Advertising.com Review for Publishers

Review Information Last Updated on: September 9, 2014

Introduction to Advertising.com

Advertising.com is the display advertising branch of AOL Advertising. They are unquestionably one of the best ad networks available to advertisers and publishers alike, representing 92 of Ad Age’s top 100 advertisers and working with 74 of comScore’s top 100 ad-supported websites. Small to midsize publishers can access AOL Advertising’s ad network inventory by signing up through Advertising.com’s PubAccess, though a minimum 500,000 available monthly ad impressions is required for account approval.

Overall Rating: 3.75 out of 5.

• What We Like: Access to some of the top brand-name advertisers, high ad quality.
• What We Don’t Like: High traffic minimum, ad placement approval process can take days, if not weeks.

Advertising.com Company Stats

• Homepage: Advertising.com
• Program Founded In: 1998
• Employee Count: 201-500 employees as of March 21, 2014, according to LinkedIn
• Ownership: AOL Inc. (AOL)
• Profiles: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Crunchbase, BBB

Advertising.com Support & Contact Information

• Address: 1020 Hull Street, Baltimore MD 21230
• Phone Number: 410-537-8500
• Support Email: publishersupport@advertising.com

Publisher Requirements

• Publisher Terms:http://pubaccess.advertising.com/NavTopic.aspx?section=terms
• Traffic Minimum: 500,000 monthly impressions.
• Publisher Language Requirement: None.
• Prohibited Publisher Content: Hate, firearms, bombs, weapons, illegal activities, pornography, links to indecent matter, illegal file sharing.

Advertisers & Offers

• Advertising Types: Display.
• Offer Types: CPA, CPC, CPM, Revenue Share.
• Verticals: All.
• Network Size: 92 of Ad Age’s top 100 advertisers.
• Sampling of Publishers: Unknown.

Tech Implementation

Advertising.com Tech Implementation Rating: 4 out of 5.

Example of 300×250 text ad unit from Advertising.com

• Creating an Ad Unit: Log in to PubAccess, click the “Manage Placements” tab, then click “go to placement manager”. On the ensuing page, click “add new placement”, then select the site and the type of content from the dropdown list. Finally, select the placement size, name the placement, and choose the estimated monthly impression volume. Within a few days or weeks, your placement should be approved, at which time you’ll be able to get the HTML code to implement on your site.
• Display Ad Unit Sizes Available: 768×90 tablet, 1024×90 tablet, 1024×768 tablet interstitial, 768×1024 tablet interstitial, 320×50 mobile, 468×60 full banner, 120×240 vertical banner, 300×250 medium rectangle, 125×125 square button, 120x600skyscraper, 180×150 rectangle, 728×90 leaderboard, 160×600 wide skyscraper, 234×60 half banner, 300×600, 320×480 mobile interstitial, 300×1050, 120×90 button 1, 120×60 button 2, 970×250, 970×90, 970×66, 950×90, 300×50 mobile.
• Compatible with Google AdSense: Yes.
• Mobile Ad Units Available: Yes.
• WordPress Plugin Available: No.

Publisher Reporting & Admin Control Panel

Advertising.com Publisher Reporting & Admin Control Panel Rating: 4 out of 5.

Advertising.com’s PubAccess control panel dashboard

• Control Panel: Advertising.com’s PubAccess control panel is relatively simple and intuitive to use. There are tabs for Dashboard, Placements, Reports, Account, and Help. The dashboard defaults to displaying results from the past 30 days as well as a table of the top performing placements. The “Manage Placements” tab allows you to do just that; placements can be deleted or edited, and new placements can be added. Account settings are easy to change from the “Account” tab. Finally, the “Help” tab displays a pretty basic FAQ page, which is not particularly helpful, though a more thorough User Guide is available here as well.
• Reporting: From the “Reports” tab of the PubAccess control panel, a variety of summaries are available. The default view is a summary chart of the trailing 30 days. From the dropdown menu, you can also select YTD, MTD, past 14 days, past 7 days, or a custom time range. below the chart is a table that breaks down the results by placement, providing stats on key metrics including impressions, clicks, CTR, payout, eCPM, and redirects. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be an option to filter reports by website or placement. So you get all or nothing. But overall, the reporting interface is pretty intuitive and easy to use, and powerful enough to be useful.
• Control Panel URL: https://pubaccess.advertising.com/Dashboard.aspx

Payment

Advertising.com Payment Rating: 4 out of 5.

• Payout: Tiered CPM or Revenue Share.
• Payment Methods Available: Check, Direct Deposit, PayPal.
• Payment Terms: Net-30.
• Minimum Payout Threshold: $25.

Account Help

Advertising.com Account Help Rating: 3 out of 5.

• Knowledge Base URL: https://pubaccess.advertising.com/userguide/sect1_pg1.html
• Personal Account Manager: No.
• Easy to Contact Support: Yes.

Editor’s Advertising.com Review

Our review of Advertising.com is limited, principally because we have not yet tested their ad placements firsthand. We hope to revise this review in the future to provide a more comprehensive look at their network. With nearly 2 billion ad impressions served daily, AOL’s Advertising.com is one of the largest players in the display ad network industry. They serve ads of most of the top brands, featuring 92 of the top 100 national advertisers according to Ad Age; and they have relationships with 74 of the top 100 ad-supported websites according to comScore. Smaller publishers with at least 500,000 monthly impressions, can join Advertising.com via PubAccess, a self-serve control panel where publishers can oversee their display ad inventory and request placements to be approved. Just be warned that the ad placement approval process can take a while. In our experience, it took 7 weeks before receiving approval. Also, I’m not sure exactly why I was required to answer the question, “What kind of content is on this site?” during the placement creation process. If their AdLearn algorithm is all its cracked up to be, it should be able to figure that out on its own. Perhaps it just needs a little head start in the right direction. But knowing that Google AdSense does not require this input makes me a little leery of Advertising.com’s promises to serve truly relevant ads. Getting the ads placed and running reports are issues that we have not yet had the opportunity to fully test, but we will update this review when we have more information.

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