Website owners can generate significant advertising revenue by running ads on their websites. The earning potential will vary based on several factors, including the size of the site, industry, content, and number of ad units. The biggest factor in determining how much you can earn is tied to the amount of traffic you bring to your website. The more traffic, the greater revenue potential there is from online advertising.
Digital ad spending globally is expected to top $602 billion in 2022, a 15.6% increase from 2021. However, there are millions of websites vying for those dollars. Competition can be tough, especially since three companies – Google, Amazon, and Facebook – gobble up more than 65% of all the ad dollars being spent. For example, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is forecast to earn $136 billion in 2022 from online ads. Other social media sites are also taking a big chunk of the digital marketing dollars being spent.
However, you don’t have to be a national or global website publisher to earn significant money from online advertisers. Small sites that are profitable can use ad networks and generate an average of about $1,000 a month. Affiliate marketing can bring in $2,000 a month.
How Do I Monetize a Website?
Website owners can monetize their websites in multiple ways, including pay per click (PPC), cost per thousand (CPM) impressions, affiliate marketing or affiliate programs, selling display ads directly, and more. With PPC, your revenue varies depending on the click-through rate (CTR), while impression-based campaigns generate revenue based on the number of visitors that see ads.
You can also use multiple ad formats on your website, landing page, or eCommerce site to accommodate different ad sizes.
The most common way is to sign up with an advertising network like Newor Media or Google AdSense to sell ad space on your website. The ad network connects the website owner with advertisers who will pay to run display ads on the owner’s website. The owner then collects revenue from ad clicks. Once publishers place a snippet of code on their site, monetization happens automatically. Advertisers are matched to sites by the ad network, which facilitates showing the website ads. This becomes a passive way to earn lots of money for sites.
Signing up for an ad network is simple. There are several to choose from (although we hope you choose Newor Media). Fill out a form and once approved, you will get a bit of code to put on your site. If you are using WordPress, you can add it manually, use a widget, or a WordPress plugin. That’s it. Ads will start displaying on your website in as little as a few hours. Since ad networks get paid a percentage of the rates they get from advertisers, they are incentivized to earn the most revenue possible.
Ad networks work through programmatic advertising, in which advertisers bid for available ad space. When someone visits your website, an ad call goes out. The highest available bidder that matches is delivered to your site’s visitors in real-time. If you work with an ad network that uses header bidding, you can generally get higher ad rates since they are shopping ad units across multiple ad suppliers at the same time rather than focusing on a single demand pool.
You can learn more about website monetization and how to get started by checking out our post on the # Steps to Create Revenue from Website Advertising.
One thing to keep in mind when trying to determine how much you can earn from digital ads is that the user experience plays a significant role. A good user experience and high-quality, relevant content attract and retain an audience. Poor user experience will drive people away from your website.
Metrics to Help Determine a Website’s Value
Every website’s value will vary, based on its size, traffic, industry, topic, pages, and the type of target audience it attracts. If you’re looking to get an estimate on the amount of money your website can earn from an ad network, try Newor Media’s free website earnings calculator.
You can also evaluate how you can make money online based on several metrics, including:
- Ad revenue by website size
- Ad revenue by site traffic
- Ad revenue by industry and page topics
- Ad revenue by ad location and ad type
- Ad revenue by website demographics
Ad Revenues by Website Size
The size of a website matters. The larger the site is and the more content it has, the more ad placements there can be to increase revenue opportunities. But you don’t need to be a mega-company or corporate-owned website to attract ad dollars. Many small websites generate solid revenue using ad networks… see how you can do it on Squarespace and Blogger!
Using Google Ads as an example, the average CPC for display ads is $2.32. When you use an ad network, the network will retain a certain percentage of what advertisers pay as its fee for bringing the advertiser and the ad to your website. In this case, Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords), keeps 32% of the revenue and passes the remainder onto the publisher.
For impression campaigns, the average CPM for Google AdSense in the U.S. is $0.68 per thousand.
Ad Revenues by Site Traffic
Whether you are using impression-based ads or CPC ads, the more traffic you bring to your website, the greater opportunity you have to earn. So, using search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to enhance Google search results to drive traffic to your site, the better your ads will perform.
For impression campaigns, your earnings will be determined by the amount of website traffic and the page views you get. For pay-per-click, you get paid based on clicks. While more traffic gives you more opportunities for clicks, generating a high-quality audience that sees relevant ads can help improve CTRs.
Using Google AdSense, for example, a website in the business category with 50,000 monthly page views might earn nearly $11,000 annually. A million monthly visitors might propel your earnings above $220,000. You’ll see quickly that industry makes a big difference even with similar traffic numbers. For example, the same 50,000 monthly page views on a news website might only generate $2,000 annually while a million page views per month might generate $43,000 a year by comparison.
