When you talk about ad monetization networks, Mediavine stands to be bloggers favorite. Infact, 80 out of 100 bloggers are aspiring to hit their monetization requirements, thus having their blog approved into their program. And if you’re one of these bloggers, then I believe you’re definitely on this page to access Mediavine’s review, to acquaint yourself with what you’re about to get into.
If that’s so, then congratulations, you’re definitely on the right page. This Mediavine review article contains a comprehensive guide on everything you need to know about Mediavine ad network, starting from its very day of existence, down to its onboarding process. But before we hit right into that, hold my hands, as I walk you through what Mediavine really is.
What Is Mediavine?
Mediavine is an advertising network (just like every other ad network), which serves as a monetization means for bloggers or content creators to monetize their blogs and earn revenue through their contents.
Mediavine was founded in 2004, according to Mediavine, “Mediavine is a full service ad management platform that aims to build sustainable businesses for content creators.”
Once you’re approved by Mediavine, they strategically place and manage ads on your blog, while emphasizing more on placing best paying ads from advertisers with high bidding on best suitable ads space on your blog, thus earning substantial income.
Mediavine is a jealous-ad network, therefore, if you’re to use their program, you have to forfeit every other ad network and pledge your allegiance to them alone. That’s to say, you have to terminate every other ad network you have on your site if you must use Mediavine.
Mediavine is also officially a Google Certified Publishing Partner. Which simply means, they are Google’s ads publishing partner. I believe their good standard earned them the spot, because it’s definitely not an easy task to attain such certification. There aren’t many companies out there that can claim that certification status.
To become a Google Certified Publishing Partner, an advertising company will have to meet strict qualification standards to prove that they are specialists in Google’s ad products.
What Are Mediavine Requirements?
Before your blog is qualified to use Mediavine, there are some certain requirements that must be met. And these requirements are:
- Your blog must acquire 50,000 sessions per month (or per last 30 days period) according to google analytics.
- Your blog must be connected to Google analytics.
- Traffic must be real human traffic (and not bot traffic or traffic generated through advertisement).
- Content should be original and long-form.
- Site must be in good standing with Google AdSense and Google AdExchange.
- Visitors should be mainly from the U.S, Canada and the UK.
To break these down:
Your Blog Must Acquire 50,000 Sessions Per Month.
The first criteria to get you 70% qualified and close to getting approved by Mediavine is reaching 50,000 sessions per month, or per 30 days period. The minimum traffic requirement used to be 25,000 monthly sessions, but in June 2020, Mediavine increased their sessions-requirement to 50,000.
It’s a good thing to note that sessions are very different from pageviews. Although pageviews and sessions are closely related, but they are utterly different.
Sessions represent a single visit to your website.
When a user visits your blog or lands on one of your web pages, it counts as one “session”. That’s to say, a session starts right away when someone loads a page and by default ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. Every pageview, click, transaction, etc, tracked during this period of activity makes up one “session.”
If that same visitor comes back several hours later, or the next day, a new session is counted. Therefore one person can log multiple sessions
For example: If the same user visits your page in the morning and later again at night, that counts as two sessions. If they visit your website ten different times a week, it will count as ten different sessions.
Pageviews represent each time an individual loads a page on your blog or website. A single session can include many pageviews if a user navigates to any other web pages on your website without leaving.
Mediavine requires your blog to attain 50,000 sessions monthly (or per 30 days) to 70% qualify you for using their ad network. Mediavine will evaluate this through your Google analytics report that you will be asked to send to them.
Your Blog Must Be Connected To Google Analytics.
Before applying for Mediavine ad network, ensure your blog is fully connected to Google analytics, as this will seamlessly help Mediavine review team scrutinize your blog traffic and its source to determine your blog’s approval into their ad network monetization program.
Traffic Must Be Real Human Traffic.
Another major criteria to get your blog qualified to use Mediavine is ensuring your traffic or pageviews are 100% human, and not bot traffic or advert-generated traffic. Mediavine has a sophisticated tool to investigate and detect non-human or advert-generated traffic.
Although it’s not bad at all to acquire pageviews from social media platforms through advertising, but Mediavine best recommends organic traffic as your main source of traffic because it is a stable and sustainable way of driving traffic to your site. Therefore you need to be on top of your SEO game to achieve this.
