They come, last a short while, then vanish. Some do well with Media.net but Adsense remains the biggest and most consistent earner.

Try the site search for "Alternatives to Adsense"

I did a search but can only find posts from years ago.

Has anyone tried AOL? the account manager contacted me a while ago and I just ignored it. I am going to see what google have to say on my call next week but I am thinking of shifting or at least trying someone else.

I have the impression that no one ever found a something better than Adsense. Otherwise, everybody would have switched already :)

Now, I trend to ignore email solicitations, I assume that only small and new ad networks are aggressively sending mails. In all events,if you try someone else, be sure it's old enough to find feedback from others.

Once, I came upon an ad network called LizAds (I can name it, since it no longer exists). Several years old business, they looked nice, I gave it a try, and it gave rather good results. But I stopped after 2 days, when I contacted them and get a reply with the "sent from my iPhone" mention at the bottom. There is nothing wrong-wrong, but I smell the amateurish business, so I removed all their code. 2 months later, their site was off-line and never came back.

...a reply with the "sent from my iPhone" mention at the bottom

That's funny!

That's funny!

:)

By the way, the thing is, lot of ad networks are in fact serving Google'ads in a way or another. For example, when i tried (one more time) Media.net last year, all their display ads were in fact adsense ads (certainly with their own code).

I also used Chitika at a time, it was doing okay, but I had to stop when they changed their payment method for non-US publishers. They were also mixing their own ads with Adsense' ads.

Criteo seems interesting, but I never gave them a try.

But in all events, I doubt that any other ad networks can perform better than Adsense, in spite of the decrease of adsense earnings that lot ar reporting. Also, keep in mind that a decrease of Adsense's earning might not be related to adsense itself, but it can be due to a change in the profile of the visitors of your site. Even if your traffic remained the same, or increase, it's possible you are no loner receiving the same kind of visitors as before.

I would consider affiliate programs as complement to Adsense instead of othre ad networks.

it can be due to a change in the profile of the visitors of your site.

I agree that the key to success is the quality/profile of your visitors. If it changes just a bit - their motive for coming, what time they come, how they get there, etc. - it can affect how often they click and on what ads.

At the same time you want that visitor pool to constantly be refreshed by new users coming to your site for the first time, seeing your content as fresh and seeing your ads for the first time.

I too get bombarded daily from ad networks wanting me to sign up - at the end of the day they ALL sound the same: high on promises and, I suspect, low on delivery.

Adsense is still king for me (been that way since 2003). The only other network that delivered the goods for several years was TribalFusion (ExponentialMedia) but, for some reason, they tanked in terms of fill rate/earnings this past February so I had to pull them after a good long run. I use Media.net as an alternative right now to pad earnings - seems to be the only one that works well enough behind Adsense for legitimate-looking sites.

By ya, doesn't look like anyone can compete with Adsense's reach at the moment. I tried options like affiliates and Lockerdome and nothing replaces Adsense income, despite its decreased earnings the last few years. Taboola had been aggressive via email so had to mark them as spam and forget them - their ads are just terrible on all these sites I see them on. Got accepted by Content.Ad recently as some on these boards promoted them as good. However, they are another ugly-ad network so I'm suspicious of ever using them.

What about Adx which is, I guess,a sort of different version on Adx (could be wrong). Does anyone here use Adx? What are your experiences using it as a type of alternative to regular Adsense?

You could try ezoic. I've been using them for a few months and they are making me more money but nothing earth shattering in terms of increase. The good thing is AdSense is part of it but they also add in header bidding and other ad partners on top of it, and wrap it using AI to place ads in many different places. It does all the ad testing for you.

Aside from that AdSense really is #1. Other than that I use Amazon affiliate links. I've tried TribalFusion and some others in the past but they don't even come close to AdSense.

Can anyone give any experience on alternatives to AdSense that provides cost per impression?

In my experience and fourteen-ish (right?) years into AdSense, there's still none even remotely close.

The last big hope was Facebook AN which sadly turned out to be the last big laugh.

For me at least, the *only* alternative (which they aren't really, because they require a lot of work and laser sharp implementation as opposed to virtually effortless AS) and which provide a sizable secondary stream, are the big affiliate programs like Amazon & Ebay. Even CJ (once king for me) has declined to a pittance over the years and is almost out of my properties.

But... who knows, there could be a Google-killer next year... :D

Ummm thanks for your replies. Been doing this since 2003 so 14 years adsense too. What about AOL or some of the top ten ad networks? Anyone tried header bidding? I am thinking of trying. I have affiliate that performs well to bump up the earnings so thanks for the advice.

I have read that the average market rate is £1 per 1000 impressions is that true as I am no-where near that.

Just thought I'd mention a problem I'm having with Media.net (my second tier advertising network).
Last year Media.net started dumping a number of auto-start-audio ads on my site.
I requested to opt out for that type of ad. They told me that was not possible.
As an alternative, I opted out of rich media ads altogether (accompanied by the expected income drop).
After many months of showing their text ads only, they have renewed showing rich media ads, at least some of which create auto-audio sounds (not necessarily words, sometimes just sounds).
I did not request this change, they imposed it on me.
I contacted my rep about this. Now 7 days later there is still no reply (not the first time at all that Media.net has not replied to issues that are indefensible on their part).
If you're dire for the money, I get using Media.net. In all instances otherwise, I would avoid them.

I've removed nearly all media.net ads from my sites, in part because of declining revenue but also because they stopped responding to emails. That never bodes well. Support used to be one of their biggest selling points. Maybe their sale to a Chinese company has something to do with their decline.

I've also removed Media.net ads. A year ago they still performed well, but now they generate next to nothing.

I also no longer use Media.Net. The income from the ads was extremely depressing. There was a time when they were good, and I made almost as much money with them as I made with Google, but no longer. Of course, AdSense is not much better now.

Thanks guys that is interesting I will stick with my adsense then :-)