Serving ads to your site can be mystifying at
best. We hounded our in-house ad guru Caryl into writing a five-part course on everything you need to know about serving ads, whether you are an independent small fry or a megasite with full ad, art, and engineering departments. (If you're totally, utterly new to the world of online advertising, you might want to start with Internet Advertising 101 before you dig in and get your hands dirty here.)
The first question you face is whether to serve ads yourself, farm out the entire process, or mix 'n' match. The key is to know what questions to ask, and Caryl gives 'em to you straight. She also chides you to be scalable and not to forget about your staff.
Once your ad-serving system is in place, it's time to think
about your process for creating, posting, and updating the
ads themselves, as well as making up specs and sticking to
them.
The series finishes up with an in-depth look at Web advertising's most
powerful tool: The
ability to target ads to different users. This technique is based on
criteria such as keywords they enter on your site, which pages they view, and how often they
visit.
Coordinating ad serving is no easy feat: It's darn near impossible to
please the advertisers, your site's staff, and your visitors and be able to grow as
necessary. But it can be done, and Caryl knows how.
Get started: Lesson 1»
