Online Advertising: List of 50+ Ad Brokers for Advertisers and Publishers

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The moment when you decide you need online advertising, either to promote something or as a monetization method for your website, app, or similar, is a watershed event.

I hope that you were not in a cramped mind space until today when you landed on this page.

I mean by being in a cramped mind space about online advertising you believe that your options in digital advertising are just the big G, Facebook and that’s it.

But if you are, no problem. That ends now, with the list that follows.

In this list, you will find digital advertising networks, platforms, providers, marketplaces, brokers, and services.

If you are looking for one that can furnish you with a free online advertising service you should find one (at the very least) that you will be able to join.

List of Online Advertising Networks, Providers, and Brokers
Online Advertising Glossary
Online Advertising Outro

List of Online Advertising Networks, Providers, and Brokers

Conversant (formerly ValueClick)

Powered by the CORE Private Exchange. Cookieless solutions. Consent management platform. Header bidding. Mobile web, video, and connected devices ad serving through JavaScript tags.

Publift

For Adsense online advertising, GAM, independent, and app publishers. Supports banner, in content, sticky sidebar, sticky footer, vignette, and multiplex ad formats. Has proprietary ad formats, like Flexi Slots, Interscroller, Miniscroller, and Pimp Your Sticky.

Vungle

Mobile ads and app monetization. Mobile video game ads, app bidding (programmatic ad monetization). Supports video, rewarded, playable, medium rectangle, and mobile banner ads.

Exponential

User-centric ad formats. Supports YourAdChoices (powered by the Digital Advertising Alliance) allows users to opt-out of behavioral targeting by exponential and other companies.

Traffic Junky

Ads for adult websites online advertising. Has static banner, video banner, in-stream video, and popunder ad formats. Each supports a wide variety of sizes and file formats. Extensive targeting features.

Monumetric

They accept less than 7% of applicants. Top verticals of Monumetric’s audiences: entertainment and celebrity news, employment, leisure, food and drink, and political news. The demographics of Monumetric’s audiences are 70% female and 30%, male.

Bidvertiser

Ad formats: direct navigation, pop-under, push notifications, in-page push, injection pops, and native ads. Uses machine learning based on historical and concurrent big data.

SXM Media

Music, podcast, and satellite radio online advertising. Among their ad solutions they have: audio, video, dynamic audio, sequential audio, branded content, contextual alignment, show opportunities, cross-platform spots, custom sponsorships, show sponsorships, live reads, sponsored reading, sponsored stations, and artist and influencer programs.

Adsterra

RTB ad network. They provide popunder, display banners, native, social bar, and VAST video advertisements. Their pricing models are CPA, CPC, CPM, and more. Some of their verticals are games, e-commerce, sweepstakes, VPN, apps, and software.

Infolinks

Real-time, contextual intent targeting for keyword-based ads online advertising. They provide exclusive placements on their 25k publishing partners to maximize ad spend. Free sign up for publishers

Ad maven

To publishers, Ad Maven promises five-minute integration, effective cost-per-mil, flexible payment plans, and optimization tools. To advertisers, they promise over two billion daily impressions from their native push notifications, full screen, and other placements, and high CPM, CPC, and CPA performance.

Epom market

Mobile native ads, and rich media desktop ads. Multi-screen ads. High-pay traffic monetization, custom native ads, world-class brands for publishers. Top-quality inventory, real-time stats, and hyper-targeting tools for advertisers.

Primis

Engagement-based video ad units. Classic with thumbnails, mid-article, and native video ads for publishers. 350 million unique video watchers per month. Nineteen industries. Viewability and completion rates of over 80%.

Hilltop ads

To be accepted as a publisher your website must have 5k+ daily visits. They accept sites from any geographical zone. Mainstream and non-mainstream content. 100% fill rate. Weekly payments through PayPal, Bitcoin, wire transfer, Webmoney, Capitalist, and Tether. For advertisers, audience targeting, retargeting, frequency capping, white and black lists, RTB platform for media buyers, self-service, competitive rates.

Juicy Ads

Adult ad network. Advertisers get pixel tracking tech, instant placement, advanced targeting, and a custom S2S Postback system to measure ROI. It has a referral program. Allows using a single account to be used for both publisher and advertiser modes.

