What Makes EthicalAds a Great Google Ads Alternative

We often get asked why you should choose EthicalAds instead of an existing display network like Google AdWords or their publisher focused product Google AdSense. Many people default to Google when they think about online advertising, and we think we're a great alternative for developer-focused sites.

Google Ads EthicalAds
Payouts

Does the network pay monthly with one of the industry-best revenue shares?

No cookies & user privacy

Is the ad network cookie-free so you won't need a cookie banner?

Compliant with global privacy regulation

Will ads require tracking notifications due to regulation like the GDPR or CCPA?

Transparent

Is the network transparent about which ads and advertisers will appear on which sites?

Developer-focused

Will there be off-topic ads or ads focused on people besides developers?

Open source

Is the ad network open source so you can see exactly what it is doing?

When your user goes to your website, they are assuming they will only be sending data to you. Some users consider it a breach of trust if you were to share that data with other third parties, and it might be a breach of a privacy law to do this without user consent. Google is well-known for it's data collection policies, and they are used to target ads on your website and many other sites around the internet.

EthicalAds is 100% GDPR and CCPA compliant.

When you use EthicalAds, we never set cookies on your users, and we don't use any user-specific data to target advertising. This means you don't need a cookie banner when you use our ads, and your users data is not being tracked across the internet.

Transparency: See exactly what ads get shown on your site.

Google shows ads based on the user who is viewing your site, which means they could be seeing ads totally unrelated to your site content. Sometimes this results in ads that you might find objectionable, might freak your users out by following them around the web, or many other issues.

EthicalAds only shows ads based on the content of your site. They are guaranteed to be developer-focused, and won't follow users around the web. We're so confident in our advertisers, we give you a dashboard that shows every advertiser on your site so you know exactly what your users are seeing.

Focus: We only show developer-focused ads. Nothing weird

Google shows whatever ad will make the most money on each page. For your site, this could be something that upsets or offends you audience, as well as something you aren't proud to be promoting.

Our network is developer-focused and the ads are hand-curated by our team. This means you get high-quality ads on your site that you will be happy to see.

Community: Our product is open source, and our mission is to support the community.

The code behind Google ads is proprietary and incredibly complex. This is because there is a large amount of time being spent trying to figure out exactly who you are and how to target you with an ad.

With EthicalAds, our code is both simple and open source. You can look at our ethical ad server and ethical ad client on GitHub. You can even read the exact logic we use to select that ads that show on your website, because we don't need complex tracking logic.

Choice: Diversify the web ecosystem by supporting more advertising options

Google and Facebook account for the vast majority of advertising revenue on the internet. Having all the revenue concentrated in these two companies makes it harder for independent publishers and companies to get started. We think our approach to advertising is worth investing in, and we hope to make it a larger percentage of the way the internet does advertising.

We talk more about the issues with invasive ad tracking, and how it hurts journalism and anyone creating high-value content on the web. We are hoping to break this vicious cycle by offering a better way to support developer-focused publishers on the internet.

Join today: Ready to take the next step?

Ethical advertising is our vision for the future of internet advertising, and we hope that you'll join us. We believe the open source community should show the way forward, since we have a deep understanding of how privacy issues impact the internet. We have space for additional publishers, and look forward to building something meaningful with you:

Become an advertiser

Start your campaign today!