> I looked into a half-dozen or so alternatives, but all the other companies were either simply Google ads re-sellers, which is an ecosystem I don't quite understand, or were extremely sketchy, and had reviews complaining about how they trick people into downloading malware and such.

This is so true. I have tried to monetize my tools with ads quite a few times before, and the only way was to use Adsense. It's actually crazy how there is literally no quality alternative.