Ok this is my totally unscientific list of the best alternatives to Google Adwords and Facebook, and they are ranked more or less on my experience based on how easy it is to actually start a campaign, and then a little bit by reach and scale, followed by traffic quality. This list really isn’t for someone that is spending 500 bucks a week, its more if you want to spend maybe 30k a month, so I realize this isn’t a completely fair list. 30k just seems to be the magic number above which its easier to get invoicing, terms, and better ad reps for any given network.
Ok aside from Facebook, Youtube, Google, Bing, Here are a couple other 2nd or third tier places:
-AOL, huge reach, decent targeting. They can replace a lot of traffic. AOL owns advertising.com / Adsonar/ AOL sponsored listings.
-Yahoo Gemini Yahoo has remarketing, and native ads too, as well as a big reach, and some good targeting capabilities.
– Adblade- works well with finance and general interest niches with buzzfeedy/taboola type ads, big reach, sometimes spotty quality. A lot of their ads are a hybrid between text and traditional display, i.e. a little picture with a bit of text next to it. They bought industrybrains a while ago which has good finance inventory and some good general inventory.
– Pulse 360 like adblade has a hybrid ad that is mostly text with a picture, they have some inventory on some big publishers and aren’t that hard to get approved with squeeze pages.
– Twitter has decent reach, offers remarketing and is friendly to advertisers.
– Open x- The guys that made the openx and revive ad servers now have a decent network that a lot of webmasters use and is a good alternative to Adwords. Easier approvals and you can replace some traffic. You can use for all your niches.
– BuySellAds-Similar to Open X but with a bit less scale, a great way to find certain niche sites to do direct media buys. Even though I say less scale, there are some pretty big sites on there, as well as some interesting niche sites that aren’t in other exchanges.
– Ebay Enterprise ( formerly Fetchback) huge reach for getting in and around ebay properties
-Pandora a lot of users a lot of inventory, also check out Skype to get in with Microsoft display. Microsoft also owns Appnexus as well, but between Skype and Pandora you have a lot of reach, so they are worth mentioning.
– Native Ads: If you can invest in making good real content there is some good scale here and some premium publishers, send them to content, then remarket later through other platforms
taboola
Outbrain
nrelate
revcontent
Exchanges:
These are places where you can buy inventory at once from a lot of ad networks, you pay a premium to use their platforms but its fast reach to a lot of inventory.
Sitescout- Most scale, pretty easy to get a lot of traffic, and lots of ways to optimize. Their remarketing and ad serving is not the greatest.
Adroll- has passed up perfect audience at this point, well worth remarketing on even if you are remarketing other places.
There are a few other people that should be on this list, but didn’t call me back, or were just a pain to try to do business with. You know who you are.
You mean there isn’t 17 here? Hey sorry I ripped you off. I am truly sorry and I will be very contrite in the future.