Creating great online advertising requires you to think like your customers. However, when it comes to placing online advertising, it pays to think like a web publisher.

The Rubicon Project is an advertising yield management tool that’s aimed at helping publishers optimize the mix of ads on their site. If you’re a publisher, you can spend 10 minutes choosing your options and then put their custom code on your site.

We’ve covered many different advertising networks in the past, just in case you’re looking for different tools for ad placement.

What advertisers should take note of is this: here is a three-minute demo that will give you a superb overview of how web publishers are thinking about their advertising. Also, if you’re a little fuzzy on how all of these ad networks come together to serve publishers, this is one of the best primers we have come across.

If you want to get smart about where and how to place your online ads . . . invest a few minutes in understanding how publishers will be deciding which ads they will carry.