How to Build Your Own Ad Network from Zero and Become the Master of Demand-Supply Chain

“Ad networks make good money when working with me → I want money, too → Why don’t I make my own ad network?” – a completely justifiable thought process that strikes the business minds more often than you’d assume. But is this as easy as it sounds?

To be honest, creating your own ad network is a path full of unexpected challenges, all sorts of business pains, and pouring thousands of dollars without guaranteed results.

Don’t worry, though; we’ll give you a fast and healthy mount (Epom ad server), as well as a map of the journey (this guide). Spend a few more minutes with us before embarking, and let us explain how to build your own ad network with an ad serving platform.

What Is An Ad Network?

Who starts with the basics in such a high-level guide? Well, we do. You’d be surprised to know how many companies, despite years of experience, don’t understand whether they fit into the role of a publisher vs. advertiser vs. ad agency vs. ad network.

So a quick recap:

• An ad network is a business that matches the publisher’s inventory and the advertiser’s demand.
• An advertiser is a business that buys ad placements to promote their products or services.
• A publisher is a business that hosts a website/mobile app where they sell ad placements to make their endeavor profitable.
• An ad agency is a business that creates and manages advertising and marketing for its clients. Unlike ad networks, these only deal with the demand side and don’t work directly for/with publishers.

We’ve already posted a one-man show of what an ad network is, and it would be a shame to miss it here.

However, at this point in advertising history, all of these roles are a lot more loose than they used to be.

For example, nowadays, ad networks don’t just appear from thin air. Usually, these are top-dog publishers. They form alliances with smaller-scale publishers (or simply buy their traffic) and start managing ad placements completely on their own.

The same scheme goes for the advertisers.

Large retailers of media traffic like Amazon Advertising or Walmart Connect have used their gigantic amounts of first-party data and money to create their own platforms. They switched from being simply media buyers to being both buyers and sellers.

Anyway, don’t get confused! In simple terms, if you want to manage both the demand and supply side of advertising while getting markups from controlling both, then read further: you’re on the way to becoming an ad network.

Why Create an Ad Network?

The answer isn’t just money, although it definitely is a part of it. Apart from obvious financial benefits, an ad network gains control over pricing, brand power, flexibility, and scalability. An ad network is a small ecosystem, and who doesn’t want one these days?

To put it even simpler, instead of being a small part of a demand-supply chain, an ad network is one.

Building Your Ad Network, Step 1: Define Your Business

Okey-dokey, let’s begin. Your first step should be to identify who you are and how you operate. And not in a philosophical way (although we recommend that too), but in the strict terms of ad tech.

Choose Your Niche

Starting from your niche: what is your content about? If you’re a big publisher, you already have the answer. Now, if you still don’t have millions of users, start as an advertiser, or want to reprofile, the best niches for a beginner ad network would include:

• Finance & Crypto

Let’s face it, you have at least one to three acquaintances who spend their days following the growth of Bitcoin and bragging about their riches while borrowing money for a subway ticket.

The growth of cryptocurrencies and the proof of their slow volatility have brought many advertisers into the space. The CPCs are high, and the traffic is plentiful.

As for the strategy, a mix of programmatic DSP demand + direct brand partnerships is a killer move.

• Health & Wellness

The fitness content is always in high demand, but so are the requirements to post it. For instance, Google classifies wellness articles as Your Money or Your Life, content that can have a high impact on the user’s life and thus is subjected to high-quality standards.

If your content’s good, then you’re golden. Topics like fitness programs and health-related advice command high CPCs and overall bring great ad revenue. As for pricing models, wise people on the web advise picking CPA/CPC for affiliate deals and CPM for display ads.

• Travel & Luxury

Remember COVID-19? Nobody does, apparently. People are actively returning to blasting “Around the World” at full volume and having affairs somewhere in East Asia. And the best part is that despite seasonal fluctuations, they usually spend big.

In this niche, direct traffic is your best bet. Advertisers in travel are old-school and trust direct relationships more. If you only deal in programmatic, we’d advise creating your own PMPs.

