alrighty here we go. Keep in mind none of this really applies to mobile apps and stuff, only large websites.
From the publisher perspective you have different levels of display networks you can get into. They range anywhere from general audience and a "bidding network" all the way to media networks and varying levels of you-don't-stand-a-fucking-chance. The pay scales and benefits kind of go along with the difficulties of getting in.
Bidding networks- These are like your typical display media buy places such as adbrite, adsonar, exoclick etc. These are the easiest to get in. They take sites from just about all the niches. They have some minimal volume and quality requirements. As long as you're a clean site you can get accepted into them. Find one of your media buyer buddies to refer you to his AM. From there ask for a referral to the publisher side of approvals and you can get in fairly quickly. Otherwise you're in a queue with about 20,000 other crappy warez and forum sites where you'll sit for months to forever. When going into a bidding network don't expect to make a lot per cpm. You'll lose a ton of ad impressions to low inventory at least starting out, and you'll lose a lot more if you're not in a profitable niche like health and fitness. If you can get your site and your ad placements profitable for what bidders you get your cpm rates will eventually grow and you can start breaking the $1 cpm range. Until that happens don't have high expectations.
Large mediabuy networks- This isn't really the term for them but they're basically a bidding network as well but larger. These typically take really large sites and have high volume minimums. Networks that fall under this is shit like Adcenter Premium, Valueclick, DoubleClick, and hell I'd be willing to consider 24/7 media as one. These are the same as above but since they have really high volume minimums (usually in the 1million+ imps/month range) they usually give you your own account rep and sales reps from their company will actually actively pursue selling your inventory privately. Getting into these are quite a bit more difficult. If they are going to consider you they will ask you for actual access to your analytics accounts and make sure you are not only above the minimums but are the type of site and niche that is easy to sell ad inventory on. On top of that, minimums usually aren't enough. Lots of people are applying that reach the minimums, you're competing with them to get in. They may also put you into a trial period where you are on cpc only. The benefit of these is that they won't ask you to heavily modify your site very much, just place the ads where they should go for max benefit and poof you get paid. The payouts are much better as well, typically in the $5-$20 cpm range. I don't really have a trick to getting into these places as I haven't done it enough to really warrant a trick being done. The success I have had was just digging through countless profiles on linkedin until i managed to get contact with the highest possible person in the company, setup a phone call, then got him to pass my app on. Don't talk to anyone until your publisher app is at least in!
Media Agencies- This is where you get into the youdontstandafuckingchance area of things. Lots and lots of these exist. They usually start as one really popular website that grows so big they create their own media agency, from there they partner with a few other big sites and use the media agency to sell inventory on all the sites at once. All the sites in a media agency is extremely uniform and same niche. I'll list a few popular ones to show you what i mean:
CNET Network: This is download.com, crave.com, help.com, last.fm, mysimon, tv.com etc. Their media agency is actually CBS Interactive.
Crave Online: This is obviously CraveOnline.com as well as about a hundred other entertainment sites and magazines such as Sherdog.com, Debonaire, EpicFail.com, and clipjunkie.
Break Media: Break.com, HolyTaco.com, Chickipedia, CagePotato and other humor Males ages 24-30 sites.
CheezeBurger: ICanHazCheeseBurger, FailBlog, KnowYourMeme.
Demand Media: eHow.com, Cracked.com and a few others.
*There are of course many many smaller ones. I'm just giving some popular examples you'll recognize to give you the idea.
These media agencies specialize in selling large branding buys. For instance go to Golf.com. You'll probably some big brand like nike or viagra, or some movie premier of sorts. The downside to this of course is uniformatity. They'll gut your site like a fucking fish. Your site has to look and be formatted exactly like every other site in the network. For instance with IGN.COM network you'll notice IGN.com is formatted and ad placed EXACTLY like their network sites mycheats.1up.com, supercheats.com, askmen.com, and ugo.com. Exact fucking same just different colors. Say sorry to all your wickedfire buddies you swapped links with earlier, their links can't stay.
The payouts on these are also much higher. They can range anywhere from $15 cpm's to $35 cpms. Like the Break Network starts you at $30 cpm. The downside is, your site will be filled with all of the same ads, you will probably get splash page ads, and you have no choice other then colors in how your site looks and navigates.
The biggest benefit to media agencies is that they will help you promote your site. It does them a lot of good for your site to become super popular. So during your trial contract period they will pair you up with some other sites in their network that are of similar popularity and make you all exchange sitewide links and promote each other. This boosts your site in big ways. Not only in the search engines but it sends you MASSIVE traffic. Then if you move your way up and get onto the main sites then you are basically instantly into a closed loop system where you easily become one of the most popular sites on the interwebs. The downside to this is, you have to match demographics EXACTLY. Don't even try to join a media agency network if you aren't exactly in their demographics and can't prove it. On all of their media agency sites they have sales materials for their buyers that usually come with a bunch of charts and stats saying exactly how many impressions/month they serve, unique visitors, and very detailed breakdown of the demographics and userbase. Find this info, make sure it matches your site and most importantly make sure you can prove it. Then apply and start making constant contact with them. I can tell you this, if you qualify it'll take you lots and lots of phone calls before they'll even ask for your analytics and membership breakdowns. If they reject you they be gracious about it and offer a very entry level. Offer to link to all their network sites, remind them that you're totally willing to conform your site structure, and basically offer next to nothing for your CPM rates. Also lay out an exact plan to build your traffic even higher or get closer to their target demographics. Then let them know you'll make some more stuff happen on your side and you'll get back to them in a few months, and do it over and over until they let you in. Once they let you in you can negotiate your rates and terms and all that fun stuff. Also, work from the top down. Try to get into the biggest network possible and if that doesn't work keep trying all the way down the chain. Once you lock into a deal thats it, you're in and never going to leave. So don't settle unless all the better options have already been chased.
Well i'm tired of typing but feel free to give me a little more details on your site and I'll give more details on where you can get in and how.
