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What should your ad server have?

Getting a website together and publish it to the Internet is easier now than it has ever been. The hard part comes when trying to build your audience and improve your search engine ranking. If you are creating a site with a goal to make a lot of money, it can be hard to do that during the early days of your website’s existence. However, you can get some money coming in by showing ads on your site. Managing ads and advertisers is not easy so using an ad server is definitely a great way to get the ball rolling and make some money from online advertising.

There are plenty of ad servers to choose from, but here are 4 things that you should look for before settling on one to use for your website:

Features

There are some ad servers that are about as basic as it gets, and which amount to nothing more than giving you a snippet of code to add to your website. While that may seem great at first, what happens when your advertiser wants to target only a certain group of viewers? It’s always a good idea to choose an ad server that is easy to use and set up, but you should also be on the lookout for features that can improve the experience for you and your viewers. That can include such things as the ability to choose the types of ads being shown and having access to detailed stats in regards views, earnings, and more.

Pricing

What you should be looking for is an ad server that has affordable pricing, but also delivers a service that will allow you to get a solid return on your investment. If the ad server is free, it likely comes with limitations in features, technical support, customer service or it may require you to handle a complex installation and daily operational tasks.

Customer Service

A good ad server should have answered many of your questions on their website, but that doesn’t mean other more specific and more complex questions will not arise. If you have a problem with payments, technical issues, ad troubleshooting, or anything else related to the use of the services the ad server provides, there should be someone available to answer them. Customer service is key whenever you choose anyone to do business with, and it shouldn’t be any different here.

Reputation

Your best chance of success comes with doing business with those who have a solid reputation. There are a few ways you can find out if the ad server you plan on doing business with is as good as they claim. Are there any complaints against them on the BBB site? How do the reviews from previous clients look? Before you sign up with any server, do a little digging to see how solid their reputation really is.

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• Should you offer self-service advertising on your website? (part 3)

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• Five tips when choosing an ad server

  "When it comes to finding an ad server, there are a lot of different options out there. Making a decision can be tough, but it’s one that deserves some real due diligence before selecting with an ad server that is best for you. " More