The ad server is a technology which is used to store, manage, and place the advertisement on the publisher website. In contrast, the ad network is a company which owns an ad server for selling the ad impressions to advertisers and to monitor the revenue of publisher.
Ad server:
The ad server handles the ad operations and maintains separate statistical data for each user in the ad network.
It monitors the advertiser campaign and generates real time reports on ad impressions, clicks, and leads.
The graphical reports of advertisement will help the advertiser to determine ROI of a particular website.
The targeting options present in the ad server will serve the advertiser ads to the targeted audience. The domain, user, and geographical targeting options will deliver the ads to the user present in the right location at the right time.
Ad network:
The ad network is a company or a network of publishers that owns the ad server for selling the ad inventories or ad spaces to the advertisers.
The advertiser can purchase the inventories to serve the advertisements on publisher website.
The ad network maintains separate login for each publisher in the ad network and generates details on the highest and lowest revenue earned by the publishers.
How are an ad server and ad network used in advertising?
An ad network with wide publisher group will provide required amount of inventories to the advertisers on an auction basis.
Using an ad server, the advertiser can purchase the required inventories and upload banners, ad links, and ad rules.
Once the ad server receives the requirement, it generates the ad tags for each publisher or the ad network.
The publisher can use the ad tag in the website to display the advertisement through the ad server.
When the ad is published, the advertiser can rotate multiple banners in the website without contacting with the publisher.
