How to launch an ad network with a small budget

Typical issues new ad network face and how we efficiently solve them

Digital advertising, ad tech overall, is one of those rare niches that in the pandemic didn’t slow down much. The worldwide spending on digital ads is forecast to continue growing and reach $646 billion by 2024. 

This growth is reinforced by the tech itself, it makes the business a win-win for everyone involved. The advertisers reach their target audience while saving time and money and receiving the data to make informed decisions. The publishers effectively monetize their websites using stats and analysis. And the users receive the most relevant offers while enjoying the content of their favorite websites.  

Naturally, the impressive potential of the niche attracts a lot of new players. But, like in any other fruitful niche, the competition in ad tech is tough. If you run an advertising agency or a small ad network you inevitably face the two typical problems every new player in the niche faces. 

In this article, we will look closely at those problems, see what causes them, and how we can help you steer clear from them to smoothly run your new business to success.

What are the two problems every new ad network has to deal with?

An ad network is an intermediary between an advertiser and a publisher. The same goes for an advertising agency. The problems they both face when starting the business stem from this intermediary position.

Every new network and every new agency inevitably face the problem of attracting good publishers. The publishers want unique offers with high rates for all top GEOs. And getting lucrative offers for those publishers is even tougher. Unique offers require high-performing traffic, some demand partners even ask to see the full list of available domains before they agree to a deal.  

As you can see one problem leads to another and visa versa.

How do you efficiently bring in good publishers and fruitful offers? 

Let’s start with getting to work with the best publishers. 

Direct traffic via Traforama DSP

With Traforama DSP from the AdSpyglass group, you can have access to direct traffic from webmasters. The marketplace section allows you to see all the domains available for each format and stream. Traforama shows the exact domains, you can see the quality, domain rank, and additional info on every ad spot, nothing is hidden.

Whether you work via direct campaigns or via RTB integration, you will get access to the direct traffic from webmasters and see that it is exactly as described. 

Flexibility 

You can start with just one or two direct campaigns without renting an ad server, no need to spend money on that. Traforama has every instrument you need to set up targeting and select the best traffic sources for each of your campaigns. 

Other features you can take advantage of with Traforama:

• Smart CPM will allow you to take part in the second-price auction and buy traffic cheaper.
• Tracking conversions with a comprehensive toolset will allow you to monitor and manage conversions and choose the best creatives and traffic.
• Despite the fact that we support only CPM, we can adjust our platform to any specifics of your business. If you are a media buyer, make sure to use the available feature to auto-recalculate your bids to meet the expected CPA.

And if you are a bit more confident user you can implement JSON/XML feed or openRTB endpoint and set up targeting for that. Traforama will let you manage white/blocklists yourself: set up targeting, whitelist or block by domain, spot or geo.

Competing with the big network

So you’ve got your direct traffic via Traforama and you’ve found your first demand partners, what’s next? You’d probably like to work with your own publishers. The problem here is – big publishers all prefer big networks like Exoclick, Adsterra, TrafficStarts. Those networks are familiar and usually offer competitive prices. How do you conquer that? 

The solution is to invite the publisher to join the AdSpyglass platform. With AdSpyglass your publisher will be able to send part of their traffic to your offers and work with their usual SSP (Exoclick, Adsterra, TrafficStarts, etc.) simultaneously.

Can you see an example? 

Sure. Let’s imagine you have an offer for 20 000 impressions to users in France on Orange mobile network carrier with CPM 4$.

A big network buys 100% (100 000 impressions) of french traffic from a publisher at 1.5$ rate. So the publisher gets 150$ a day selling traffic to the big network. 

If the publisher switches to your offer they will make $80 for their traffic from Orange and 0$ for the rest of it. 

But if you and your publisher work via Traforama and AdSpyglass then the publisher will make $80 for the Orange traffic and roughly $120 for the rest of it. The calculations will, of course, be not as straight since the big network’s rate will not be 1.5$ if you get the Orange traffic out of it. But practice shows, and we’ve tested this on hundreds of publishers, with 3-4 networks in rotation along with your offer the publisher’s total will be over $200 per day. 

Final words

Fighting for offers and publishers with big players is tough and extremely expensive, the current ad tech industry is a fast-growing and competitive market. Starting from scratch demands a huge budget and an experienced team.

But Traforama and other products of the AdSpyglass group have you covered every step of your way to success. Starting an ad network or advertising agency is not as tough with us as it is without us. You won’t need a huge team or millions of dollars to conquer the big ad tech, all you need is Traforama, AdSpyglass, and a couple of hundreds of dollars.

Our support team is ready to help you grow your business! Let’s chat (or email support@traforama.com) if you’d like to discuss your particular situation and what we can do to help you out.