Google’s dominance of the advertising space means that its AdSense service for publishers outranks all the other providers in terms of its payouts, access to advertisers and quality of ads. They do, however, have program policies that need to be met before an AdSense account gets approved. There is also the case of getting banned (for life) from AdSense if you violate any of their policies and online chatter suggests that there is no easy way of appealing or overturning that ban.
Alternatives to AdSense
Luckily though, AdSense is not the only source of advertisements for publishers and there are several other alternatives that you can use if you don’t meet AdSense’s criteria or were banned. Each of these services provide something unique in terms of the kind of ads that they display on your website, the languages that they work with, the optimization of the content of those ads and the access to different kinds of advertisers.
Given this variety of offerings, it would be a good idea to dive deep into the details and finding a service that works best for your blog or website in terms of the content you host as well as the profile of visitors. Many of these services are quick and free to register and start working with and it would be a good idea to experiment with each and see which ones work best for you. There is also an element of giving about a week to a service to optimize to your needs based on how their ads behave on your website.
Here is a short list of top AdSense alternatives that have been highly rated by users/publishers in terms of the payouts, volume and ease of use.
Infolinks
Infolinks provides in-text, in-fold, in-tag and in-frame text advertising features. The in-text feature means that infolinks will add some hyperlinks to keywords in your blog’s text that will lead to advertisers’ websites. The approval process is fast and payouts can be received through PayPal, Wire, eCheck or Western Union. The minimum payout is $50. Infolinks is featured in several top AdSense alternative lists, showing its popularity among publishers as an AdSense alternative.
Chitika
Chitika is said to be extremely similar to AdSense in the way it works. It allows users to customize the ad-type, has a low payment threshold ($10 via PayPal), and provides access to Yahoo! and other top quality advertisers. Additionally, you can use Chitika and AdSense together. Users have lauded the contextual content of Chitika’s ads that helps generate more clicks as well as the ability to customize advertisements’ formatting to your preference.
RevenueHits
RevenueHits is another popular alternative to AdSense, regularly featuring on the top of lists of such alternatives published by bloggers. The service claims to have worldwide coverage and the highest eCPMs paid to bloggers. It is free and quick (30 seconds) to register and start making money. Their platform works with the content and the performance of ads to optimize revenue for your blog by adapting to your users. You would have the option of different ad types: display ads, pop ups as well as apps and widgets. Payout can be wired ($500 minimum) or transferred via PayPal or Payoneer ($20 minimum).
Adversal
If you have a popular blog (50,000 page views per month), Adversal provides a quality service which is considered by users as a great alternative to AdSense. Minimum payout is $20 via PayPal, ACH, Wire or Check, but that shouldn’t be a problem if you have passed the minimum page view barrier to sign up. Adversal offers a 100% fill rate to publishers as well as multiple ad-formats (banner, pop-under etc) to choose from.