What's best to serve ads?

[advert_man]

I mostly, if not entirely use simple iframe tags to serve ads on my site, it does have its limitations, but what do you think is best to serve ads:

- iframes
- scripts/banner managers (such as php, cgi etc.)
- third party banner managers (sites which you place your ad codes in and get a "master" ad code to display the different ads.
- any others?

advantage of iframes are that they wont add additional server load (the iframe is read directly by the browser, it does not have to request or execute any software on the server, like php + perl has to)

downside is that if, like some advertisers do, is serve thier ads in iframes, it can mean that two iframes have to load for the one ad, this takes that little extra time for the banner to load.

Is php ads new the best way to go? I dont like databases however....

[masm50]

I'm slightly confused by the question, but here goes...

iframes are useful to place ads in, as the ad will not slow down the loading of the rest of your page. However, the iframe itself doesn't serve the ads. It is just basically an invisible frame where you can place your ad code.

For advertising, you really need to be able to track (count) the impressions that you serve, and the amount of clicks that your site generates on the ads. For this you need either a software banner manager to install on your server, or a 3rd party adserver.

You don't say how many impressions you are planning to serve, but if you are after free adserving solutions then either use phpAdsNew - http://www.phpadsnew.com

or a 3rd party ad server (if you don't want to deal with the databses and such yourself) such as AdButler - http://www.adbutler.com
(do note that these free services take a % of your impressions to pay for the service).

Which ever you decide to use, you will need to obtain the ad code which will most likely come in the form of an iframe.

Cheers

Tim