Vibrant Media

Contextual marketing. They assure publishers that their ad code is the lightest in the market. Cross-platform delivery, content monetization filters, advertiser block options, and keywords and vertical targeting for publishers. InArticle, InImage, and Programmatic, and brand-safe ads for publishers.

Microsoft Ads

720+ million monthly unique searches. No minimum fee, only PPC, budget setting, keyword, bids, and timing tests and measurements for advertisers. Publishers can implement native Microsoft ads via the Microsoft Advertising SDK.

EMX

End-to-end programmatic ads solution. 600 billion total requests per month. Real-time bidding, private marketplaces. CTV, online video, display, mobile, search, social, direct response, DOOH, digital audio, and native and local ads.

Criteo

Dynamic retargeting, video (CTV, OTT, and online), mobile, contextual, and omnichannel ads. Criteo AI Engine pulls insights from the 685 million daily users in Criteo Shopper Graph. The engine learns the shopper’s behaviors and adapts to your campaign objectives.

PopAds

PopAds specializes in popunder ads. It touts itself as the best-paying popunder network on the web. Human-reviewed publisher pages, anti-fraud system, bid-based traffic speed, and multiple targeting options for advertisers. Liberal terms, fast payments, and real-time stats for publishers.

Applovin

Mobile app monetization. Bidding, DSP and ad networks, cohort reporting and split tests for true loan-to-value, real-time mediation and exchange analytics, and impression-level data for publishers. The ALX (Applovin Exchange) serves 140000 mobile apps and 2 billion+ mobile devices.

Adpushup

Connects 50+ premium online advertising ad exchanges, a Google-certified publishing partner. Easy payments, machine learning-based optimization, quick header integration. Dedicated account manager. Automated ad layout optimization, 50k premium brands demand, client-side and S2S header bidding, smart optimizations, new-generation ad formats, and AdBlock recovery for publishers.

Adnow

More than 160k partners worldwide. Native ads. For publishers, 24/7 moderation, language, OS, geo, and device targeting, custom bids, campaign schedule, and UTM macros. For advertisers, proprietary inventory on the ADNOW.ONE network. Adnow partners with Voluum DSP, SmartyAds, Kadam, and AdOperator.

Adform

Specializes in video and mobile ads. Programmatic publisher ad server, supply-side platform, and data management platform for publishers. Ad server, demand-side platform, data management, and identity management for advertisers.

Atlas Solutions

By Meta. Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Audience Network, Oculus, and Workplace ads. Image, video, carousel, and collection ad formats. Collection ads are Facebook feed ads with a cover image or video, with multiple products shown underneath.

SmartyAds

A full stack of ad monetizations. SSP, open RTB. Header bidding, playable ads, and rewarded video ads for publishers. Mobile, video, rich media, display, native, and self-serve platform for advertisers.

Adbeat

Global coverage through 120+ ad networks. Allows you to see if a network is profitable from a roster of 90+ ad networks, allowing you to discover direct buy opportunities and new ad networks.

YieldBird (formerly AdTaily)

Self-service ad network. Programmatic ads. Google-certified publishing partner. Ad stack review, CWV excellence, pricing solutions, header bidding, expert services, and yield management.

Spoutable

Proprietary bidding wrapper with a single unified auction. Granular real-time reporting. 330 mil+ unique visitors and 7 b+ ads served monthly on average. 250 mil paid to publishers (all time). Fast payments, no fixed contracts, easy setup. Google open bidding, Amazon’s transparent ad marketplace, and open source options.

Traffic Force

Fraud and bot detection, advanced planning tools, deep targeting, and granular real-time stats for advertisers. RTB, real-time stats, prompt payments, advanced targeting, mobile stats, geo data reports, ad safety, and multiple ad formats for publishers.

Sovrn (formerly Viglink)

Advertising exchange with 60k+ independent sites, 500 mil consumers, and 50 b+ auctions per day. 30-day payment terms, easy implementation. Premium demand partners. Multi-integration that supports OpenRTB, Prebid.js, Google Open Bidding, and Transparent Ad Marketplace APIs.