• Real Estate

Real estate is competitive, dynamic, and quite difficult to grasp at first, but it has a thing that nullifies all of the cons – it never dies. It’s a niche for large publishers and ad networks, which means that advertisers put serious money into it.

Once again, direct advertising is the way to go. CPL would be advisable to combine with premium ad listing. If you go programmatic, then CPM (among the highest) is your best bud.

• Insurance

This one’s the most boring on the list, for sure, but it’s one of the most profitable as well. You see, the ROI is great (for obvious reasons), which drives CPCs to the sky. The search volume for insurance is always on the rise.

Overall, go native on this one. Charge CPA when dealing with direct and charge CPM with programmatic.

Choose Your Operational Model

There are all sorts of terms floating around ad networks, and you’d better understand what they mean, at least. Let’s start with inventory types:

• If you deliver ads to a broad audience and seek scalability, you’re a horizontal ad network.
• If you specialize only in a certain niche, you’re a vertical ad network.
• If you mainly deal with premium traffic, you’re a premium ad network.
• If you are none of the above and have a special set of traffic, audience or niche, you’re a specialized ad network.

Now for a second and far more critical division:

• If you are an outsourced advertising sales force whose main focus is high-traffic, well-branded sites, you’re a rep firm.
• If you’re a classic ad network that acts like a media buying/selling broker, you’re an ad arbitrage. Most of you are probably ad arbitrages.
• If you’re an ad network above ad networks that has so much traffic that an ad arbitrage fades in comparison, you’re an ad aggregator/ad mediator.

Truth be told, a lot of ad networks don’t define themselves as either of these. Just keep these definitions in mind to prevent yourself from looking like an amateur on fancy Google Meet calls.

Step 2: Get the Software

If you want to build your ad network, you’ll need an ad server – the base of all operations. You’ll need it to serve ads, make deals, set up targeting, and monitor your performance in real time. Start with the Epom ad server!

Seriously though, it might sound like an obvious promotion, but not only is Epom mentioned in every Quora question on the matter, it also has three major benefits that make it a killer for starting an ad network:

1. Epom ad server is a white-label solution. It has full customization of UI, logos, and even domain names. This means that your clients won’t see a third-party provider name when accessing your ad server, they will see your branding immediately.

   What’s better, this is ten times more affordable than building an in-house solution and can be set up in 2 weeks.

2. We are a family of products and thus provide options for both direct and programmatic traffic buying/selling.

   If you want to work directly with advertisers and publishers (no auctions), then the Epom ad server provides all the tools you need to manage campaigns.

   If you want to work with programmatic demand, then an ad server can function as an SSP.

   If you want to focus on the supply side and buy ad placements programmatically, then we have a white-label DSP which even allows you to add custom SSP endpoints at no extra fees.

   Overall, whatever you want, Epom can handle it.

3. And most importantly, if you grow beyond what our plans cover and require a network of several ad servers, we don’t charge you any additional fees. That’s right, we build a network for you on our own, without charging you more. Isn’t that a deal of a century?

So yeah, we have you covered on every front that matters. In the past, building an ad network technically was as painful as we’ve described in the beginning; nowadays with Epom’s products, not so much.

Step 3: Build a Team

The next step is kind of obvious: you have software, so you need a team that manages it. Yes, it’s expensive, but since you can’t clone yourself to complete all the tasks at hand, we’d recommend investing in a qualified media-buying team consisting of:

• Media buyer
• Copywriter
• Creative designer
• Front-end developer
• Programmatic strategist
• Ad operations specialist
• Backend specialist
• Sales manager
• Data analyst
• Lawyer

Are all of these necessary? Depends on your priorities. You could easily cut the copywriter and creative designer, but how would you lead media activity to promote your ad network, address clients, or create relevant content?

How much will it cost you? Once again, it depends on what you plan, who you hire, and where. For instance, you could go as low as $100k if you hire juniors or freelancers. On the other hand, if you want experienced candidates from higher-paid markets, aim for $450k+ per year.

