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Google Adsense vs Adbrite

First let me just say this.  As of right now there is no better way in general to monetize your website than with google adsense.  However, that is "in general".  In certain cases you can make a lot more with a company like adbrite.  And indeed you can use the two together to increase your earnings without annoying your users more.  So let's look at the pros and cons.

Google Adsense

Pros

• easy to set up
• adds are served almost instantly (within a few hours)
• lots of different types of ad units to pick from
• quality management system and support
• high payout on sites that are primarily text based and content themed
• high click rates due to their fantastic little spiders that crawl your site and determine what the best ads are for your pages

Cons

• they don't allow sites with adult content or borderline adult content
• occasionally will ban people for random reasons, some are legit, some are not (example here) 
• low payout on sites with very little text (i.e. image based sites)
• limit on the number of ad units per page

Adbrite

Pros

• easy to set up
• various forms of ads, such as full page ads, inline ads, as well as the standard banners and text link units.
• full control over pricing for your ad units (or let adbrite decide)
• allow adult content through their "Black Label Ads"
• allow adbrite ads on pages that don't have adult content, even though the site itself does.
• Have pay per impression ads as well as pay per click ads
• No limit to the number of ad units on any page

Cons

• takes a day or two for ads to start showing up
• takes a few months before you will start seeing the same return you will get from adsense right away (takes time to build a client list)
• doesn't have as large of an ad network as adsense

Recommendations

As noted previously google adsense is the best their is for most sites.  This is particularly the case for sites that are rich in content and are very specifically themed.  However, one of the bad things about adsense is that they give you very little control over your ad units except for the shape and size.  You can block certain domains and things from advertising on your site, but beyond that there is little you can do to control what ads are shown.  You also have no control over setting pricing on the ads that are shown on your site.  You can always try to optimize your site for adsense, thus putting in "expensive" keywords, but this is a pain to do generally.

Adbrite on the other hand gives you full control over setting prices for your ad units or you can let adbrite take care of it.  Likewise they allow you full control over what ads are shown on your site in different ad units.  You have the power to accept or reject any ad offers they find for you or come to you through the adbrite marketplace.

So which to choose?  From experience I would say that if your site is primarily text based you should go with google adsense as your primary website monetizing solution.  If your site is primarily image based you will probably make more money in the long run using adbrite.  This is a general rule and isn't always correct.  Before picking one or the other you should look into keyword prices and see if the types of content on your site is matching with high paying keywords (check out this site for more info on adsense/keyword optimizing).  Typically if you have a humor based site adsense is going to make you practically nothing.  Adbrite on the other hand in that case can make you about double (in my experience).

Then again, why choose one or the other?  You can actually use adbrite and adsense at the same time.  Adbrite allows you to set prices and if they can't find ads that will pay you what you want, they will substitute their ad code for anything you want in the same place.  This way you can copy and paste your adsense code in there and adbrite will serve up the adsense ad codes if they can't make you more than your average for google adsense.

Another thing you can do is use adbrite's inline ads and/or full page ads at the same time as your adsense ads.  This will give you a nice additional stream of revenue without annoying your users to much (especially in the case of the inline ads, which just parse out some text on your page and make them a flyout ad if your users scroll over the words).

Finally if you have a site that has any adult content at all you must not use google adsense.  You will get your domain banned from their ad network and possibly have your earnings taken away.  Adbrite likewise doesn't allow their ads to show up on pages with adult content, but they don't care if your site has adult content, just so long as their ads aren't showing up on pages with adult content.  If they find that they do, they will automatically switch your ads over to their "Black Label Ads", which serve up ads for adult oriented sites.

For more tips on making money with adsense check this out: How to Make Money With Adsense

Google Adsense (non-referral)

Adbrite (referral) | Adbrite (non-referral)