AdSense

Optimized for mobile. Automated ads, ad size optimization, auto ads with easy implementation, and responsive ads that adapt to different screen sizes. Great revenue potential for blogs, forums, and free online web app sites.

Adblade

Content-style ad provider. Over 300 mil users. Geo and interest targeting in all of Adblade’s ads units. Reports refresh each 15-minute intervals. Among their formats are news bullets, IAB units, content marketing, and mobile.

Plugrush

Unifies different ad technologies in a single solution. For advertisers it supports deep targeting and provides these ad formats: push notifications, display banners, popunders, and native ads. Publishers can sell traffic and trade traffic.

Baidu

For westerners to advertise in the Chinese search engine. Not just PPC campaigns, but they also create landing pages and tailor your communications to Chinese customers. The minimum initial ad credit deposit is $2000. PPC costs between $0.5 and $1.

Taboola Ads

The Taboola Ads website is the admin console to advertise with the discovery and native advertising network Taboola. Promises to run your ads through trusted editorial sites. For publishers, it provides the Taboola Feed, editorial insights, optimized paid acquisition, post-click behavior optimization, organic video growth, and sponsored content.

Undertone

“Holistic solutions” for ad search, social media ads, and display/video/CTV ads. For publishers, it supports standard, interstitial, in-line, adhesion, video, and CTV ads on desktop, mobile, tablet, apps, and CTV. Their integrations are client-side header bidding via pre-bid or index exchange, service-side header bidding via Amazon TAM, and direct-tag via GAM or other ad servers.

Adcash

For publishers, affiliates, media buyers, and ad networks. It gives advertisers advanced targeting, anti-fraud tech, automated ROI optimization, conversion tracking, exclusive RTB supply, and publishers. Publishers get anti-AdBlock technology, easy integration, fast payments, high fill rate and eCPMs, live stats, worldwide coverage, and more.

ExoClick

Supports digital dollars (USDC) for publisher payments. Probably one of the companies with the widest ad format offers on this list (around 20 formats). They serve more than 12 billion daily ad impressions. One thing though, as of this writing their site didn’t render correctly in the clone of Chrome that I use. They have a referral program.

Propeller Ads

Push notifications, onlick ads, in-page push, interstitials, and smart links are their ad formats. For publishers, they target website owners, SEO masters, ad networks and brokers, domainers, social media marketers, and plugin and extension developers. Referral program available.

InMobi

Indian multinational mobile online advertising company. They offer advertisers market and customer insights, targeting, managed DSP, and programmatically on-app inventory exchange. For publishers, they feature identity solutions, game monetization, and an ad SDK.

Clickadu

More than four billion daily impressions, 3300 publishers, and fourteen targeting options. Their formats are banner, popunder, push, inpage push, instant text message, video ads, and skim ads. To be a publisher for Clickadu you need more than 1000 daily traffic. Payment methods for publishers are WebMoney, Wire Transfer, Paxum, and PayPal.

Amazon Publisher Services

Suit of cloud advertising services. They target large publishers, mid-size publishers, mobile ad developers, TV publishers, audio publishers, and programmatic buyers.

Perpetua

Display and video ads. Managed services for marketplaces, like Amazon, Walmart, or Instacart, and eCommerce advertising software designed for agencies. Smart recommendations and contextual, conversion-based bidding algorithms. Enterprise-level reporting.

Media.net

Contextual display ads and native ads. The creators of the display-to-search (D2S) ad format. When it comes to market cap, Media.net is one of the top 5 largest ad tech companies worldwide. They are also the second-largest contextual ad network.

Hivemedia

An AI-powered campaign management system that operates across dozens of social, native, and programmatic ad networks. They promise their software will fit publishers of all shapes and sizes.

Propel Media

Propel Media’s ad formats are: lightbox, push, and new tab. Real-time, intent-based, contextualized ad technology that connects the ads with highly relevant content.

RevenueHits

Israelite online advertising ad network for publishers. Lets publishers monetize their AdBlock traffic through pops and banners. Ad formats that they support are display, banner, popunder, in-page push, button, footer, floating banner, shadow box, slider, and dialog.

