Ad serving platforms have evolved beyond basic display features and functionality. They are now powerful tools that help businesses deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time.
From targeting and tracking capabilities to advanced reporting and optimization, ad serving platforms have become proven marketing tools that small businesses can leverage to reach wider audiences.
But with so many ad servers vying for your attention, how do you choose the right ad server?
To save you the time and effort of manually researching each platform’s targeting options, I’ve done the work for you, selecting seven options that offer the features small businesses need.
First-party advertising service platform
These platforms are primarily owned and operated by entities that also own ad space, making them first-party ad servers:
1. Google Ads Manager
Google Ads Manager Whether you’re a small business owner or a solopreneur, it’s a powerful tool for managing your ad inventory. Launched in 2018, it helps you manage your ad space and track your ad performance.
Here’s how Google Ads Manager helps entrepreneurs take full advantage of advertising:
- Advertising inventory management: Organize and control all your ads in one place.
- Advertising performance tracking: Monitor your ad performance with detailed reports.
- Buy and sell ads: Easily manage the buying and selling of ads within the platform.
- Fine-grained positioning: Reach the right audience by targeting specific devices, browsers and geographies.
- One price auction: The highest bidder wins the ad space, ensuring competitive pricing. Learn more about Google Advertising Cost Plan your budget.
Picture this – you own a small online store and want to advertise. Using Google Ad Manager, you can set up a Summer Sale ad campaign targeting mobile users in your city.
Performance reports can help you understand which ads are performing best and adjust your strategy. Using a third-party ad server can expand your reach and optimize future ad campaigns.
This can streamline your advertising efforts, save time and help you reach your audience more effectively. Learn more here Google Ads vs. Facebook Ads Complete collapse.
Because it is such a popular platform, there are many Facebook marketing tools can also help you.
2. Meta Ad Manager
Meta Ad Manager Your first choice for advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or Audience Network.
It’s an all-in-one platform for creating ads, managing when and where they run, and tracking ad performance to achieve your marketing goals.
I like how everything is neatly organized through one platform. It also helps smaller teams scale to multiple pipelines without hiring additional resources.
Meta Ad Manager allows you to:
- Create a new ad: Easily set up new ads by choosing campaign parameters that fit your business goals.
- Audience targeting: Define and tailor your audiences for smarter ad targeting, whether broad or specific.
- Budget management: Set a total budget for each day of your campaign or for the entire campaign lifetime.
- Cross-platform advertising: Extend your ads to Facebook’s family of apps and services with automated placements.
- Adjust activities: You can edit your budget, audience, and placement options. You can also pause, copy or restart a campaign at any time.
- Dynamic creativity: Automatically deliver personalized ads with dynamic creative, combining images, video and text to achieve ideal audience targeting.
- A/B testing: Test different ads for the best target audience, delivery optimization, and placement.
- Instant insights: Use reporting tools to track whether your ads are meeting your goals and spot trends for future adjustments.
Imagine running a small boutique. Using Meta Ads Manager, you can build ad campaigns targeting local shoppers on Instagram and Facebook.
Adjust budget and audience as needed, and use dynamic creative to showcase different product images and videos.
Instant insights let you know which ads are performing best, helping you optimize future campaigns for better results.
3.TikTok Ads Manager
TikTok Ads Manager This is a powerful tool for small business owners looking to reach a large, engaged audience. With the rise of user-generated content and short-form videos, this is a great way to capitalize on this growing trend.
I’ve found that TikTok’s engagement rates are at least 25% higher than its Meta-based counterparts.
Ads Manager allows you to create and track ads on the platform, increasing the potential for viral content and increasing brand awareness at a low cost.
TikTok Ads Manager can help you with:
- Create an ad: Set up in-feed videos, images or playable ads to engage your audience.
- Target audience: Define and adjust target audiences for precise advertising.
- Budget management: Set and manage your budget and choose from a variety of bidding strategies including CPC, CPM, CPM, and CPV.
- Dynamic creativity: Automate personalized ads with dynamic creative to maximize engagement.
- Instant insights: Monitor ad performance and make data-driven adjustments anytime, anywhere.
TikTok Ads Manager is best for businesses investing in video content, especially short-form videos. Let’s say you run a dance studio and want to promote your new hip-hop classes.
With TikTok Ads Manager, you can showcase short videos of your choreography to attract young people interested in dance and music, thus keeping in line with the platform’s trends.
4. LinkedIn Campaign Manager
LinkedIn Event Manager It is a powerful tool for businesses to leverage the LinkedIn network. With over 700 million professionals, it provides unique access to decision-makers, professionals and industry influencers, making it ideal for B2B businesses.
To set up your account, log in with your LinkedIn account, select your campaign goals, and choose your ad format (sponsored content, text ads, or dynamic ads). You can also set targeting criteria based on demographics, job titles, and more specific criteria.
Benefits of LinkedIn Campaign Manager include:
- Target Audience: Define and tailor your audiences for precise advertising.
- Budget management: Set a daily or lifetime budget and choose a CPC or CPM bidding strategy.
