Advertiser Frequently Asked Questions

Contents

How are ads priced?

Our prices differ by topic and by geography and rates change quarterly to balance demand.

Ads are priced in cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and we also offer an automatic 10% discount for ad buys of $3,000, and 15% for ad buys of $25,000 or more.

While you might setup a recurring campaign to be billed monthly, all our pricing is per impression.

Our prospectus has all the details.

Can I post an ad promoting my job openings?

Absolutely. Hiring developers is one of the most popular reasons for advertising with us. We put your job right in front of developers using your technology.

How can I target my ads?

In line with our ethical advertising approach, we believe that ads can be well targeted while respecting users' privacy. We only target based on a user's country and the content of the page where the ad is served. For ads targeting the USA, we also support targeting by state.

Advertisers may also target ads by topics. Currently, these topics are:

Data science and machine learning
Backend web development
Frontend web development
Security and privacy
DevOps

Our prospectus will have the latest details and rates on keyword targeting. More niche targeting is possible although campaigns may take longer to fulfill due to availability. Inquire for details.

How does topic targeting work?

We analyze the publishers and web pages where are ads are shown in order to understand what those pages are about. We use a contextual machine learning model trained on real pages where our ads appear and it classifies content into our topics (or no topic). This allows us to show the most relevant ads possible.

More relevant ads are better for advertisers because they perform better and better for publishers because they usually earn more money from them.

What geographic regions can I target?

We can target any region you'd like where we have enough inventory to run a campaign. Most of our advertisers are focused on North America and Europe although we have some advertisers interested in other regions such as Asia Pacific or India. Our prospectus has more pricing options but please let us know what you're interested in and we can quote you a price.

Some advertisers want to focus globally. For those advertisers, we recommend splitting your budget between what you're interested in targeting. For example, you can spend 67% of your budget on North America and Europe and 33% outside those regions. This ensures advertisers get exactly what they expect.

What are the ad specifications?

There are two main ad placements across the EthicalAds network. Publishers choose which placement best fits with their site and we have seen great performance for advertisers and publishers with both types.

We support unobtrusive text & image placements which use a 240 * 180px image (displayed at 120 * 90) and up to 100 characters of supporting text. An optional headline and call-to-action (part of the 100 characters) are bolded.
There's also a text-only placement that uses up to 100 characters without an image.

Check out our ad specs page with more details and tips.

What about ad blockers?

Ad blockers are a fact of life when it comes to internet advertising and developers block ads at an even higher rate than the general public. Our privacy focus helps us get through some ad blockers but not all of them. For example, EthicalAds is on the AcceptableAds list which helps minimize ad blocking. However, our ads are still blocked sometimes but advertisers never pay for ads that aren't viewed and that includes ads that are blocked.

Where do the ads link to?

The ads can link to any URL. Typically they will link to your landing page on your website. You may include UTM parameters or other URL parameters to know that the traffic came from your ad on our site.

How do I track conversions?

Some other ad networks help advertisers to track conversions by using conversion pixels or beacons. These pixels are an image that advertisers can put on a conversion page. At EthicalAds, we don't use conversion pixels due to privacy concerns (see our guide on surveillance advertising). Instead, to track conversions, use your existing conversion tracking mechanism such as analytics and rely on UTM or other parameters added to your ad destination link. Keep in mind that our audience is a little more privacy-focused than the general public and JavaScript-based conversion metrics like Google Analytics can understate true conversions.

How are my ads scheduled?

We attempt to schedule advertising evenly based on the length and size of your campaign. However, if you want to advertise as fast as possible, we can definitely do that.

Can I run my ad JavaScript?

In order to respect our users' privacy, we do not allow any third-party ad scripts.

How can I see how my ads are performing?

Once you become an advertiser with us, you will have access to view live reports on the performance of your ads including how many times they were viewed and clicked. We count a viewable impression when the ad comes into the browser viewport.

See more details about advertiser reports.

How can I manage my ads?

After you become an advertiser, you will get access to our advertising platform where you can create, change, or turn off your ads as well as see live reports broken down by each ad.

Check out a video overview of our management interface.

How can I optimize my ads?

For all but the smallest campaigns, we recommend running multiple ads in your campaign. These A/B tests will usually show that some ads perform better than others. After you've collected enough data, turn the lower performing variant off to maximize your performance.

Will you help me optimize my campaign?

Absolutely. You can contact us anytime, but an ad specialist will proactively reach out a few weeks into your campaign with suggestions. We also offer advice on crafting ads that resonate with our audience. See our advertising guide for more details and our creative specs guide has a number of tips and tricks about what works.

We can work with you to ensure your campaign is successful. If you have creatives you're running on other networks, we can help you adapt them to our ad formats. If you need more help creating ads that convert, we can help with that. We've run a lot of campaigns on our network for ourselves and for advertisers and we know what works.

For larger campaigns, we provide periodic video summaries of how your campaigns are performing with detailed suggestions to try to boost performance.

Where do my ads appear?

Ads appear on sites that belong to our publisher network. Placement is customizable based on their requirements, but we always ensure a valuable placement.

What are the top publishers on your network?

Sure, we have a curated list of some of the largest publishers for each of main topics.

What type of ads are acceptable?

We want ads that are of interest to our audience of millions of software developers.

EthicalAds has final approval for all ads with respect to editorial and creative content but generally this isn't an issue.

What are the details of the EthicalAds audience?

See our audience.

Do my ads support open source?

EthicalAds is open source software and the ads go to support development of the publishers where ads are hosted.

How can I get started advertising?

We thought you'd never ask. Simply fill out our advertising information form. A member of our team will contact you with a detailed prospectus and will walk you through the process of getting started advertising on EthicalAds.