Content Should Be Original And Long-Form.
After evaluating your traffic source, your content is next. When it comes to assessing your content, Mediavine reviews squarely at the uniqueness or originality of your content. Your content must be uniquely created and should not be plagiarized from any other source.
Also your content must be well-detailed and a well-detailed content comes in a long-form, this indicates the comprehensiveness of your content. And remember, having long-form contents on your blog increases sessions and duration at which a user stays on your blog which draws you closer to reaching Mediavine’s requirements.
Site Must Be In Good Standing With Google AdSense And Google AdExchange.
Mediavine is a Google Certified Publishing Partner. Which simply means, they are Google’s ads publishing partner. Although, they are independent and answerable to no one. Therefore, for your blog to get approved into their program, your blog must be in good standing with Google Adsense and Google AdExchange.
By good standing, I mean, your blog must maintain or keep to all Google Adsense and Google AdExchange terms and conditions, and mustn’t Infringe any single of their respective policies. Mediavine review team takes their time to assess your blog to ensure these policies aren’t broken.
Visitors Should Be Mainly From The U.S, Canada And The UK.
Mediavine’s advertisers are mostly from tier one countries like USA, Canada Australia or UK, because advertisers from these countries pay higher to market their goods and services, accompanied with their heavyweight currencies. Therefore, for you to get into Mediavine’s ad monetization network, your audiences needs to come from tier one countries too.
Advertisers from tier one countries like USA, Canada, Australia or UK spend money to advertise their products, and to ensure their products reach targeted audiences, Mediavine ensures that their publishers (bloggers) organic traffic are equally coming from tier one countries.
The strict demand for organic traffic from tier one countries is to ensure advertisers reach suitable audiences which keeps a healthy ecosystem – happy advertisers, happy publishers and happy Mediavine. Also judging from the good value of their money, (dollars), means more money in the ecosystem.
The Onboarding Process Of Mediavine Ads.
After going through Mediavine’s requirements and being convinced that your blog is qualified to get into their ads monetization program, then you have to take these below-mentioned steps to get your blog approved by Mediavine.
- Submit An Application – Use this form to apply for Mediavine. This takes a few minutes.
- Send A Google Analytics Report – You’ll be asked to send over a specific report from your Google Analytics if you pass step one. This report will entail your site’s statistics in the last 30 days through your Google Analytics report.
- Partner On Google Ad Manager – Submit consent to let Mediavine to manage your ad inventory.
- Once you’ve filled out the Mediavine application, a mail will be sent to you about verifying traffic with Mediavine’s ad partners.
- Wait For Approval – Mediavine’s various ad networks will have to approve your site before you’re allowed in. This will take some days (normally 3-5 days, depending).
- Once approved, they will send a contract to sign using an e-signing service, “SignNow”.
- Next, you’ll be given access to your Mediavine dashboard containing your account info. It’s best advised to reset your password.
- After this, a detailed document will be sent to you by Mediavine listing the next steps to prepare for launch.
Things you need to do to prepare:
- Grant Google Analytics read and write access.
- Remove social sharing buttons that were floating on the bottom of the screen. These floating buttons conflict with Mediavine’s adhesion units, which also float at the bottom of the screen.
- Login to the Mediavine Dashboard and set up my payments profile in order to get paid.
- Fill out the Privacy Policy tab and enable the Mediavine CMP (consent management platform). Basically if you have visitors from the EU, this allows EU readers to opt-in to personalized ads. It’s a General Data Protection Regulation requirement in the EU.
- Complete the profile and influencer survey.
- Check for conflicts such as lazy loading iframes or videos or Cloudflare’s Rocket Loader feature.
- After completing the steps, ensure to send them an email to let them know it is all complete.
Mediavine review team will have to do the final checks before launching your ads. After the checks, if everything is well set, then your ads will be launched and they’ll go live. Congratulations!!.
You can as well choose a date you want your ads to be launched. The Mediavine team will grant you the privilege.
After your ads are launched and go live, a series of emails will be sent to you, as well as an invite to the Mediavine Facebook group.
Mediavine Dashboard.
