An Online Journalism Review wiki aimed at independent publishers provides some key tips to choosing which advertising programs work best for individual news content websites.

First, a simple method for determining whether or not certain advertisements are working: compute the eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) of revenue that each ad type is earning for you. To do so:
1. Take the total amount of revenue generated by an ad or ad type.
2. Divide it by the number of pages on which it appears.
3. Multiply by 1,000. Compare different ads and ad types to see what layouts, types, and positions work best on your particular site.

According to recent Google research, top performing ad formats include:
-Large box ads placed in the middle of your main content column
- Skyscraper ads placed in a left-side column
-Leaderboard ads placed at the top and the bottom of the main content column.
-As any internet user can imagine, pop-up, pop-under, and “screen takeover” ads are extremely unpopular.

Here’s some of the best advice on specific types of advertising:

Commissions/Affiliate Links
-In commissions programs, an online retailer pays the publisher a percentage of sales made when customers follow an ad from the publisher’s site. Of course, publishers must gauge their own site’s readers’ likelihood of making purchases.

When entering into one of these agreements, note:
-What percentage of a sale the retailer pays
-The length of time after a click-through that the retailer offers credit for the sale
-Linking to individual products, rather than retailer home pages, has proven successful.

-If interested in one of these programs, try LinkShare.

Advertising Networks
-Pay-per-click (PPC) programs are the most popular, especially Google’s AdSense-you earn money each time a reader clicks on an ad
-Ads are displayed according to page content. Therefore, they do not always work well for sites whose readers are defined by demographics, like geography, age, or political position.

Selling Ads Directly
-Know your readers – GoogleAnalytics provides traffic data, or take a survey
- Create an ad management system using a system like OpenAds, and PayPal to invoice advertisers.
-Set up a page that provides information about traffic and who your visitors are, along with ad packages.

Though it all sounds easy enough in theory, journalists are not business people, usually far from it. It can be tough for a journalist to strike a balance between editorial integrity and promoting their own brand. Paidcontent.org's Rafat Ali has felt this ethical confusion first-hand, and said at the a recent OJR convention, "One of the things about a journalist as opposed to a business person is that journalists will always err on the side of caution. The reality is that advertising is part of the conversation and the editor draws the line about how much it encroaches [the site]."

Remaining transparent in advertising and actively engaging with viewer responses to ads can help journalists overcome ethical qualms and sneaky feelings they often associate with advertising, allowing them to forge ahead in making their content pay.

Source: Online Journalism Review 2