Step 4: Build Your Network of Advertisers and Publishers

It’s simple to determine what you should do, but we can’t help you with the most difficult part – closing deals and leading communication.

For starters, recruit publishers. You’ll require businesses with reputable sites or apps that are relevant to your niche. If you’re already a publisher, that won’t be a huge problem; open web pubs trust each other far more than advertisers do.

Once you work with them, assist your new clients with the implementation of ad tags and SDKs (that’s where the team comes in handy) and discuss the pricing & markups.

If you’re a beginner ad network, it’s usually advisable to set markups (10-20%) lower than the competition. Guarantee fill rates above 90% and provide flexible payment terms, again, the success of it all depends on your mastery of negotiation.

It gets a bit more complicated with advertisers since they are usually more picky. Don’t worry though, it all comes down to what you can offer. We’d advise:

• Offer tiered pricing and bonus impressions for long-term partnerships;
• Offer CPA/CPC if you’re confident in the inventory quality;
• Sell premium ad placements;
• Show them the advantages of your platform (quite easy with Epom ad server);
• Run A/B testing to prove your trustworthiness.

Overall, be transparent, offer profitable deals, and provide high performance – that’s the sauce.

Step 5: Start & Optimize

Start with a small number of campaigns. You don’t want to rush into the process without understanding how your freshly cooked advertising soup tastes.

From the supply side, we’d advise keeping a closer look at:

• Fill rates;
• eCPMs;
• Latency;
• Viewability rates;
• Revenue per publisher;
• Ad metrics.

From the demand side, the metrics are classic, look at:

• CTR;
• Conversion rates;
• CPA (or whatever pricing model you’ve set);
• ROAS;
• Engagement time for video ads;
• Placement performance overall.

The trickiest part is balancing both parts. Publishers should be happy with fill rates and eCPMs, while advertisers need to see strong ROAS and conversions.

Step 6: Grow and Advertise

So, you’ve built an ad network that brings profits to your clients and gives you enough in ad markups to abandon public transportation and finally drive a Porsche 911, what’s next?

The next step is growth. Expand your network by onboarding more publishers and diversifying ad formats. Create strong brand awareness by creating fun content (like ours) and participating in industry events. That’s where the content part of your team will truly shine.

Surely, all of that seems like a dream on the distant horizon judging by the number of bullet points and loads of information, but it’s not like that. Actually, if you’ve got the coin, you can start an ad network with Epom in just 2 to 3 weeks. We’ve already explained all the benefits we provide, so what are you waiting for?

FAQ

• How to build a native ad network?

  Building a native ad network follows the same core steps outlined above: find your niche, assemble a team, choose the software (like Epom ad server), and connect the advertisers with publishers.

  The key difference is that native ads are designed to blend seamlessly with website or app content, making them less intrusive. Focus on content-driven platforms and offer high-quality native formats (like sponsored articles or in-feed ads).

• How to build a mobile ad network?

  A mobile ad network connects advertisers with publishers on mobile platforms, including in-app ads, mobile web, and CTV. The steps above provide a detailed guide, but specifically for mobile:

  • Focus on SDK integrations for in-app advertising;
  • Prioritize rewarded video, interstitial, and native ad formats popular in mobile environments;
  • Integrate with mobile-focused DSPs and SSPs;
  • Optimize for low latency and high viewability across various devices.
• What’s the difference between an ad exchange and an ad network?

  An ad network aggregates inventory from publishers and sells it to advertisers, often using direct deals and pre-negotiated prices.

  In contrast, an ad exchange is a real-time auction platform where publishers and advertisers buy and sell inventory programmatically through real-time bidding.

• How does an ad network make money?

  An ad network earns revenue by taking a percentage of the ad spend (usually 15-30%) or charging service fees. It profits by buying inventory from publishers at a lower rate and selling it to advertisers at a markup.

• Why choose a white-label ad server to build an ad network?

  Using a white-label ad server (like Epom) lets you launch faster, save development costs, and scale without tech headaches. It provides customizable features under your brand, allowing you to manage direct and programmatic traffic while focusing on growing your advertiser and publisher base.