Greatest Google AdSense Alternatives

Google AdSense is the biggest ad program out there, and understandably, the most popular one out there as well. It is backed by a large base of advertisers, which means that it can serve relevant ads to just about any website or blog – operating in any niche – with ease.  It is the most basic form of blog and content monetization for many bloggers, website owners and content publishers on the internet. Thousands of people use AdSense to earn money on the internet.

However AdSense does come with its flaws, and we spoke about some of the program’s drawbacks in a previous article on this blog. So here are some of the best Google AdSense alternatives available to blog owners and content publishers looking to monetize their blogs:

1. AdBrite

AdBrite has been around for a while now; it is one of the oldest and the most-closest competitors of AdSense – and hence the most popular AdSense alternative. It is actually pretty similar to AdSense, in its function as well as its application. Like AdSense, it brings advertisers and website publishers together; but what it does is it places a ‘Your Ads Here’ banner on your website, which allows advertisers to put their ads up your website. Advertisers can purchase ‘ad packages’ on CPC-basis, and have their ads placed on their website(s) or blogs. Like AdSense, the ads are CPC, which means that you get the money when someone clicks on the ad – the more clicks, the more money you get.  Simple to use, easy to set-up and free to sign-up for.

2. Chitika

Chitika’s motto is ‘turning page views into profits’ and that is precisely what it does. Chitika lets you display ads on your website or blog from their network of advertisers that are targeted towards your blog’s traffic. It can be used in tandem with Google AdSense, because (a) Chitika ads are non-contextual and (b) they do not look like AdSense units at all. The ads are extremely relevant and highly-targeted, which means a higher CTR for you. Payout rates are $10 for PayPal and $50 for checks. Highly recommended if you’re looking for relevant ads for your blog, and may even want to look into putting these up with your AdSense ads.

3. Clicksor

Another great service, not to mention a reputable one, offering contextual ads is called Clicksor. One of the best aspects about Clicksor is that they have a large network of advertisers, as well as the third-largest network of publishers of all advertisement networks. Clicksor scans a publisher’s page for keywords, match and cross-reference them with advertiser-provided keywords and then display extremely-targeted ads – strictly related to the content – on the page. They get over 1 billion ad impressions from all over the world every month. In addition, their ads are based on no less than 9 different targeting methods (geographic-, time-, keywords-, device-targeting, to name a few), and use different payment methods such as CPC/PPC, CPV/PPV, CPM or CPI. Once you’ve signed up for Clicksor, the process is simple: simply use the ad-codes to choose from different kinds of ads, and have them displayed anywhere on your website using the code. Payout rate is $50, and they also have a affiliate/referrals program that you can sign up for.

4. InfoLinks

Tough choice between InfoLinks and AdBrite when it comes to determining which is the biggest of the two, since both are big and pretty popular AdSense alternatives (call it a draw?). Infolinks has a network of publishers of over 100,000 websites, from 128 countries, generating over 1 trillion impressions every month! Unlike the other services, however, InfoLinks is an in-text advertising platform – what this means is that it serves contextual ads, on the CPC model, in which specific keywords within the text/copy of a webpage are matched with advertisement units. These words are hyperlinked and have a different color (and are often double-underlined) in order to differentiate them from the rest of the copy. In-text ad models such as InfoLinks hence have a pretty high CTR. Getting approved however, is a whole different ballgame, as the service approves each application individually. Once it’s been integrated, bots crawl your website and display matched-keyword-ads in your copy, according to your blog’s content. Minimum payout rate is $50.