- Performance monitoring: Track key metrics like impressions, clicks, click-through rate, engagement, conversion rate, and ROI.
After launching a campaign, use dashboards to monitor performance and make data-driven optimizations. LinkedIn Audience Network can extend your reach beyond LinkedIn, and Audience Expansion can help find similar prospects.
Start with at least three ads per campaign to test changes and optimize results.
LinkedIn Campaign Manager streamlines your advertising efforts to effectively reach and engage professional audiences to drive your business goals.
Third-party advertising service platform
These platforms operate independently and can serve ads across multiple websites and networks. This is ideal if your business has a presence on various platforms and wants to reach a wider audience.
5. Kevil
Kevil is a set of APIs that enable programmers to design, build and launch fully customized server-side ad servers in a matter of weeks.
It offers the ability to run sponsored listings, internal promotions, and native ad placements, making it a versatile option for businesses looking to enhance their digital advertising capabilities.
Benefits of using Kevel:
- customized: Create a fully customized ad server that fits your business needs.
- Multiple ad formats: Run a variety of ad formats including sponsored lists, native ad placements and internal promotions.
- Trustworthy brands: Kevel is trusted by major customers such as Ticketmaster, Yelp, Strava, and Mozilla for reliability and performance.
- Quick deployment: Launch your custom ad server quickly, minimizing downtime and accelerating time to market.
These features increase revenue through targeted advertising while maintaining a seamless user experience.
Leveraging Kevel’s powerful API ensures your ad server is powerful and adaptable, as the API can be easily integrated with other tools and systems your business may use.
6. Advertising Manager
Advertising Manager is a flexible, scalable and reliable ad server designed to help you monetize your digital assets effectively.
With over 25 years of experience, AdButler offers a comprehensive suite of solutions to support your website, e-commerce store or application.
With AdButler you get:
- Quick ad serving: AdButler’s unique server design and global network deliver ads in milliseconds, enhancing user experience and engagement.
- Multiple ad formats: Supports multiple ad formats, including display ads, native ads, video ads, etc.
- Advanced positioning: Drive relevant and converting marketing campaigns with precise targeting options like geography, platform, and keyword targeting.
- Customizable platform: AdButler is fully customizable and white-labeled, allowing you to create a branded interface that fits your business needs.
- Comprehensive analysis: Automated reporting provides detailed insights to help you demonstrate ROI and optimize your marketing campaigns instantly.
- Best-in-class support: Dedicated experts and account managers are available 24/7 to assist you.
AdButler is a fast and reliable ad serving solution. E-commerce stores benefit from the ability to quickly deliver targeted ads, increasing sales and customer engagement.
The platform handles increased traffic efficiently and scales as your business grows. Its user-friendly interface and detailed analysis support data-driven decision-making.
7.OpenX
OpenX is a long-established, reputable platform that’s ideal for large publishers who serve large amounts of ads each month. Although more expensive, OpenX provides excellent tools for audience targeting and customized campaign reporting.
You can also access 12 months of historical data. Notable clients include CBS Interactive, Electronic Arts and Samsung.
Benefits of using OpenX:
- Addressability: OpenX targeting works on all channels, including CTV, and works with any data set or identity type. This helps you reach your audience at scale.
- transparency: Since 2008, OpenX has established a fair and transparent system between sellers and buyers to support customer success.
- responsibility: OpenX is the first Net-Zero verified ad tech company and the first to launch Impact PMP powered by Givsly. This helps brands reduce their environmental impact and support social causes.
- Cloud-based: OpenX runs entirely on Google Cloud Platform, enhancing performance, scalability, speed and global reach.
OpenX is best suited for larger publishers who need to manage large volumes of ads and require detailed analytics to optimize ad performance.
The platform’s powerful targeting and reporting capabilities enable businesses to fine-tune their marketing campaigns for maximum impact. Its cloud-based infrastructure ensures reliability and rapid deployment of new features.
What about a self-hosted ad serving platform?
If you want complete control over your advertising management, a self-hosted advertising platform is the perfect choice. If you have the technical skills and resources, running your own ad server allows you to customize everything to your specific needs.
It will also save you money in the long run since you won’t have to pay for external hosting. This approach is ideal for businesses that require a hyper-customized solution and don’t want to rely on third-party services.
Design ads for ad serving platforms
Once you decide where to host your ads, it’s time to create them. Here are some programs that can help you design ads that are optimized for the platforms they serve on:
- canvas: This is for non-designers who want to easily create visually appealing designs.
- Adobe Creative Suite: For advanced graphic design and editing.
- Advertising creativity: The platform leverages artificial intelligence technology to create competitive, professional ads with minimal technical experience.
this Canva and Photoshop The review will help you decide between the two based on your skill level and ad design goals.
Bottom Line: The Best Advertising Serving Platform for Entrepreneurs
Advertising is the backbone of digital revenue generation for businesses. If managed properly, they can earn significant returns by increasing traffic and conversions to their website or app.
Whether you’re a small business owner or an established company, consider investing in one of these ad serving platforms to grow your online presence and boost your profits.
