Should you offer self-service advertising on your website? (part 2)
                     Should you offer self-service advertising on your 
website? (part 2)
John Z
Writes on ad servers, involved with AdSpeed adserver 
software & Adspeed Ad serving software.
If you want more control and more revenue from ads shown on your 
site, you should consider running a self-service advertising system for 
your site. This option is great for publishers with high quality sites that 
are desirable and attractive to advertisers. If you frequently receive 
direct inquiries from potential advertisers that want to put ads on your 
site, it is a very good sign that you have a high quality online property. 
Your next decision would be about finding a suitable ad server to start 
your self-service ad program.
Build vs. buy
There are several different ways to have a self-service advertising program for your website. You can 
build your own in-house self-service advertising system or buy from a third-party ad technology provider. 
The route you choose depends on your technical expertise and the amount of time you have available.
If you are 100% focused on building and growing the site on your own, maybe even become an ad tech 
provider yourself in the future then you should consider building your own self-service system. Basically, 
the ad serving capability becomes one of your core competencies and it distinguishes your company from 
other competitors. With your own ad server, you’ll be able to implement customized processes and 
requirements. You can make changes whenever your business needs without waiting for someone else.
However, you’ll need to have extensive programming knowledge or hire 
someone who does. Salary for a software engineer or a developer is not 
cheap and you might need more than one person and it might take 
months to build one. There is no guarantee that the system works as 
you anticipate when it is finished because you often need to 
continuously maintain it with updates and make improvements over 
time. Additionally, the on-going ad operations are not trivial and will 
also require technical knowhow and experience. This route is not 
recommended for most publishers because the initial investment is 
significant and the project will take some time before you can begin 
using it.
Subscribe to a third-party ad server
If building an ad server from scratch in order to support self-service 
advertising seems like too much work, you can subscribe to a third-party ad 
server. There are SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) ad serving solutions with self-
service advertising functionality that you can consider and choose from. 
Comprehensive ad servers can manage and deliver multiple ad formats, 
including display, text, email, mobile, and video ads. You can quickly evaluate 
the company with a demo or a free trial account before making a decision. 
This flexibility makes third-party adservers very attractive for most publishers.
There are also third-party ad servers with the white label feature or an API 
(Application Programming Interface) so that you make it look and behave like your 
own ad server. With the ad server's API, you can combine functionality with your 
other systems via a technical back-end integration. As a result, you can have a 
hybrid custom ad server without spending a lot of money to build one from the 
ground up. You can have your own custom front-end interface with your own logo 
and styling while the back-end system is independently operated and maintained by 
a professional company with years of experience in ad serving and ad operations.
About Adspeed
AdSpeed ad server is a reliable & powerful ad serving and ad 
management solution that serves your ads, tracks impressions & clicks 
and reports ad statistics in real-time. Driven by the latest ad serving 
technologies, the goal of Adspeed adserver is to provide a reliable 
platform that can help in executing online advertising strategy more 
efficiently. 
Thank you for spending your precious time in reading this article.