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Sometimes Advertisers need some alternatives to Google Adwords and MSN Adcenter, whether to augment their search campaigns or because there is just too much competition for their keywords or various other reasons.
So if you are looking for additional traffic, where can you go and what are your best options? The big problem is that once you venture below the “first tier” traffic sources, you are in the internet jungle where the quality of the traffic and potential click fraud can increase astronomically.
Here are some good alternatives. First off you can try display advertising.
Display advertising at Yada’s platform allows you to access most of the first tier in a different way that is still the auction model. If you bid too low you don’t get any traffic but at least you can buy advertising at a price that you know is profitable for you.
If you are scared of Display advertising there are still a few other places you can go where you won’t lose your shirt:
Ask.com is a very good second tier search engine that has been a Google partner for years, along with AOL. They offer conversion tracking and are pretty helpful in getting your campaigns going. Like any other search engine you should have separate campaigns for both search and content, because the ask content network is nowhere near the quality of Google’s. Hey, you get what you pay for!
IndustryBrains now owned by Marchex is a good way to access a lot of quality sites, and their targeting is pretty good. They have both text and display advertising. Industry brains is great for financial and b2b type businesses
Adsonar (now owned by Advertising.com which is in turn owned by AOL ) has both text and display advertis
Adsonar (now owned by Advertising.com which is in turn owned by AOL ) has both text and display advertising and while the volume of the traffic is not great, it is still first tier and worth it for many different advertisers. Also within this network is the old quiggo network that many people remember. AOL figured out late in the game that they better own SOMETHING, so they have quietly been buying up sources of traffic and building up their network.
Business.com is also a good network for, of course, b2b type businesses and has a good reach.
Affinity.com is a lesser known contextual network that is quite good.
Below this level there are still a lot of other places to go, but the traffic quality starts dropping markedly. There are also new ad networks starting up every day and its a very dynamic marketplace.
Some of the networks mentioned above are really good for certain industries and really bad for others though. Its a minefield out there.