Google Ad Manager

For the last few months I have been using Google Ad Manager to manage my Google AdSense ad spaces across my web sites and it's been very nice. I like the sleaker code of Ad Manager and the increased control of placements and slots, but until recently I have not used it for third party ads, even though I knew it had the capability...or, that it was actually it's main selling point.

Using Ad Manager keeps most of the information about the ad space out of the client side code, which is nice. AdSense, in the beginning had everything client side...font colors, background colors, size, publisher number and more. They later upgraded code to contain less, and then Ad Manager has virtually nothing. The only thing it still has is the one thing I wish they'd store client side, that being the publisher number.

That aside, the Ad Manager makes it easy to manage even third party ads. Set up an advertiser record (client) and a line item (each ad for that client) and assign each of those ads to existing ad slots. When setting up the line item you select what type of ad it is, select geographical targeting and how to display it and it will begin appearing in those ad slots.

When configuring the unit you can enter how much you are receiving by CPC or CPM, or if it's a "house" ad (such as you'd use for affiliate ads) and it will show it accordingly. It can also be set up to show AdSense ads as back fill for spaces you no longer have inventory for.

You can host images on their system, set up custom HTML or JavaScript code, set them with date or impression ranges, and even target the ads by country, browser, browser language, operating system, bandwidth and time of day. Pretty amazing functionality in that regard.

Also, it's hosted by Google, so it's no maintenance, space or resources on your part, and the code calling ads is JavaScript so it does, by nature, eliminate crawlers from executing it and bloating your stats unnaturally.

I've been very happy with Ad Manager thus far, and have used it for mostly affiliate ads, such as eBay Partner Network and Amazon.com ads, but it is so much more functional than that.

If you have a need for an ad server to manage your advertisement publishing efforts, check it out.