The Top 10 Alternatives to Google Adwords

Google Adwords currently leads content-sensitive web-based marketing solution for internet advertizers. By participating in the Google AdWords program advertizers can have their text, image and video based ads shown on selected publishers sites that include Google AdWords JavaScript code. Google's servers show context sensitive advertisements (Google Adwords). However, a number of excellent alternatives exist, for example, the left hand side of this page shows a Clicksor skyscraper displaying a text or image ad just like Google Adwords.
However, Google's popularity also means that it is not necessarily the best solution for most small advertisers. Many small businesses are struggling to obtain effective internet advertizing through the Adwords program. They find that the bid prices (or Cost per Click) on Adwords can be prohibitively high. This makes advertizing campaigns extremely expensive and of limited effectiveness. Hence a number of competing alternative programs exist that offer much better value for money than Adwords. By using these programs in place of Adwords advertisers can significantly increase traffic to their websites for a lot less money.

In addition to the cost Google Adwords has very stringent terms and conditions are that mean that many would be advertisers are turned away. If you are not satisfied with your Google Adwords experience or are looking for more cost effective alternatives then take a look at these Top 10 alternatives to Google's Adwords program that are ideal for the small time advertiser and business.

Is Adwords ineffective and costing you too much? Then try these top 10 alternatives.

AdBrite
Clicksor
Bidvertiser (Get $20 of free clicks by using this link)
Exit Junction
Chitika
AdToll
Yahoo Publisher Network
Target Point
Fastclick
ClickThruTraffic
Note: The descriptions are based on personal experience and do not represent any form of endorsement.



1) AdBrite

AdBrite is the clear leader of the adwords alternatives for small time advertizers.

As an advertiser you can use AdBrite to set your own ad rates and instantly reach over 370 million visitors on more than 80,000 sites all with a single campaign buy. AdBrite's market share is growing all the time.

Publishers just place a small snippet of HTML placed on their site, while AdBrite handles serving, scheduling, billing, customer service, and sales. About half of AdBrite's sales are generated from their marketplace and sales team, while the other half are generated from users clicking "Your Ad Here" on our publisher's sites. The best thing about AdBrite is that you can reach a very large number of potential customers for significantly less than you would have to pay with AdWords. While AdBrite can provide advertisers with better ads and formats, more exposure and better conversion rates for less money than traditional ad networks such as Google AdSense their approach works fine along-side them as a simple way to increase your campaign exposure. Additionally as an advertiser you can purchase ads directly on sites showing AdBrite ads for very cost effective rates -- something the other ad systems don't typically do.

AdBrite doesn't show the big "brick" of ads that you're normally used to but rather AdBrite gives advertisers full control over the look and feel of their ads so AdBrite campaigns can stand out on any website.

AdBrite offers

Text Ads
Banners
Full Page Ads
Inline Ads
BritePic (Custom interactive photo ads)
There is no obligation to purchase when you can sign up and you can play with all of their tools and experiment before purchasing any ads. Click here to sign up.



2) Clicksor

Clicksor is one of the major leaders in the field providing CPC and CPM advertizing solutions that are similar to Adwords but much cheaper and more effective for small businesses. They offer a huge range of advertizing formats including all of the standard Adwords formats as well as some very effective alternatives such as pop under and interstitial ads. Clicksor also lets you sign up for both an advertiser and a publisher account and then freely transfer your publishing income to your advertizing account in order to reduce your advertizing costs.

One of the great things about Clicksor is that they have a large network of high quality publishers while still offering bid prices that are significantly lower than equivalent keywords on Adwords. They are also, in my experience, much more tollerant than Google. Clicksor also supports showing ads as Google public service ad alternatives so you can still access Google Adsense publisher sites and traffic but for significantly less money.

Clicksor also has a big advantage over a number of the lower ranked alternatives on this site in that their ads are truly context sensitive. Thus as an advertiser you can be sure that your ads show only on relevant sites so maximizing your click to customer conversion ratio. This means that visitors to websites showing ads are exposed to ads of the same subject as they were searching for when they reached the site. This means the effectiveness of your ads is maximized.



Clicksor allows you to start advertising from just 0.3c per click. Significantly cheaper than the 5c minimum demanded by Adwords.

The ad creation and campaign control tools provided by Clicksor are not perfect but they are more than enough for you to perfect your ads and keep track of all of your campaigns and expenditure.

Advert wise Clicksor features:

Multiple formats available including text, image and animated ads.

Text Links
Image Ads
Flash Ads
Animation Ads
Banners
Pop unders
Interstitial Ads (NEW)
Dynamic (DHTML) highlighting
Click here to visit Clicksor's website and sign up for an advertizing account to try it out. There is no obligation and you can cancel whenever you want.

3) Bidvertiser (Get $20 in free clicks by following this link)

Bidvertiser can be a much more cost effective and useful alternative to Google Adwords. BidVertiser offers some intriguing ad formats including what they refer to as free design. This lets you specify the look and dimensions of your text ads and as an advertiser means that you can design ads that will stand out from the crowd and so maximize your conversion ratio and reduce your advertising costs on unrelated clicks. While a useful feature I have not investigated how well it works but imagine that while it sounds good on paper it could be difficult to setup. However, the custom nature of it means that it probably results in lower priced ads which makes it much more cost effective for you as an advertiser.