Yahoo Ad Tech

Native, mobile, video, brand integration, advanced TV, DOOH, immersive/XR and commerce ads, and demand-side platform for advertisers. Native, mobile, video and OTT, and DOOH ads, and supply-side platform for publishers.

Adroll

Retargeting, brand awareness, and connected social ads. Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix Commerce, Magento, and BigCommerce integrations. Abandoned cart recovery via display ads + automated emails.

Unity Ads

Monetize games through ads from Unity or 60+ other demand partners. Full-screen reward videos, interstitials, and banners into gameplay. Uses reach extension, which integrates Unity users and users from other exchanges.

PubMatic

Solutions for app developers and video publishers. Programmatic ads for publishers. Prebid as a service and real-time header bid tech. Private marketplace offerings. Media buyer console to plan campaigns across different channels and formats.

Basis.net

Programmatic, CTV, search, social, and site direct media management integration. Machine learning ads implementation. Proprietary research tools to define target audiences.

Rokt ads

Integrates with Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. Exclusive advertising placements. Targets are the most likely to convert customers on eCommerce sites right after they complete a purchase. Rokt ads boasts of an awesome 4.8 CTR and 2.8 million annual acquisitions.

Groundtruth.com

Has omnichannel solutions, targetting mobile/tablet, desktop, and CTV (connected TV). Additionally, they specialize in behavioral-based audiences and real-time and contextual ads.

Richads

Micro-bidding push alerts and push notifications, popunder ads, direct click, in-page, and pop ad tabs. Traffic monetization for publishers, currently helping 20000+ publishers monetize they work in 200+ countries.

Adswizz

For publishers, a monetization platform for audio. Ad inserting in any audio content, interstitial ads that work on Live, Linear, Podcast, or On-Demand, for publishers. For advertisers, like radio buyers, digital buyers, and programmatic buyers.

Online Advertising Glossary

If you are new to online advertising is probable that some or a lot of the terms in the descriptions of each provider escape your understanding.

Don’t worry, here below is a list with (hopefully) all the terms in this article that may sound alien to you.

Account Manager

A person working for the ad provider company will communicate directly with you and help you in virtually anything related to your business relationship with the provider.

Ad Code

The piece of code embedded on a web page for it to display digital advertisements.

Ad Exchange

A platform that automatically manages the trading of advertising space.

Ad Server

A server tasked with dispensing ads to the websites and other channels of the publishers' workforce of an advertising network.

Adblock

A type of browser plugin that detects and blocks web advertisements. A well-thought monetization approach considers the possibility that a certain percentage of visitors will have an ad-blocking plugin enabled and implements a plan-b approach where the ad-blocked traffic still gets to see some ads.

Advertising Platforms

Like display, mobile, and video. They are chosen based on a few different variables, for example:

Amazon TAM

When working with Amazon Publisher Services, a Technical Account Manager will alert you of any technical problems.

App Bidding

The app version of header bidding.

Blind Advertising Network

Advertisers relinquish control of where their ads will run. Their campaigns are RON (run-of-network).

Broker

A middleman between an advertiser and the ad firm, that will take care of all the legal, financial, and commercial tasks involved in a digital advertising campaign.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The quantity of clicks an advertisement gets deducted from the number of impressions.

Connected TV (CTV)

A device that streams content over the internet. A channel for advertisers to leverage.

Core Web Vitals (CWV)

An active method of measuring web page performance. CWVs measure performance based on the actual use given to it by visitors, as opposed to running a website performance test, which can’t give precise statistics because is not an average resulting from users all around the world, like CWVs are.

Cohort Reporting

Reports about related groups of people and how their engagement in trends changes over time. Cohorts are considered more ethical than cookies and it’s the method slated to replace 3rd party cookies when they’re phased out.

Consent Management Platform

A technology that handles the notification to users about what kind of data the website collects.

Cost-per-Mille

Amount of money spent by every thousand impressions of an ad.

Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

A powerful advertising technology that allows advertisers to automatically buy different ad formats, from many different sources in a single platform.

Direct Buy

Buying traffic directly, through contacting the owners of the websites where you want to have your ads displayed and asking to buy ad space directly from them.

Domainer

An internet marketer engaged in buying, selling, marketing, monetizing, and publishing website domains. Also known as flipping web domains.

