For a small-to-medium website ValueClick Media (formerly FastClick) is currently one of the best ad network choices online. They run ad campaigns that you can enable or disable for rotation on your site. However, you don't have to micro-manage it, there is an option that automatically selects all campaigns for rotation.

Their payout is pretty decent -- currently about $.60 CPM on average for banner campaigns, $3.00 - $3.50 for pop-under windows. As of the date of writing this review ValueClick Media offers multiple distinct ad media types: standard 468x60 banner, leaderboard (jumbo banner), a pop-under window, two types of skyscraper (120 and 160 wide), half-pages (a sort of really wide skyscraper format), 300x250 rectangles, small rectangles, their own InVue ad (A DHTML layer pop-up that slides out within the page), interstitials, in-text links and even flexible banners. Their statistics screens are wonderfully designed and present you with prenty of data and history to be able to analyze ad response patterns.

Another great thing about ValueClick Media is that they don't try to screw you out of your hard-earned dollar. Payments are prompt and statistics are accurate. For example, they pay you for only one pop-under per unique user per 24 hours, but they also display only one pop-under (some other networks will leave it up to you to implement this type of capping). The site and ad serving mechanism is fast. I have no idea about the quality of their customer service, but that's simply due to the fact that I never had to utilize it.

ValueClick Media is famous for continually keeping up with industry trends and now support virtually every popular ad format out there.

Interstitials are another interesting feature availble from ValueClick. These are full-page ads that appear when the a link is clicked. They stay on the screen for 10 seconds, and then the visitor is sentto the link's original destination. These have by far the highest payout CPMs: upwards from $4.00, and can be frequency-capped at your choosing (15 minutes is the minimum). They are great, especially for webmasters with a loyal audience, or a lot of links leading off-site. (We do not recommend over-using them though.)

Webmasters should definitely ustilize ValueClick's default engine - a mechanism where third party ads can be plugged in when no paid ads are available for showing. This can be used to chain in second tier networks to display lower paying CPM/CPC ads when ValueClick Media doesn't have enough to fill your inventory.

Some of the options to consider for this:

• Banners/Skyscrapers: Casale Media, Google AdSense.
• Pop-Unders: Casale Media.
• Rectangles: Google AdSense. You can also place an empty javascript file as your default to avoid taking up space for unpaid ads (this will result in the 300x250 space not being taken up by the ad).

We highly recommend using phpAdsNew to rotate defaults for ValueClick (as well as for other ad-serving purposes). You can use this software to make ValueClick-Default zones, then easily add and remove ads without needing to mess with them on the ValueClick site.

Bottom line: Highly recommended. A definite 5 stars.