I’ve been playing around with the idea of running ads on some of the sites I am building, to cover some of the cost (such as a media [movies and games] review site). I know next to nothing about running ads, so I’ve experimented.
I ran Ad Sense for a week. I made 3 cents. And when I checked to see what ad was running (I use Adblock Plus), it was for some cloud hosting service that I had never heard of (I am pretty invested in Rackspace). I scrapped that, since I was only running it until I could get Project Wonderful up and running.
If you read web comics, you’ve probably seen an ad like the one in my footer (well, except at the moment it isn’t an ad…). They use a bidding system, and it doesn’t count impressions or clicks, just the time it is running on the site. It is an interesting idea, and I get to approve which ads are shown, which makes it an attractive choice among ad networks.
Also, it helps that it is headed up by Ryan North. 