What are Ad Networks?
Ad network is a medium between the ad publishers or those who want to host advertisements on their websites and the advertisers. The main functionality of the ad network is to collect the ad space from the publishers and allocate it for ads by the advertiser. Ad network serves as a good medium for the website owners who want to earn revenue from their online sites. For every click on ad, a share of advertiser’s revenue is paid to the website owner or the publisher.

The advertiser networks actually act as the advertising agents which invite companies to publicize online with ads and will also help the advertisers to place their ads on the websites that are most relevant to their ad campaign. Ads posted by the advertisers can be anything like banner ads, text links, rich media ads or even promotional emails.

Types of Ad Networks
The ad networks or advertising networks are generally classified on the basis of various factors say business strategy, clients, traffic quality and format of the ads they support. But, the most important of all are the first-tier and second-tier ad networks.

First tier advertising networks are those which attract high quality traffic and do have their own, large advertisers and publishers group. Many second tier advertising networks can get their ads and traffic from these first tier networks. The best examples of these first tier ad networks include Google AdSense, yahoo etc. On the other hand, the second tier ad networks have their own but comparatively smaller group of publishers and advertisers than the first tier networks. These second tier networks usually get their revenue by syndicating ads from other networks.

Ad Networks for Publishers and Advertisers
Functionality of ad networks is dependent on the advertisers and publishers. While the publishers wish to earn revenue from their websites by joining an ad network, the advertisers look to target the right audience for branding needs by posting ads on the advertising networks.

The important concerns that publishers generally look in while joining an ad network are the ad prices and timely payment for the ads on their websites. Payments to the publishers are usually done through two ways – CPM and CPC. CPM means Cost Per Impression and hence, the publisher gets paid as the ads get displayed on their website, while in CPC which Cost Per Click, publishers are paid for every click on ad posted on their website. All the publisher websites but only those that adhere to the fixed standards in regards to their design are approved by the networks for ad publishing.

For advertisers, the main concern for selecting an ad network is to see that their ads reach out to the right audience, protection of their brand online and their ad campaign to generate value in the real world through increase in their sales or business. The ad prices, their types and formats published on the network, targeted ad capability and contract flexibility can be the key factors which can lead an advertiser to select or disapprove an ad network for their advertising needs.

However, to place advertisements on websites and to monitor the progress of advertising campaigns, ad server is required. Hence, both publishers as well as advertisers require ad server development services to develop a software for delivering advertisements to users, to manage website’s advertising space and to provide an independent ad tracking system for the advertisers. There are number of companies out there providing services for ad server development out there. Hence, publishers and advertisers require to go on with a careful analysis in order to select the best and the most suitable one for their needs.