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Sputnik Signal compared.

These products solve different problems. Signal is a free banner exchange that pays in credits. EthicalAds and Carbon Ads are paid ad networks for developer audiences. Revive Adserver is software you host yourself. Google Ad Manager is Google's ad server and exchange. Competitor facts come from each vendor's own pages as of September 2026, with numbered sources at the end.

Product Model Who can join Hosting
Sputnik Signal First-party banner exchange run by Sputnik Digital Free sign-up. An operator reviews each website and banner. No adult sites; gambling sites only after a thorough inspection. Run by Sputnik Digital on its own host
EthicalAds Ad network for developer audiences, built by the Read the Docs team [1] [2] Invite-only with an evaluation. Developer-focused sites with at least 50,000 pageviews a month, with some exceptions for fast-growing sites. [3] [4] Vendor-hosted. The ad server code is open source under AGPL-3.0. [5]
Carbon Ads Curated ad network for developers and designers, run by BuySellAds [6] Invitation only. Publishers agree to show only Carbon ads. [7] Vendor-hosted [6]
Revive Adserver Free ad server software. It includes no advertisers. [9] Anyone can download and run it [9] Self-hosted, or a paid hosted edition. Open source under GPL-2.0 or later. [9] [10]
Google Ad Manager Google's ad server combined with its ad exchange [13] Requires a Google AdSense account. Google describes it as built for large publishers with significant direct sales. [14] Hosted by Google [13]
Product What publishers get Tracking and cookies Ad formats
Sputnik Signal Credits, not cash: 1 per valid ad shown, 11 per 10 for the first 25,000. Credits pay for showing your own banners. The embed loads no third-party scripts. Ad requests carry no cookies. IPs are stored only as a keyed hash. No behavioral profiles. Details Exact-size image banners (JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, 350 KB max)
EthicalAds 70% revenue share, paid monthly, $50 minimum [4] Ads chosen by page content and country. Says it loads no third-party scripts or pixels and uses the visitor IP only to find the country, without storing it. [1] [3] Text with a small image, or text only. A larger format was added in January 2026. [15] [16]
Carbon Ads Typically $1.20 to $2.30 per 1,000 impressions, paid monthly [7] Its join page says it uses pixels, not cookies [8] Native ad units, including a larger Carbon Cover unit [6] [8]
Revive Adserver You sell your own ads and keep the revenue Sets cookies, including a random visitor ID that lasts a year. The operator can switch that ID to a fixed value and anonymize IP addresses. [11] Image banners, HTML5, third-party tags, and video [12]
Google Ad Manager Revenue after Google's share, paid monthly [17] Personalized ads by default. Publishers can choose non-personalized ads, which still use cookies for frequency capping and reporting. [18] Display, native, video, rewarded, and audio [19]

Where each one fits

Where the others are stronger

  • EthicalAds, Carbon Ads, and Google Ad Manager pay publishers in cash. Signal does not.
  • They also have far more scale. Carbon reports 350+ publisher sites and over $120 million paid to publishers since 2010. EthicalAds reports 35 million+ developer impressions a month. [1] [6] Signal is new and small, so slots can stay empty.
  • Revive Adserver and Google Ad Manager support many more formats, including HTML5 and video.
  • Revive gives you full control of the server and the code, and the EthicalAds server code is public too.

Where Signal fits

  • You want to promote your own site and have ad space to trade, but no ad budget.
  • You want one operator serving the script, the images, and the clicks from its own host, with no third-party ad code on your page.
  • Your site is outside the developer niche that EthicalAds and Carbon Ads focus on.

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