure out the sizes that get you the best
results.
If you only try one AdSense alternative on
this list, I would recommend it be this one.
The minimum payout at Media.net is $100, which is a bit higher than some of the other AdSense alternatives on this list.
3. Monumetric
Monumetric helps you make money by filling your ad inventory with the highest CPM offers available. Essentially, you set up the ad inventory that you have available on your site. Then, Monumetric helps you fill it in the way that earns you the most money for the impressions that you’re getting.
Monumetric has a reputation for being
publisher-focused, with tools to help you manage which ads appear on your site
and where they display.
For example, if you don’t want to display ads
from a certain company or industry, Monumetric makes it easy for you to avoid
those advertisers.
Monumetric works with sites starting at just 10,000 page views per month. However, if your site is under 80,000 page views, Monumetric charges a one-time $99 setup fee.
4. BuySellAds
BuySellAds is notable in that it’s not about automatically displaying contextual ads like you get with AdSense. Instead, you can list your ad inventory in the BuySellAds marketplace, where advertisers can directly purchase it.
For example, you can say, “I have this
footer ad spot that gets 30,000 impressions. I’ll sell it for $300 per
month”. Then, advertisers can easily purchase that inventory through
BuySellAds – it’s all automated.
If you like that approach, definitely give BuySellAds a look.
The only downside is that BuySellAds will only work with your site if you’re getting over 100,000 page views per month.
Note: At some point you’ll have ad space available and nothing displaying until your ad space is sold. To ensure you’re not losing out, you can set “backfill” ads to run until your ads sell. One option is to pick out high converting affiliate offers from popular affiliate marketing platforms – they’ll give you banner codes to copy and paste.
5. Sovrn //Commerce (Formerly VigLink)
Sovrn //Commerce is the rebranded incarnation of VigLink. It helps you monetize your site by automatically inserting contextual advertising links into your content. These links are given to the highest-bidding retailer on the platform.
Sovrn //Commerce can also help you
automatically add affiliate links to existing product mentions that you’ve
already linked to on your site.
While the name is oddly confusing – why are
there two slashes? – Sovrn //Commerce is neat because it’s fairly unobtrusive.
Rather than large banner or text ads, it’s just adding a link to content that
already exists.
The minimum payout at Sovrn //Commerce is just $10.
6. Amazon Associates / Native Shopping Ads
Amazon Associates is Amazon’s own affiliate network.
While a lot of people only think about Amazon Associates in the context of manually inserting relevant affiliate links into content, Amazon Associates also has its own contextual advertising offering called Amazon Native Shopping Ads.
With these native ads, Amazon will automatically display relevant products based on the content of each page on your site. If your visitors click on those products and make a purchase, you’ll get an affiliate commission just as if you’d manually inserted the link yourself.
The only downside is that you’ll still only
get paid if someone makes a purchase – you won’t get paid just for impressions
or clicks like you do with AdSense.
The minimum payout threshold at Amazon
Associates is $10.
If you decide to use Amazon Associates, make sure you familiarize yourself with all the rules, as Amazon Associates is a lot stricter than other affiliate networks. For example, you cannot cloak Amazon affiliate links.
7. PropellerAds
PropellerAds can help you monetize your website with a variety of different ad types, including some aggressive ad types that may or may not be right for you.
The two tamest ad formats are:
- Native banners which contain
contextual ads related to your content. - Smart links which automatically
take users to the most relevant offer
If you want to get more aggressive,
PropellerAds can also help you with…
- Onclick/popunder ads
- Interstitials which appear before
or after specific pages on your site - Push notifications, which let you
advertise even after the person has left your site (if they accept your request to display push notifications)
PropellerAds offers weekly payouts and the minimum payment amount is just $5.
8. ylliX
If you thought Sovrn //Commerce was an odd name, let’s up the ante with ylliX. That…well, that is technically a name. “illix”, “why lie X”…I don’t know.
But don’t worry – they’re better at helping
you monetize your website than they are at coming up with brandable company
names.
ylliX guarantees a 100% worldwide fill rate.
It has a variety of ad types and supports CPM, CPC, and CPA campaigns.
The minimum payout at ylliX is just $1 and
ylliX supports daily payments, which is definitely one of the most generous
payment policies of any of these AdSense alternatives.
While that’s all well and good, I have seen
some complaints about ylliX letting dodgy advertisers onto the platform. So if
that’s a concern for you, you might want to go with one of the other AdSense
alternatives on this list.
For example, Monumetric or Media.net are probably much better choices if your site’s reputation is of utmost importance to you.
9. Skimlinks
Skimlinks uses a similar approach to the Sovrn //Commerce (VigLink) ad network that you saw above.
Essentially, it scans your content for
mentions of the over 48,500 affiliate merchants in Skimlinks’ network. If it
finds a mention, Skimlinks automatically adds an affiliate link to give you a
chance to earn a commission.
The nice thing is that, because it has so many affiliate merchants in its ad network, you don’t have to deal with a bunch of separate programs.
The minimum payment is just $10, but Skimlinks operates on a Net 90 basis, which means you’ll have to wait a bit to get paid.
