Carbon Ads vs EthicalAds vs Koah vs Surfacedd: The AI Ad Network Roundup

Four ad networks. Four different eras of the developer ad market. This roundup looks at how Carbon Ads, EthicalAds, Koah, and Surfacedd compare across formats, revenue, and fit for AI apps. If you are picking a network for a new AI product, the differences matter more than the surface similarity.

What each does best.

Carbon Ads is the elder statesman. Launched in 2009, it became the default for high-quality developer and design publications. A single sponsor slot, a clean text-plus-image format, and a reputation for brand-safe advertisers made it the standard for sites like Stack Overflow and CSS-Tricks. Carbon works best when you have a large, high-intent developer audience and want a single respectful ad unit that does not break page design. The trade-off is an application process, a traffic floor in the thousands of daily pageviews, and a format that was not designed for AI app UIs.

EthicalAds is the privacy-first, open-source-aligned option. It pays a 70/30 split, accepts smaller publishers than Carbon, and refuses tracking cookies on principle. Its advertiser pool skews toward dev tools, hosting, and open-source-aligned SaaS. EthicalAds is a good fit for documentation sites, open-source project pages, and indie developer blogs. It was not built for AI outputs and the script-tag integration does not fit inside a chat stream.

Koah is one of the two AI-native networks in this group. It was built with chat, agents, and AI app surfaces as the primary placement. Koah offers text, image, and product ad units, a self-serve onboarding flow, and an SDK rather than a script tag. The revenue share is not publicly documented, which makes forecasting harder.

Surfacedd is the other AI-native option. It runs a 60/40 split, supports text, image, video, and product cards, and ships with a structural disclosure on every ad unit. Surfacedd places across web, app, and AI chat outputs, and does not require any traffic minimum. The free AI Commerce Readiness Score gives publishers an audit of where their content is visible to AI assistants before any monetization conversation starts.

Head-to-head on formats.

Carbon Ads runs a single format: a small image plus a line of copy and a sponsor label. The constraint is intentional and the reason Carbon looks clean on editorial sites. It is also the reason Carbon does not fit inside an AI output. You cannot render a Carbon unit inside a chat response and have it feel native.

EthicalAds runs a similar single-unit approach with text and a small image. It has a variant for dark-mode sites and one for sidebars, but the creative ceiling is low. Both Carbon and EthicalAds assume the ad lives next to content, not inside content.

Koah widens the format set. Text, image, and product cards cover the main placements an AI app would need. A product card in particular matters because an AI assistant discussing a product class is the highest-intent moment to show a relevant buyable item.

Surfacedd adds video on top of the Koah-style formats. Video is still the least common format in AI surfaces, but it matters for categories like apparel, travel, and education where a static image does not tell the story. Across the four networks, Surfacedd has the widest creative palette.

Head-to-head on revenue share.

Carbon Ads does not publish a single public number, but industry reporting consistently puts the publisher split at around two-thirds. EThicalAds publishes a clear 70/30 in the publisher's favor. Surfacedd publishes 60/40. Koah does not publish a split at all.

The raw split is the less interesting number. What matters is eCPM, fill rate, and how the split interacts with the category of advertiser. Carbon's higher split is paid out of higher-CPM developer inventory. EthicalAds' generous split is paid out of lower absolute CPMs. Surfacedd's 60/40 reflects a younger marketplace where demand is growing fast and the network invests more of its take into advertiser acquisition. For most indie AI apps, a 60/40 on AI inventory produces more dollars per monthly active user than a 70/30 on retrofit web inventory would, because the AI surface itself commands a premium.

Ask the network for eCPM ranges, not just splits. Any serious operator will share a band for your category.

Head-to-head on developer experience.

Carbon Ads integrates with a script tag. You drop it in the page, it renders on load, and that is the end of the story. Simple, but rigid. You cannot feed it context, control layout in an AI response, or render it conditionally based on the conversation.

EthicalAds works the same way: a script tag and a server-rendered fallback. Clean, but built for documentation sites.

Koah ships an SDK that you call from inside your AI app. You can request an ad unit inline with an AI response, pass signals about the conversation, and receive structured creative back. This is the pattern that fits how AI apps are built.

Surfacedd ships both a JS SDK and a direct API. The SDK covers the common case for web and app embedding. The API is useful when you are rendering into a surface the SDK does not yet cover, like a voice assistant or a terminal agent. Structural disclosure metadata is returned in the response, which makes it easy for a publisher to meet emerging AI advertising disclosure rules without rolling their own.

Which to pick.

If your site is a documentation page, a blog, or a developer publication with significant traditional web traffic, pick Carbon Ads or EthicalAds. Choose Carbon for higher CPMs and a brand-name advertiser pool, once you clear the traffic bar. Choose EthicalAds if you are under the traffic bar, care about privacy, or align with the open-source ethos.

If your product is an AI app, a chat assistant, an agent, or any surface where an AI output is the primary interface, pick Koah or Surfacedd. Either will slot into the architecture properly. The decision between them comes down to specifics.

Pick Koah if you want a simple AI-native network, text and image are enough for your placements, and you do not need video. Pick Surfacedd if you want the widest format set including video, want transparent revenue share numbers and structural disclosure metadata, or value the free readiness audit before onboarding.

Run both if you want to compare fill rate and eCPM directly. Most AI ad SDKs can be configured to fall back from one network to the other, and two months of side-by-side data will settle the question for your specific audience.

The short version: Carbon and EthicalAds are the right call for traditional developer sites. Koah and Surfacedd are the right call for AI apps. Do not retrofit a 2009 ad format into a 2026 chat UI.

Updated 2026-04-19.