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Ask HN: Advice on starting a niche ad network

5 points by fbodz ↗ HN
I've recently been thinking about starting an ad network with a new format for ads. I think the format is more engaging for viewers and more useful for advertisers. However, I'm not sure where i should start developing it, what would be your advice for how to develop the ads? The ads will be web based and square dimensions but I'm just not sure what the current best practises are for adtech. I'm competent with the backend but I'm not sure how to develop the ads.

4 comments

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dougbarrett
I work in this area currently, it's super competitive, but very lucrative if you can find your niche, so I wish you good luck!

I'm sure you've looked into it before, bu https://www.carbonads.net/ is a good starting place. There was another ad platform I had seen awhile back that shut down, that was very similar to carbon ads. The premise was pretty simple, it would be a script tag that would inject directly into the page. Essentially just an image wrapped in a link without any other tracking.

If you are looking to be a replacement for existing ad units, then you may want to look into IAB standards and ad sizes: 300x250, 300x500, 720x90, etc.

cavneb
The competitor to CarbonAds you are referring to is probably CodeFund. We ran CodeFund for almost 4 years. Even though we shut it down, we left the code open source (https://github.com/gitcoinco/code_fund_ads). Please feel free to use whatever you want from the project. Also, you might want to watch the video demonstrating how the project worked here: https://berry.sh/codefund-demo/

Good luck! It's a wild ride you are embarking on!

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dougbarrett
That is cool! It definitely wasn't codefund, but it's so great to see more people create an alternative network that is privacy and user experience focused.

The main focus of this ad server was that it was selling impressions more than conversions, it had a focus on being more like a newspaper where you buy eyes on your ad vs looking at the conversion of clicks.

This was years ago, but I believe I remember seeing it was running on PHP, or at least appeared to be.

readonthegoapp
not sure what the question is, but tell me what i need to give you and i'll create an ad for my startup/service.