Ad Publishing Strategy with AdSense and OpenX

I have, in my time on the AdSense support forum where I am a Top Contributor, seen many, many publishers that throw up AdSense and forget about ads, expecting they'll get rich, or, at least make money. After they don't, a predictable series of events ensues.

• They come to the AdSense support forum ion one of two frames of mind, either asking what they can do to improve things, or angry and kicking and kickin n' screamin' that AdSense is fraud, yada yada yada...
• They then realize that in order to make money you actually need traffic to your web site in order to make money, following that they either maintain their anger and are sure AdSense is still a fraud, or they think about it, understand, and ask how to do that.
• Following that they learn they need to create content, and LOTS of it and learn some SEO strategies.
• They then either give up or trudge on.

For those the trudged on, this article is for you.

Once you accept the challenge, create content, start getting traffic and see the money start trickling in, there is yet another step, and that is the step toward maximizing revenue...and that is realizing the advertising world does not exist with AdSense alone.

You need to realize that, for the average successful site, AdSense is the best paying generic ad system, but there are still ways to improve on it. I will share my personal theory with you.

First, you need to sign up at OpenX and use it. OpenX is an ad server that you can ad your AdSense ads to, without violating TOS (I asked AdSense specifically, and they told me so directly) and run your ads thru their system to display on your web site.

The part of this that is beneficial is that OpenX also has a very large ad network as well, and you can set up your AdSense ads to be "remnant" ads, which means they are fallbacks that display only when nothing else fills it. Likewise, in the AdSense "campaign" within your OpenX system, you can set it up to display AdSense ads up until there is an OpenX network ad thatis offering more money for the space.

Fortunately, your AdSense reports tell you, on average, how much each channel is earning, so you can set that threshold price, within OpenX as high as you want related to that value.

This will help you maximize each channel/campaign within your web site and ad variety to your ad pool.