With online ad spend skyrocketing into the billions, and continuing to climb, more and more players are looking to find their niche… and their share of those billions.  Advertising networks abound and we're slowing starting to see a market in which no clear dominate force exists outside the major search engine players.  But if you've got a small site or blog, search advertising and programs like AdSense or YPN might not appeal to you.

There are already several advertising networks dedicated to blogs and small sites.  And ClickZ is running a story about another one called AdVolcano.

AdVolcano's main claim to fame is that it allows publishers to define their own ad sizes, their own ad placements, and their own prices.  If you think an ad on your site is worth $50 a week, so be it.  If you think it's worth $5000 a week, so be it.  You set the price.  And you control who can and can't run ads on your site.  That seems to be the key word around AdVolcano:  control.

As part of the sign-up process, users create ad space on their site and describe that space to advertisers.  They also specify dimensions and provide any demographic information that's available.  After the ad space is create and defined, site owners set their price.  So far I've seen ads as inexpensive as $10 a week and as expensive as $500.

If you're an advertiser, you can browse the available ad space and, should you find a site you'd like to advertise on, create and buy your ad on the fly.  While still in its infancy, AdVolcano told ClickZ is hopes to bridge the gap between advertisers and small site owners/blog writers.  By putting complete control of the advertising into the hands of the site owners, the company hopes to draw in publishers that might otherwise be leery of letting other companies put their names and/or products on their sites.  In addition, the service also alleviates the common problems advertisers face with click fraud because prices are not based on the number of clicks an ad gets.

Jason Rodriguez, AdVolcano's VP of Business Development, told ClickZ that the company is getting ready to ramp up advertising plans with "targeted properties" and CPC search links.  Rodriguez also said the company plans to morph into a more collaborative system in the coming months by creating lines of communication and interaction between publishers and the advertisers who buy space on their sites.