September 2026 update: treat the 2008 prospecting list as a record, then buy transparently
This 2008 post records three advertiser-prospecting ideas. It does not justify scraping competitors, inferring buyer interest from an ad placement or making unsupported audience claims.
IAB direct-buy and data-transparency guidance support clear terms: inventory, audience-data source and restrictions, dates, creative, price and reporting. The FTC says advertising should be identifiable as advertising. For a standard display impression, the Media Rating Council guideline defines viewability as at least 50% of the ad’s pixels in view for one continuous second. That is a delivery definition, not evidence of attention or action.
Google’s EU user-consent policy applies to relevant products, not as a legal conclusion for every site. Review Ad Manager invalid-traffic guidance before reporting delivery. The archive record below preserves the original context. For channel planning, see our web marketing services; for reporting boundaries, see the analytics tools update.
Sources: IAB direct-buy addendum; IAB Tech Lab data-transparency standard; FTC native advertising guide; Media Rating Council viewable-ad-impression guideline; Google EU user-consent policy; Google Ad Manager invalid-traffic guidance.
Archive record
So, you decided that you aren’t going to wait for advertisers to find your site. Instead, you’ll take the initiative to look for them and offer them a good advertising spot or package. That’s great! But now you must be wondering where those ad buyers can be located.
There are several places where you can find advertisers for your blog or website, but today I’m going to focus on the following ones:
1. Your own site
Yes, your own site can help you compile a list of prospect ad buyers. Here’s how: install AdSense (or other contextual ad network’s code) on your template. Wait a few days, until Google learns what your site is about and starts showing appropriate ads. Now visit the sponsor sites (don’t click on your own ads; type their URLs on your browser) and see if they are indeed relevant to your audience. If the answer is positive, these are ad buyers you may want to offer a deal to.
2. Google
I’m not going to suggest that you simply search for companies in your niche via Google, though you can certainly do that as well. The problem is that you can’t easily guess whether the search result pages will contain companies that are used to buying ads or not. So, I recommend that you do the following: type keywords that are related to your niche and see if the result pages display sponsored ads. If they do, check their sites. The principle here is pretty similar to the one applied to place #1.
3. Competitor sites
Your competitors can (involuntarily) lend you a hand when you’re seeking for prospect ad buyers. Visit their sites and read their “advertise here” pages. Take notes on the prices they charge, overall conditions, stats, restrictions etc. Now visit their current sponsors and contact them to offer better advertising deals. It’s that simple.
Have you ever tried any of these methods? Leave a comment sharing your experiences with us.
