I have been a web developer for several years, but have never been privy to “ins” and “outs” of web-based advertising. When you search online for introductory material on internet advertising, unless you know the right buzzwords to search for (which I don’t) you only come up with literature that target either: (a) the total laymen, or (b) “mom and pop shop” type website owners that don’t do any of their own coding. Sites that tell you about the basics of banner ad networks, and IAB size guidelines, and so forth.
What I am interested in is a technical introduction to web-based advertising. Say I have a website and I want to use some real estate on each one of my pages for advertisements.
- Where do I start?
- Do I set up an account somewhere and program divs/spans in my page to hit some banner ad server?
- Do I download and configure some script on my web server?
What I’m really looking for is both a broad and deep insight into all the advertising options out there, and how one actually rigs up these ad systems to their site: everything from AdSense to exchange networks, pay per click models, and everything in between.
If anyone knows of this kind of literature, can you point me in the right direction?
You can do it however you like, from a technical perspective. The online advertising world is very, very broad and there is a great deal of variety. The hardest part, however, is getting advertisers. Without people paying for you to advertise their products/services, it doesn’t do you any good.
I would suggest signing up for an account with an advertising company, such as Google AdSense. They take care of matching up advertisers with web properties, and it’s very simple to provide the needed hooks. They have everything very well documented and it’s very easy to get up and running. I’m pretty sure that the AdSense signup process even walks you through what you need to do, which is as simple as adding additional HTML to your page(s).
Trying to find your own advertisers and implement your own solution is just going to be a giant waste of time in the majority of cases because the market is so saturated with many better options for advertisers to use.
In the end, the best way to get info on how to integrate with an ad network is to simply contact them and ask. Most of the reputable ones already have good documentation on how to put their ads on your site.
In general, the primary way ad networks work is that you add HTML to your page that references some resource via a URL (often with your account number or similar identifier) on a server that the ad network controls. The resource might be an image, a video, a chunk of JavaScript, or anything else really (an iFrame is another common one).
In most cases, it will be a chunk of JavaScript or an iFrame and the script will get an ad off of their network and set it inside a link. This link is usually a link back to their server, which then redirects the user clicking it to whatever destination the ad is driving traffic to.
By hitting a resource on their server, they are counting the number of “impressions” or “views” that particular piece of advertising got from your site, and by routing the click through their server, they are counting the number of clicks. Since you send them your account ID when you request the resource, they can associate this all with your account and pay you based on “cost-per-click” (CCP) and/or number of impressions.
Other examples of non-standard ads (eg. a banner somewhere) include ad networks that use a script to scan the text content of your pages and selectively turn some words into links, often with larger ads that pop up when the user’s mouse goes over them. A variation on this are the ads that pop up when you first enter a site, or ones that “attach” to the users’ cursor for a specified amount of time.
All of these examples, however, are rather invasive and will likely piss your users off and will reduce the number of users you have on your site, which is a BAD THING. Google has done lots and lots of research regarding effective ad placement, including things like size, color, differentiation from the rest of the site content, etc. and they make much of this information available through the AdSense documentation.