ECPM (effective cost per thousand)

The amount of revenue a publisher gains for a thousand impressions.

Fill Rate

The percentage of ad slots filled is based on the total of page impressions.

Frequency Capping

Advertisers can control the number of times an ad is displayed to a user by setting its frequency capping.

Google Ad Manager (GAM)

Google’s ad management platform. While Google AdSense is for those who are starting, established and enterprise-level advertisers use GAM.

Google Open Bidding

A feature of GAM that allows a publisher to invite third-party demand partners to compete for inventory, in a single auction server-to-server real-time bidding.

Header Bidding

A technology that helps publishers get the maximum price for an ad impression through implementing the headers from a provider.

Impression

The number of times an ad is shown to a user.

Inventory

The total of space to place ads available to advertisers.

Javascript Tag

By serving ads through the use of Javascript tags, the ads can be dynamic, they can pass data from the page where the ad appears to the ad server, and the ads load faster.

Machine Learning

A type of artificial intelligence technology. Machine learning imitates the way humans learn.

Managed Services

The opposite of self-serve programmatic online advertising. The campaign is developed, implemented, managed, and optimized by a media strategist, instead of being automatically done by an advertising tech software.

Marketplaces

The exchanges where advertising inventory is bought and sold. Advertising marketplaces can be open or private. Some examples of online advertising marketplaces are Amazon Ads, Walmart Ad Center, and Instacart Ads.

Media Buying

The process of selecting and purchasing digital advertising space and time on online platforms.

OpenRTB

An API specification for automatically trading between sellers of publisher inventory and buyers of advertising space. The OpenRTB protocol makes the integration between buyers and sellers easier.

Placement

The specifics of where in a channel an advertisement will be run. It can be a single ad on a single page, an entire website, an app, a video, or an ad published on certain pages of a website.

Prebid

An ad placement tech that, when triggered by a user visiting a page, pulls an ad that was previously selected by the ad server. Prebid.js is the core component of the prebid suite and it can be scaled up.

Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising is the real-time pairing of DSPs with SSPs for automated online advertising transactions.

Real-Time Bidding (RTB)

A bid request carrying data about the visitor of a page (like browser history, demographics, and geolocation) queries an ad exchange. The exchange selects the bid winner and delivers its ad to the page.

Referral Program

Also known as an affiliate program. Two other, lesser-known names of this marketing modality are lead generation and piggybacking. A program through which somebody who is already a member gets a commission or any other perk or benefit by bringing new members to the program.

Server-to-Server Bidding (S2S)

Also known as server-side bidding. The bidding for an ad takes place on the ad server instead of happening on the publisher’s page.

Supply-Side Platform (SSP)

SSPs are for publishers, supply-side platforms allow publishers to sell their ad inventory through various ad exchanges.

Self-service

An advertising service in which the advertiser is responsible for buying ad space, managing campaigns, and everything else.

Targeted Advertising Networks

TANs have special targeting tech, like contextual or behavioral. They use clickstream data. Some also use social graph tech, which leverages connections in social networks.

Targeting

Different methods of pairing leads with advertisements. Some of the targeting methods used in digital advertising are:

Tiered Online Advertising Networks

Different tier networks work differently due to the different kinds of metrics they use.

Large first-tier ad networks have high-quality publishers and traffic and not just serve ads, but also sell traffic to second-tier networks.

Second-tier ad networks have advertisers and publishers but they syndicate adverts from first-tier networks.

Urchin Traffic Monitor (UTM) Macros

Code suffixes are added to URLs that allow for the tracking of the marketing performance of ad clicks.

Vertical Advertising Network

VANs are for publications and their portfolio. Transparency of where the ad will run. High-quality traffic.

Yield

Generic metric term. Means the quantity obtained out of something.

Online Advertising Outro

I hope this list of online advertising networks will help you either monetize your website and make a ton of money, or bring in the goods through advertising your products or services successfully. I also hope that if you are a newcomer to the world of digital advertising, this list with the bare facts about the market, and a glossary to accompany it would have given you a rundown on what’s available.

If you have used or are still using any of the services in the list, please leave a mini-review about the firm that gave you the best results and share the value with all of us in the comments section below.

Image Credits
Will Lion