Ask HN: Ad options for a creative browser-based tool
TLDR - have a site with good traffic / interaction which i want to run ads on but can't get adense approval isn't a blog or game - help!
-- I've developed Ocean - https://www.oceanwaves.io/ - an online music creation platform which runs in your browser. Users can make beats and share them into a feed using creative commons sounds. It's collaborative so they can jam.
I've been building up over the last few years and it's growing more popular with Gen Z.
I have an issue though - I want to show ads on the platform but i keep getting denied from AdSense as i'm not really a publisher. I don't have reams of blog content, but there is LOADS of "user generated content" i.e. music created by the users. It's not a blog, it's a creative tool in the browser. It's not a game, but has some game-y elements to it.
I want to run ads to A) pay the server bill i'm currently paying for myself and B) use it as a nudge to get users to sign up to a premium ad-free version.
I want to run ads on components like the sound library, where users select sounds for their beat, in the last 30 days we've had 300,000 sample preview interactions on this component alone so could get some good numbers on ads in this feature alone for example.
Would be great to hear from others who've made similar things and got ads set up.
Thanks