10. Bidvertiser
Bidvertiser helps you monetize your website with a variety of ad formats including display banners, popunders, sliders, smartlinks, and programmatic ads.
They guarantee 100% coverage for both desktop
and mobile visitors, which means you’ll always have some type of ad displaying.
While Bidvertiser does support some more
aggressive ad types (like popunders), they have a compliance team to ensure
that the advertisers themselves are on the up and up.
The minimum payout at Bidvertiser is just $10.
11. Infolinks
Infolinks is an advertising network that offers a variety of ad types to help you monetize your advertising space on your website:
- InText – Matches ads to keywords in your content. The ad is not just a link – it will actually show a display ad when a user hovers over the keyword.
- InFold – Notification bar-style ads that stick to the bottom of the screen on both desktop and mobile.
- InScreen – A popup interstitial that displays between page views.
- InTag – Contextual ads directly related to the page.
- InFrame – Displays vertical ads on the unused side portion of your site on wide screens.
These give you a good range of both aggressive
and unobtrusive options, and Infolinks has a pretty good reputation as far as
the quality of its advertisers.
The minimum payout at Infolinks is $50.
12. Revcontent
Revcontent is a somewhat exclusive ad network that focuses more on quality than quantity, which is good if you’re concerned about your site’s reputation.
You have a lot of control over which ads
display, and you can remove ads that you don’t want to display on your site.
Revcontent requires a minimum of 50,000 visitors per month to apply, and they reject a lot of publishers. If you make it in, the minimum payout is $50.
13. Taboola
Taboola helps you monetize your website with article suggestions that appear after your content. You’ve probably seen Taboola ads around as they’re pretty common, especially with news sites.
You know – the clickbaity-style article
suggestions like “15 foods you should never eat after age 30”.
If you’re ok with clickbait on your site, Taboola is definitely an effective monetization option, though it’s tough to get into because the minimum traffic requirement is 500,000 page views per month.
14. AdRecover
In 2019, around 26% of Internet users are using ad blockers to block advertising. Why does that matter? Because AdRecover is an ad network that’s focused specifically on helping you monetize your visitors who use ad blockers.
It does this by displaying fast-loading,
user-friendly ads that are compliant with ad blockers.
For example, AdBlock participates in the Acceptable Ads program, which lists out certain criteria that ads must meet in order to bypass the ad blocker. AdRecover’s ads meet those requirements, which is why some, but not all, ad blockers will still allow them.
In total, AdRecover supports these three ad
blockers:
- AdBlock
- AdBlockPlus
- Crystal
In order to join AdRecover, you’ll need at least 10,000 adblocked pageviews per month. Based on ad block usage, that means you’ll probably need 40-50,000 monthly page views.
15. Adversal
Adversal is a self-serve ad platform for native ads (the same style of ads as Taboola). In addition to native content, you can also include native video ads, as well as more traditional display ads.
If you don’t have enough traffic for Taboola, Adversal might be a better option because it only requires a minimum of 50,000 page views per month.
16. PopCash
As the name suggests, PopCash is a popular popunder ad network.
Popunder ads are aggressive, and they may or
may not be right for your website.
But if you’re ok with the strategy, PopCash is
one of the best ad platforms dedicated to this type of ad.
PopCash offers fast approvals, daily payments,
and the minimum payment is just $10, which means you can be up and earning in
no time.
And while the ads are popunders, PopCash does have both internal and external monitoring processes to ensure that the ads are clean and free of malware.
Which is the best AdSense
alternative for you?
All of these AdSense alternatives have
something to offer – it really just depends on…
- How aggressive you want to be with
your monetization - What type of ads you want to
display - How much control you want over
which ads are displayed - Your tolerance level for the
chance that a scummy advertiser slips through and gets displayed on your site
Overall, Ezoic makes the most sense. While not strictly a direct replacement for AdSense, it’s the easiest and most flexible way to display ads on your site.
If you want something like AdSense where you can pretty much just set it and forget it and serve up clean, contextual ads, I think Media.net makes a great starting point.
As I mentioned, it’s probably the closest
thing to AdSense itself in terms of approach.
Monumetric is another great option if you want more control over which ads display and are concerned about your site’s reputation. And you’ll never go wrong with Amazon Associates, though product ads may or may not work well for your site.
AdRecover is also a good source for high-quality ads, though it’s obviously limited in its scope because it only targets visitors who are using ad blockers.
As for the others, I think the link-based ad networks like Sovrn //Commerce and Skimlinks are great options because they offer really unobtrusive ways to monetize your site without having to manually sign up & add links for individual affiliate networks.
BuySellAds also offers a unique marketplace approach where things are closer to direct ad sales than all these other AdSense alternatives.
Finally, if you’re willing to be a little more aggressive, you can check out platforms like Bidvertiser and others of that ilk. These can be a little more hit-and-miss when it comes to the quality of the advertisers, but they can still make a good option for certain types of sites.
And no matter which ad network(s) you choose, a WordPress advertising management plugin can help you more effectively serve up those ads.
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Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. This means we may make a small commission if you make a purchase.
