10 Alternatives for Google AdSense

If you make money from your website or blog, chances are you’ve heard of or at least used Google’s CTR-based advertising network – Google AdSense.
Google Adsense has, if we may, 2 distinctive type of publishers. Those who constantly receive monthly cheques from Google, we call them the happy publishers. The others, the not so happy publishers.

This article is catered for the latter group. Publishers tend to look for an alternative for all sorts of reason. Here’s a list of contextual ad networks similar to Google Adsense, meaning they reward you monetarily when visitors clicked on the contextual ads displayed on your website.
In short – they are the Google AdSense alternatives. We hope you find them useful.
Disclaimer: We have not used most of the ad networks here before. This is an attempt to discover and bring to your awareness more options of contextual ads publishing. We urge you to spend time carefully checking out more details (ad performances, ad size/format, payout threshold, payment method, online reviews, etc) of any particular ad network you intend to use on your website.

The Infamous 3

Chitika

Chitika is probably one of the top choice when publishers come to seek for an Adsense alternative. Chitika’s ads are search query driven, that means your visitors will not see the ads unless they are coming into the website via search engine.

The image below gives you an idea how a Chitika ad would look like:

Despite being one of the most popular AdSense alternatives, Chitika’s ad performance are still a bit on the low side for most publishers. Publishers ought to have a high quality site and apply for Chitika’s Silver level or Gold level ad program in order to see surge in terms of revenue.
Related links:

Sign up – Professional Publisher / Enterprise Publisher
Publisher’s page
FAQ

Misc info:

Minimum payout: $10 (PayPal), $50 (cheque)
Payout time: Net 30

Yahoo Bing Network

This new ad network is a collaboration of two of the biggest search engines on the internet, and it should not be confused with Yahoo’s existing YPN and Microsoft’s adCenter. Publishers of the Yahoo Bing Net manage their ad units via Media.net.

One of the advantages of Yahoo Bing Network compare to Google AdSense is perhaps its ability to allow publishers to customize their ad units in terms of style (size, color, shapes) so it blends better with their respective website.

The Yahoo Bing Network is currently not open for public sign up, but if you are keen enough and most of your website’s traffics are coming from United States, Canada and United Kingdom, you can request for an invitation.
Related links:

Misc Info:

Minimum payout: $100. Paypal or Wire.
Payout time: Net 30

Kontera

Kontera uses the in-text advertising model. In a nutshell, in text ads do not take up additional ad spaces, rather, they analyse your site’s content and turn relevant keywords or phrases into hyperlinked text ad.

Here’s how a Kontera in-text ad would look like:

Kontera is based on a CPC model, in another words publishers get paid when visitors click on the ads. The ads customizable, that means you are able to alter the color of the hyperlinks, control the density of text links or even restrict turning any specific keywords into a text ad.
Related links:

Misc Info:

Minimum payout: $50. Paypal, Wire or Cheque.
Payout time: Net 30

A few More:

If you’ve tried the above mentioned 3 and they don’t quite work out for you, here are more advertising networks you can explore.

Clicksor

Clicksor has a range of different types of ad formats. The two popular ones you may want to look into are their text ads (Google AdSense alike) and in-text ads (Kontera alike).

Clicksor’s payout term is Net 15, and you can opt for cheque or Paypal payment option as long as your earnings exceed $50.00
[Sign up] [Publisher's page]

Vibrant Media

Similar to Kontera, Vibrant Media is another ad network notable for their in-text ads. Vibrant Media has recently launched two types of ad formats for extra revenue streams, respectively the in-image ads which integrate text ads within images, and display ads which works on a Cost per-thousand Impressions (CPM) model.

[Sign up] [Publisher's page]

AdSide

AdSide’s banner ad format looks very similar to Google AdSense with one exception – it has a thumbnail on the left side of each row of ad. The following image gives you an idea how the ad looks like:

AdSide ads target heavily on United States, Canada and United Kingdom visitors. If you have an amountful of traffics coming from these mentioned locations, it may work for you.
[Sign up] [Publisher's page]

Infolinks

Infolinks is yet another in-text advertising network. They can also be considered a good alternative if the current in-text ad network is not performing well.