Ask HN: What is the best ad option for my startup?

[bdmorgan]

I'm a co-founder of a startup that is doing fairly well, 100 days in. Traffic is growing on almost a daily basis and unique visitors, page views, etc. - while not massive - are promising. I've been told that ad sales for sites with over 100K unique visitors per month are on another tier in terms of expected CPM and advertising credibility.

My question is: let's say our site is pulling 25-50K unique visitors per month of a fairly specific audience (demographic-wise). What would the HN audience recommend for our site to do, in order to maximize ad revenues? We've tinkered with Google Ads and some other options but, as traffic picks up, we're beginning to look into it more seriously. The difference between $0.25 CPM and $2.00 CPM is obviously huge, once traffic scales to a certain level. Do all of the ad networks pay the same (roughly)? Are all of the ad networks created equal or are there some we should reach out to that might be more selective, and therefore more rewarding?

Another related question (for those who have ad sales/buying experience): what should we project as an expected "going rate" CPM for a site with moderate traffic that reaches primarily college-educated males in the 25-50 age group?

[bemmu]

I would spend a good chunk of time trying out many different ad networks. My traffic is very different, as I mostly have apps on social networks, but I could sometimes find that an ad network performed 2x-10x compared to another one. For example in my case AdSense paid 10x better than Cubics / LifeStreet even though those were geared at social networks.

Not knowing this I wasted thousands of dollars before that I could have had by simply slapping in a different network's ad unit. For my current app I am planning on spending several evenings applying to every ad network I can find and split testing them against each other to make sure I won't lose such easy money this time.

You could also try direct ad sales by simply reaching out to people over email. I only have one data point on this, but I once noticed someone advertising with Reddit self-serve ads that was selling a product very suitable for my audience. I emailed him, he PayPaled me and soon his ads were live on my site as well.

[bdmorgan]

Sorry - I don't think a good job of phrasing my question, although the replies are welcoming for addressing the question of where should we best be advertising.

My actual question was in terms of running ads on our site - I'm trying to determine if all the ad networks are created equal (in terms of payout/CPM) and really what the expected CPM should be for us.

[Joakal]

Check out Reddit's self-serve if you want to cut out the middleman. There's some overhead though.

[iamdave]

Facebook Ads has traction as a serious, targeted ad platform. You can drill incredibly far with your demographics and interest groups and still get a very chunky network reach.

By and large, networks are the same but they're completely different at the same. Places like The Deck or BuySellAds you'll more than likely see a lot of blog traffic coming in but you can also expect high bounce rates (this I say from experience). Google AdNetwork/Doubleclick you might get a completely different number, with more varied interests/keyword results, but spend longer time on the site.

I've got a couple of PDFs I will give you that goes into pretty deep detail about FB Ads in specific.