Mediavine dashboard is complex and user-friendly. It includes several report metrics that give amazing insight about your content and how well things are monetizing. This analytics insights includes information about ad earnings, performance, RPM breakdown as well as traffic insights. These deep analytics are to help you keep track of your performance and how you may improve it.
Mediavine Customer Support.
From what it’s worth, it’s been said that Mediavine has superb customer service support. This is not a speculation, but came from the horses mouth (Mediavine users).
According to some of them, they said that the Mediavine customer support team prioritizes prompt and swift response to their customers to attend to their respective needs.
Mediavine RPM.
Mediavine on an estimate pays $10 per RPM (revenue per 1,000 pageviews). That’s to say, If your blog drives 5000 pageviews daily, you would earn $50 daily and $1,500 monthly.
Don’t know what RPM is?
RPM which stands for “Rate per milli” is the estimated revenue paid to a publisher per 1000 traffic by an ad network.
That’s to say, if for example your ad network pays $7 per 1000 traffic, and your blog generates 4000 pageviews daily. You’ll deservedly earn $7 per every 1000 pageviews your blog generated (excluding clicks). That’s to say, you’ll comfortably make approximately $28 daily, and $840 monthly. Isn’t that a good start?
Payment Schedule.
Mediavine pays on Net-65 basis. which means you get paid 65 days after the end of a given month. For example, revenue earned in January will hit your account in April.
Payments are made on the 5th of the month. If the 5th falls on a weekend, payments will be made on the closest business day.
As a publisher, you will receive 75% of the total monthly revenue, and Mediavine will keep 25%. There is a loyalty bonus scheme, which means you’ll receive a bigger share of the revenue the longer you stay on as a Mediavine publisher.
You can also receive a bonus based on how many ad impressions your site produces. For example, if your site produces 5 million ad impressions over the previous 30 days, the revenue share increases to 80%.
Although, depending on how long you’ve been with Mediavine, and how well your site is performing, a Mediavine publisher has the potential to reach a 90% revenue share.
Payment Method.
Mediavine pays in USD, and publishers can choose between PayPal, check, wire transfer, or local bank transfer for deposit. Payments are also processed within the first 5 business days of a month, with a minimum payment of $25 using PayPal payment method.
Majority of the publishers prefer to be paid through PayPal because Mediavine does not charge any transaction fee.
Pros Of Mediavine.
- User-Friendly Dashboard: Mediavine dashboard is user-friendly yet contains tons of deep tracking analytics information to enable you keep track of your performance and how you may improve it.
- Great RPM: An RPM on an estimate of $10 is a good way to earn passively. Mediavine is known as one of the best ad monetization networks when it comes to good RPM. Therefore, judging from the estimated $10 RPM (which isn’t fixed and could also increase), you will earn $50 daily and $1,500 monthly if your blog pulls 5000 pageviews daily. Isn’t that great?
- Great Ads Set-Up: Mediavine Technical team will ensure ads are well placed on your site to earn you the best revenue. They’ll ensure that your ads are well-optimized and placed on the best ads-spaces on your blog. Ads can as well be placed on your choice of preference if you wish.
- Support: Mediavine has great customer support, who are willing to fix any ads related issues with prompt response. Just like the 911 emergency line.
- Low Commission Sharing: Mediavine only takes 25% commission on your revenue (this is taken before the numbers you see on your dashboard).
Cons Of Mediavine.
- Long Onboarding Process: The onboarding process may take 1- 2 weeks depending, sometimes more. It all depends on how fast you’re being attended to, and the personalized-technical ads setup.
- Net-65: Unlike Adsense which pays in Net-30 terms, Mediavine pays in Net-65. That means, For example, revenue earned in January will hit your account in April. Which will be a long time to wait. You just have to get used to it, because this is fairly common with ad managed companies.
In Conclusion.
If you’re a blogger (or a publisher), Mediavine is definitely one of the best ad monetization networks to utilize to earn passively through your blog-content. Like I previously stated, Mediavine is every blogger’s favorite and dream ad network, due to its high payment rate (RPM) and good customer service support. You’ll never go wrong if you chose Mediavine as your choice.
I believe this Mediavine review content addressed every question you would have loved to ask about Mediavine? Now, get started by applying for Mediavine if your blog is qualified for its monetization requirements, if not, you can opt for other alternatives such as Ezoic, Monumetric or Google Adsense.