A premium ad network like Newor can generate significantly higher revenue as a result of higher RPMs. With a premium ad network, expect to earn between $5 and $50 per thousand page views. Using 50,000 monthly page views results in $3,000 to $30,000 per year. There’s a huge advantage to using premium ad networks instead of AdSense.
Ad Revenues by Industry & Page Topic
Yes, industry and topics make a big difference in generating revenue. Niche industries, industries in highly-competitive spaces, and premium publishers tend to attract higher rates — especially when you consider target audiences.
For example, ads on the Nordstrom website generally have a higher value than an ad on the Dollar Tree website (if those sites ran ads) based on the type of shopper. If you were an advertiser trying to target high net-worth individuals, ad space on Bloomberg or Financial Times would be seen as more valuable than an ad on Coupon shopper.
So, context matters greatly. The more useful, popular, and relevant the content is to the target audience, the more opportunities you have to generate revenue. It’s why some sites with niche audiences (in the right niche) can do quite well. Producing quality content that attracts quality visitors can increase your average CPC or CPM.
Here are some of the average CPC rates, sorted by industry according to the Business of Apps:
- Auto: $0.58
- B2B: $0.79
- Consumer Services: $0.81
- Dating and Personals: $1.49
- eCommerce: $0.45
- Employment Services: $0.78
- Finance and Insurance: $0.86
- Health & Medical: $0.63
- Home Goods: $0.60
- Legal: $0.72
- Tech: $0.51
- Travel and Hospitality: $0.44
With CPC advertising on ad networks, you will want a lot of traffic and click-throughs to generate significant revenue. The average CTR was 3.17% for Google Ads in 2021. So, you can do the math.
Let’s say you publish a tech website with 100,000 visitors a month and these visitors viewed every one of the ad units on your site, a CTR of 3.17% would yield 3,170 clicks. At $0.51 per click, that’s a monthly earning of $1,616. Realistically, however, visitors won’t see more than a handful of ads during any visit, so your number can vary greatly.
Keep in mind that ad dollars also rise and fall subject to the laws of supply and demand. When demand is high, rates can go up — especially in competitive industries. However, there is a tremendous amount of supply out there as well. Still, highly competitive industries can also pay significant premiums to reach the right audience.
Ad Revenues by Ad Location & Ad Type
Ad placement and ad type will also play a role in your ad revenues. For example, if your banner ads are at the top of your page templates or above the fold, they’ll be more easily seen. If a visitor doesn’t scroll further down a page, they may never see an ad and have an opportunity to click, thereby generating a lower conversion rate.
The type of ad also makes a difference. Static display ads bought on a cost per thousand (CPM) model average around $0.52 or less per thousand. Rich media, interactive ads, or interstitial ads can generate higher rates. Video generally gets the highest rates. A Google Ads video, sold by impressions, generates about $10 per thousand views. Rewarded videos earn higher rates, especially on mobile devices, averaging between $12.60 and $13.1 per thousand videos depending on whether they display on iOS or Android devices.
Ad Revenues by Website Demographics
Website demographics can also impact ad rates and audiences in significant ways. Here’s an example: despite its recent ups and downs, advertising for crypto investors remains a hot category. Crypto ads generally target millennial men. Millennials make up 44.3% of all crypto investors and men are twice as likely to invest as women.
So, if you have a website with solid traffic that targets millennial men, you might get a premium for your ad units. The average ad for cryptocurrency on Facebook audiences gets a CPC of $0.73 and a CPM of $13.14. That’s roughly 43% higher than average CPC rates and a whopping 2000%+ premium over display CPMs.
The relative age of your website audience plays a part in the advertising revenue you can generate. Despite the fact that Baby Boomers hold 53.3% of all the wealth in the US and are twice as wealthy as GenX (and 10 times wealthier than millennials), advertisers still favor younger consumers. The idea remains that if you can convert someone younger in your life to be favorable to your goods or services, you can generate a larger customer lifetime value (CLV). As such, website owners that tend to attract younger adults to their sites may be able to generate higher advertising rates.
Conclusion
Website monetization is not only possible, it can be highly profitable. And it doesn’t have to be difficult. While there are multiple ways to generate revenue, using an ad network like Newor Media is simple. They will work with you to optimize ad placement for maximum value. Once you place the code they provide on your website, they do the rest — balancing ad loads on your site so you don’t negatively impact the user experience.
Newor Media has relationships with all the major players in the advertising ecosystem, from ad networks and supply side platforms (SSPs) to agencies and advertisers. This allows you to benefit from competitive bidding across multiple industries, advertisers, and platforms. You can get the best rates from different platforms, including Google Ad exchange, Amazon, AppNexus, OpenX, Triple Lift, and more.
Still, based on all the different factors that can impact advertising revenue, figuring out how much money your website can earn from online ads can be challenging. We can help. You can get an idea of how much revenue you can generate on your website by using Newor Media’s free earnings calculator.
You can also find more ways to monetize your website with our post 7 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Website.
