Monetize Your Website Through Ad Networks:

Perhaps the most common form of generating revenue and why not? Place some code into your pages and wait for the check each month. Let someone else worry about brokering the ads and the technical witchcraft. But what if keeping your website on topic is important to you? What about Japan-related ads?

The bad news: If you are committed to displaying Japan-related ads in your website then you are very limited in your ad network choices. Some networks such as BURST! advertise that they will provide campaigns targeted to your content. These are infrequent and the targeted campaigns may be a small percentage of the total ads.

The good news: There are still a few choices in the form of content-specific or content-targeted ad networks. Most are text ads with the exception of Google's recent inclusion of graphic banners.

Japan-Specific Ad Networks:

A more proper title would be "content-specific ad networks" as the technology used in these networks aligns advertisements to the textual content of the page on which the code is placed.

Below are three networks I have tested on Japan website pages covering a wide variety of topics ranging from Japanese woodblock prints to Tokyo Disneyland. Results will give you some idea of what to expect but try them for yourself as even slight changes to page content and code placement will alter your results.

• Google AdSense
  • Summary: Text ads, limited banner ads and recently added WebSearch with AdSense. Generally considered a first choice by publishers regardless of website content.
  • Japan Website Results: Text ads are usually very well targeted with a very well populated base of Japan-related advertisers covering everything from kimonos to Nikkei stock reports. Banner ads are optional and if selected are infrequent. This may change as more advertisers get on board and supply graphic banners. Excellent pay per click and clickthrough rate make this a prime choice.
• Quigo AdSonar
  • Summary: Text ads only. Excellent ad layout options and reporting. User interface is top-notch.
  • Japan Website Results: Good clickthrough rate and very few default ads. Pay per click 1 to 5 cents per click. Every bit as good as Google in terms of ad quality and layout but pay per click considerably lower.
• Allfeeds.com
  • Summary: A variety of ad formats including content-targeted text ads. Allfeeds also provides "Google Backfill" code which replaces AdSense default ads with paid ads from their own network by placing a bit of code into the AdSense code within your pages. Backfill likely violates Google's policies by modifying the AdSense code.
  • Japan Website Results: Payout for Contextual Ads and Google Backfill was low at 1 or 2 cents per click on average. Ads were somewhat targeted to Japan topics but often only 1 or 2 ads were displayed in a 4-ad layout block.

Final thoughts:

The number of ad networks is large and the services and technology are evolving quickly. If you know of any tried and tested networks capable of providing Japan-related or content-related ads then please let us know. We'll consider reviewing them for inclusion on this page.