Banner ads have been and always will be a popular way to make money with your blog. It isn’t exactly my favorite method, but it does work if you have the right kind of audience and the traffic to throw at it.
A lot of bloggers, too, are familiar with Google Adsense. It is the ultimate equal-opportunity blog monetization opportunity. Anybody can use it (unless you’re running an adult site or something of that ilk). And, with the right targeting and the right traffic, people can and DO bank with Adsense. (Quick Plug: Workshop On How To Maximize Revenue With Google Adsense).
While Adsense is easy, you’re also paying for it. The typical publisher split with Adsense is 68% (according to a 2010 announcement from Google, anyway). So, that means you’re giving Google 32% of the total revenue your site is earning. The big publishers (however they define that) often arrange custom splits.
So, that’s always an option.
Eventually, most bloggers who use banner ads think about direct-selling, removing the middle-man, and keeping 100% of revenue. For more on this, you can check out an older post I wrote on How To Sell Ads On Your Blog.
Many site owners end up getting confused on how to actually manage this in-house.
- How can you rotate ads on your site internally?
- How do you track performance?
- Does this mean I can’t use networks anymore like Adsense?
That last one ends up being a biggie for many.
You want to direct sell ads, but you don’t want to stop using ad networks. After all, they’re fairly dependable. You simply want to be able to use your own campaigns IF you manage to sell them and they make you more money.
OIO Publisher remains a good option for many. It allows you to run 3rd party ad networks along with your own in-house campaigns.
But, there is another option provided by Google. And it is free.
It is DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP) Small Business.
It isn’t super well-known that this solution is there. Most people just think of standard Adsense when it comes to Google. But, yes, Google bought the Doubleclick network back in 2007. Now, you can use the power of Doubleclick – for free.
DFP allows you to manage your in-house inventory AND integrate Adsense into it. You can also use any other third-party ad network with no problem. So, you can sell in-house ad campaigns and still seamlessly have Adsense use up your unsold inventory. The system can even maximize revenue by running whichever networks is paying you the most.
Setting up DFP has a lot of similarities to setting up Adsense… however, it is a bit more complicated. You have to take the time to set up the different ad placements and ad slots. If you sell a direct campaign, you set up an order, set up creatives, tell it which slots to deliver the banners to, etc. The first time or two you do it, it will take a little trial and error. They also have a Youtube channel with video tutorials for it.
You’ve also got pretty much any option you might need for campaigns. For example, sometimes an advertiser might want to limit display of their banner only to the U.S. You can geo-locate a campaign easily with DFP. You can also target campaigns to a user’s browser, language, operating system, or domain. You can do frequency capping easily (capping the number of times per day a user sees the same ad).
I also like the fact that it is all managed by Google. Less headache that way.
There is no WordPress plug-in that I can find to auto-integrate this into your blog. To set up the ad tags, you’ll need to modify your theme manually and insert the ad tags into the right spot.
If advertising is part of how you make your money online, then definitely check out DFP.
David has been blogging for 15 years, and generating a six-figure income at it for the last 12. He is the founder of Blog Marketing Academy. 
David Risley has been building and operating authority blogs for 15 years, and operating a six-figure business doing it for a decade.
How do DFP’s level of control compare to a self-hosted adserver like OpenX?
It is similar. However, OpenX has to be manually set up and maintained because it is self-hosted. Things like geo-targeting require a third-party database (last I checked) to be set up with OpenX. And, being that it doesn’t integrate seemlessly with Adsense, you don’t have the easiness in terms of backfill inventory.
It has been awhile since I’ve used OpenX. In fact, that was back when it was still called something different. But, I remember being stumped by some of the things like geo-targeting and how to make it work right.
I never liked Google Adsense because of the way it looks on other sites. Some just do it wrong and it kinda turned me off. Money never turns me off, but it’s the appearance that I frowned on. I use banner ads, but also monetize my site while acknowledging that it’s my affiliate link.
One thing that I feel works best for me is doing reviews. I don’t just slap up some lame words and say buy, but I get pretty in depth so a non-user thinking about purchasing the product gets a real life review with the good and the bad. I think using what works best for your site is all that matters. What I can’t stand is a site with tons of banner ads and they make no sense with their niche.
Yeah, not everybody digs Adsense. But, DFP isn’t Adsense. You don’t have to use Adsense with it. DFP is just an advanced banner inventory manager powered by Google, but they don’t inject Adsense into it unless you allow it.
I was wondering when a name-brand blogger was going to spill the beans on DFP (formerly Google Ad Manager). Too bad you let the secret out
A good blogging friend told me about DFP a year or more back (Thanks Bob) and I’ll always be grateful. It’s really a wonderment that so many ignore this great tool. But, then again, there’s no way to make money with it by selling it to one’s readers so perhaps that’s why it’s such an unknown quantity. Really ads a sidebar also to my wonderment at how so many people want to make money (with or without using AdSense), yet so few have any advertising system in place. If you want to make money, you have to open the door for money to come in
Well buddy whatever you said
in this article is true. I’m currently using Banner ads to promote my
sites and to earn more money from online. Thanks
One thing to watch out for here–last i checked, I believe it’s against the Adsense TOS to run competitive ads against Google Adsense units from inside some other ad system. In fact, I think they had “Adsense for Apps” for dynamic pages for a little while but that was discontinued–Google really just wants static pages that don’t change. (Maybe that’s a unique advantage of DFP, because it’s owned by Google? No idea!) Of course some of these other ad management guys will tell you otherwise, but they’re not working for Google–and they’re not the ones who will lose big when your Adsense account is turned off. Recently Google visited my city (I couldn’t make it that day) but this is exactly the kind of question I would love to ask Google face to face. Unless you are making several thousand $ per month with Google, or know some secret handshake, you’re just a number to them–really all you can do is ask questions in their help forums. (I’ve made many thousands of $ with Google and never once has anyone at Google reached out to me personally, like with a phone call.) So most of you probably don’t have a contact inside Google to ask esoteric questions like this to confirm you won’t get automatically flagged by some new algorithm down the road for trying something fancy like this. As much as I still depend on Google Adsense payments each month, after like 7 years of running their ads–it’s definitely a tenuous relationship. I still love producing content but finally this year decided to spend more time on client work and selling services.
I don’t believe that’s correct. I don’t think it is uncommon at all to use Adsense as backfill on a site. Besides, they actually flaunt that ability as a selling point when it comes to DFP… so I don’t think they would do that if it were against TOS.
I do agree about the lack of people to call, though. I have yet to ever talk to anybody from Google.
nice i’ll try and use this
Wondering what is the difference between Adsense and DFP. I think it counts which one is more profitable and safe, has anyone experience to compare these two?
good , am going to have a look on that , for sure.
I am not happy with Google Adsense because of the approval time it takes whenever any issue is detected on site and top of that we are not aware of such things.. So never try to play any trich with Google may be Google is playing is playing with you.You may use banner ads to earn money from your site, this is an excellent technique guys.thanks!!! Nice post
The free Plugin Simple Ad Manager has support for Google DFP, its available on the WordPress Plugin repository. Regarding the TOS someone mentioned – Google is actually encouraging Publishers to run competing ads – this way they get a chance to deliver better performing ads. So nothing to worry here. However must not be true the other way around, some other ad networks disallow running their ads against Google.