Another great thing about BidVertiser is that you can use it to drive customers to your eBay listings. Hence if you are a major user of eBay for your business then Bidvertiser may be the perfect solution for directing customers searching for related items to your eBay listings. Once you select your eBay item the ad is created for you automatically with the minimum amount of effort.

Bidvertiser allows you to:

Pay only for the clicks you receive.
Site-Targeted pay per click advertising.
Create your ads in minutes.
Choose your geographic targeting.
Closely monitor the performance of your ads.
BidVertiser includes a complex fraud-detection system that protects its customers from click fraud, ensuring that only valid and legit clicks are counted. Each click is processed online by their fraud-detection system, using a sophisticated algorithm that is being constantly updated by the fraud-detection team.

As an advertiser you can get $20 in free clicks by following this link: Bidvertiser Advertise and get $20 in free clicks.




4) Exit Junction

Exit Junction is a new affiliate program that was spun off from Revenue Pilot which is now defunct. Exit Junction is not strictly an adsense alternative but instead is an excellent addition to adsense and other context sensitive advertising programs. The key aspect of Exit Junction that makes it a unique new way to advertise and drive traffic to your site is that their approach is capture exit traffic from a site. The way this works is as follows: Suppose a user runs a Google search and a website you are advertising on scores highly for that keyword. To have your link appear as a sponsored link for this keyword on Google would be expensive. However, consider that the user then goes to the first site returned by Google and that site is running the Exit Junction code. At first nothing happens, the page loads and the user sees the page as normal. However say they now found that this site was not what they were looking for and they hit the back button in their browser. This is where Exit Junction cuts in and provides unique advertising opportunities. Instead of returning to the Google search Exit Junction intercepts the back command and instead shows a series of sponsored links that match the original Google search term.

The neat feature of Exit Junction is that at present it is novel and hence the user, who was not expecting the back button to show them an ad instead of their original search page will be more likely to notice the ad and use it to visit your site. Exit Junction is therefore an ideal way to complement your existing advertising efforts and will likely generate some very high conversion rates.

Click here to signup with Exit Junction for a free no obligation account.



5) Chitika

Chitika - The Leader in Impulse Merchandising
Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka) is different to most other internet advertizing companies and presents an intriguing alternative to Adwords. Founded in 2003 Chitika is the industry leader in impulse merchandising. Chitika supports innovative publisher-side advertising and merchandising solutions and services that will help you maximize your advertizing campaign and attain the highest possible conversion ratios.

The key to Chitika being a successful Adwords alternative is that instead of standing alone as a single advertising solution Chitika provides a way to compliment your existing advertising campaigns by featuring your products for sale directly through their advertisements. They provide Ad Units which are very different from the standard pop-unders and ad boxes that everybody else provides. The key difference is that instead of displaying the 'industry standard' advert boxes with image, video and text Chitika provides active boxes that show targeted products from your advertising campaigns. As an advertiser you only pay for the click thru on the ad is someone actually purchases the product. What happens is that Chitika tracks people arriving at the website via search engines and then converts the search engine string into a series of related products that it then shows in the advertisement and on which the visitor can click to purchase. This is referred to as impulse marketing and works in the form of what Chitika refers to as Premium Ad Units or eMinimalls.

While not a standalone alternative to Adwords feel free to give it a try as a way to compliment your other advertizing services.

For advertisers and media buyers, Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. If you visit a site showing Chitika's ads from a search engine then the Chitika premium ad unit kicks in showing you ads that are specific to your searching - otherwise the publisher can have it show an alternative ad provider, such as adsense, or they can just have it collapse away to show nothing.


Chitika allows you to display targeted products based on what people searched for to get to the page providing a robust comparative shopping experience and an additional way to advertise your goods.

Click here to visit Chitika's website and sign up today.

6) AdToll

AdToll pays is an adwords alternative offering creatives that charge on a CPC basis. Their user interface is extremely good providing an easy way for you to manage your campaigns and design your ads. As an advertiser you can also transfer earnings from any publisher accounts you have in order to expand your advertising campaigns without extra expenditure. This sort of integration is entirely missing from Google's adwords program.

AdToll's newest technology is the Peel Away Ad. This is a technology that allows you to advertise in the form of ads that peel away on the top right hand side of a web site. The key to this ad format is that when the mouse moves over the peel it opens in a smooth manner to reveal the advert underneath. As an advertiser the key to a successful campaign is getting people to notice your ads and this new format from AdToll is perfect since it is not offered by any other providers and thus is something different from the run of the mill pop-up / pop-under / skyscraper ads that most website visitors have now learnt to ignore. The new ad format allows publishers to make use of the lesser used, yet highly visible top corners of web sites and provides you the advertiser with a space to place your ads that is both noticeable and intriguing to website visitors. It is also a very non intrusive form of advertising to the site visitor and so does not annoy people like other forms of advertising do. This all translates into more exposure of you ads for less money and better conversion ratios.

