How much can you earn by placing display ads on the site?

July 19, 2023
What is display advertising?

Banners, videos, ads in mobile apps, audio ads, teaser blocks. If you visit a website and see an advertising block that you immediately recognize as an ad, that's display advertising.

If you're unsure whether it's an ad or not, it's likely native advertising. If you're really uncertain, it's good native advertising.


Who can earn money from display advertising?


Site owners - websites on the internet and mobile apps. If we look at it broadly, any platform where:
  • you regularly post content and people read it
  • you have access to the platform's source code.


Thus, social networks are not included here. Yes, you can post content there, but you don't have access to the source code. Social networks themselves earn money from advertising by using your content to attract traffic.


What do you need to start earning from display advertising?


Let's look at the example of earning from your own website. It's still a much more popular and accessible option than a mobile app.


You'll need:
  • a website
  • a bit of content
  • a content plan for the near future
  • fast hosting to display ads correctly and load them before visitors leave the platform
  • initial traffic - you can buy ads or improve your site's organic search engine rankings.


Where can you earn money?

There are many advertising networks. Yandex's contextual advertising network, aggregators like the recently updated umg.team.


The usual algorithm looks like this:
  • register with an advertising network;
  • choose the main ad formats (classic banners/videos to start with);
  • place their codes on your website;
  • after some time, withdraw the honestly earned funds.


How much can you earn?

It depends on the quantity and quality of traffic (visits from your audience to the site) and the number of ad formats on the site. A small new platform usually allows you to earn up to 10-15 thousand rubles, based on a traffic of about 10-50 thousand unique users per month. A collection of good average platforms can generate around a hundred thousand rubles. Major media outlets and thematic portals can earn millions of rubles per month.


Is there a lot of money in this market overall?

Forecasts for the turnover of internet advertising in 2023, according to various sources, range around 400-500 billion rubles. Unfortunately, after commissions from all participants, only 5-10 percent of the budgets reach the final platforms. Plus, it's worth considering that the lion's share of advertising will not be shown on regular webmaster sites.

However, even this allows us to say that platform owners will be able to compete for hundreds of millions of rubles per year.


How quickly can you achieve a good income?

Around six months. The main factors on a website are traffic and content, and developing these components takes time and focused attention. If you treat advertising as a full-time job, it's possible to reach sums of over 100,000 rubles within this timeframe.


What challenges can arise?

The main challenge is not being able to attract traffic to your website or buying it in a way that makes your advertising economically viable.

If you solve this problem, you can consider success within reach. Other potential issues, such as the complexity of choosing and setting up ad networks, content generation, and so on, are more about work that hasn't been done yet rather than actual problems.


Why should you drop everything and start earning from display advertising?

  • Quick entry into the field: There are plenty of educational materials available, including those provided by ad networks themselves, courses, and concentrations of varying effectiveness. Therefore, the desire to learn more in this field for development will be quickly satisfied.
  • Relatively passive income: Overall, most advertising networks allow you to set up ads in a "set it and forget it" mode and do not require daily actions. However, it's important not to neglect analytics and adjustments to maintain a stable income.
  • Current income stability: Advertising is the engine of commerce, and websites on the internet continue to be a clear and effective source of customer acquisition for advertisers.
  • Creating content isn't that difficult: With the help of language models like GPT-4, creating high-quality content has become much easier.


Why shouldn't you drop everything and start earning from display advertising?
  • Putting all your eggs in one basket is risky: It's usually worth giving up everything in rare cases and after several sessions with a psychologist. Therefore, it's always better to have multiple sources of income and diversify risks.
  • You can be pushed out by monopolies: The advertising market is consolidating, with players merging and acquiring each other. This could likely lead to monopolies and a decrease in earnings for participants in the advertising chain, including website owners. On the other hand, you may make a profitable exit, if you able to make a good website.
  • The advertising market is getting smarter: This means it requires more specialized traffic, specifically traffic that suits the desired target audience, which can provide the necessary conversions for advertisers. The era of broad targeting for ads, where any webmaster could earn from any type of traffic, is over. The era when a site owner could earn a lot from low-quality traffic or fraud has also passed. For example, if the ad block didn't load, was in an invisible part of the page, or worse, if impressions and clicks were artificially inflated.

Websites as a source of information are losing their relevance. There is an opinion that typical internet activities will soon be limited to viewing social networks, posting content there, buying goods and services on marketplaces and classifieds, and communicating on dominant messenger platforms. Unfortunately, regular websites on the internet do not fall into any of these activities.

We won't draw any conclusions here. We've talked about display advertising as a way to earn money and its pros and cons. Whether to start earning from display advertising or not after reading this article is up to you.