Click here to visit AdToll and sign up for a no obligation advertisers account today.



7) Yahoo Publisher Network

Yahoo are currently trying to play catch up to Google Adwords by offering their own copycat service which offers the same context sensitive advertising. In theory this promises to add some more competition to the Adwords arena which should act to lower bid prices, however, in reality Yahoo's Adwords competitor has been in beta test for several years now and doesn't look like being a serious competitor anytime soon. Their terms and conditions are just as stringent as Adwords and they have the same $100 minimum payouts and large up front expenditures required by advertisers. They also seem reluctant to add any small time advertisers and most potential publishers don't even receive an acknowledgement of their application. As such their network is small and the reach of your ads will be minimal. However, their bid prices, because of this, should be lower than Google's Adwords and so it can potentially offer better value for money, however, the small scope may limit campaign effectiveness. Hence until it finally comes out of beta and goes live and it becomes clear what type of advertisers Yahoo will be targeting I can't place it any earlier in this list.

Advert wise Yahoo Publisher Network features:

Context sensitive ads related to the content of the website being viewed. Charges are based on qualified clicks.
Integration with other Yahoo! services into web site is offered including things such as My Yahoo! RSS Feeds etc.
Standard text and image ad formats and sizes.
8) TargetPoint

Targetpoint is a reasonable Adwords alternative with services that are particularly suitable for someone who wants to have absolute control over the appearance of their ads. They provide strict supervision over ad content which preserves the quality of their network and reduces CPC and CPM costs from fraudulent clicks and sites. While they initially appear to be a good alternative they can be very choosey regarding which sites are accepted into either the advertising or the publishing programs. They are mainly interested in very large accounts and so if you are a small business owner looking for a cost effective but small advertising solution then this is probably not the best choice but does provide and alternative if all else fails.

Advert wise Target Point provide:

Adpoint provides support for context-relevant, revenue-evaluated ads.
Exitpoint provides a way to show your ads to web site exit traffic.
Imagepoint allows you to use visual ads. These are known to the rest of the world as Image ads.
Underpoint provides for pop-under ad windows.
Registration is free and there is no obligation.

9) FastClick (Now known as ValueClick)

At first glance FastClick would appear to be one of the better alternatives to Google's Adwords program providing a range of value ad products to advertisers along with lower CPM and CPC costs that Adwords. However they are only interested in large customers and so most people will not qualify. You would have thought that these companies would have learnt from Google's success realizing that the best way to make money is by targeting both small and large target both large and small customers. Does anybody remember Excite? They became extinct because they only focused on the top 100 companies rather than targeting custom location aware ads to the small guys who can't afford large TV commercials. But, I digress. If you can get yourself accepted to FastClick (now called ValueClick) then you will probably be able to run some excellent campaigns on high profile websites. However, be prepared to pay for the privilege.

Some formats include:

Image Ads
Text based creatives.
Interstitial Ads
Pop-Under Adverts
InVue - a custom ad format.
10) ClickThruTraffic

This is not the best alternative to adwords but if you are not happy with the others listed above then feel free to try these guys. They have a limited publishing pool which limits you ad exposure however it also makes campaigns significantly cheaper with most click thru costs being in the 0.5c to 2c range. Advert wise they offer the standard selection of context based text links, buttons and banners.


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Thanks, but please don't use all bold letters. It's very hard to read it.

 

Yeah, thanks for the list, but why the huge bold font?

 

Thank you for the info A bit long and links to the ppc advertising sites would help. Here's a list of them with www.ppcadcenter.com. I have tried a lot of programs but still find adwords to be the best bang for your buck.

 

Thanks anyway, but adwords is my favorite.

 

He was probably trying to attract people to read the thread, but it didn't work very well, because it's hard to read it.

 

Good compilation.....

 

Also ClickThruTraffic doesn't seem like a good ad network to me, just to let you know.

 

Nice info and content but I really don't like reading posts when they're that big and bold

 

Yeah, our eyes don't get much attention when all the text is in bold and it's really annoying reading all teh text in big black bold letters.

 

Good piece of info.

 

I strongly believe that monopoly of Google adsense and adwords should be cut down .If different publishers and advertisers start using other companies than this should not be a difficult milestone to reach .

Glad you have put something like this .

 

Google's near monopoly on the adwords scene makes it easy to manage but as noted overly expensive for an increasing number of advertisers. Competition in the feild may help keep prices lower.

Thanks for the compilationm,

 

Thanks for the info. Like everyone stated before the bold letters are too much.

 

Good information but there is lot of fraud on other network. Google have good fraud protection. On other network with the exception of Yahoo Search Network all others are very poor in preventing fradulant clicks.

 

my eyes! my eyes!

I am seeing ants on my wall now

 

thanks for good infomation mate

 

thanks for good infomation mate

 

Thanks for the informations, dont do bolding text again please, it hards for me to read..

 

Great information there. I personally prefer google adwords as it pays a lot and helps me earn a lot