Are you starting to think seriously about how to make money from your blog? Monetizing a blog isn’t exactly an easy task, given all the competition in any given niche. And although you may have started your blog as a labor of love, it can be a lucrative revenue stream as well.
One way by which you can use your blog as an income source is by signing up with an ad network. These are technology platforms that serve as brokers between publishers such as yourself and any number of advertisers.
Ad networks essentially put together an inventory of publishers’ unsold ads and sell them to advertisers. In return, they take a portion of the ad revenue. Some ad networks may also mark-up these ads before selling them to advertisers.
There is a lot more to the role of ad networks as it pertains to blog sites, but that is the gist of it. Suffice it to say that if you want to monetize your blog, you could do so more effectively by partnering with an established ad network.
So which ad networks should you partner with for maximum benefit? We’ve put together a list of excellent ad networks for bloggers, some of which offer the best ad services around. Here they are in no particular order.
Mediavine
Pros:
- You could earn considerably more on Mediavine as compared to AdSense
- Hosts only relevant and high-quality ads
- Fast load speeds and excellent user experience
- Full transparency on earnings and CPMs via the dashboard
- Ads are user-friendly and easily controllable
Cons:
- Ads have the Mediavine brand displayed
- Doesn’t allow AdSense disabled sites
Mediavine is a publisher- and blogger-owned service that allows you to earn considerable revenue from your blog content.
Unlike other ad networks, Mediavine aims to give you maximum returns, with as much as 76% of the ad revenue going to you. The service itself earns only 25% from each ad placement.
This means that you could make up to 400 times more with Mediavine than you would from other ad networks.
Furthermore, Mediavine places only high-quality and relevant ads on your site, which preserves its value for your audience. Ads load quickly as well, so they won’t affect your site’s performance or get in the way of your users’ experience.
There are some pretty strict eligibility requirements for applying to Mediavine. Your content needs to generate 50,000 sessions per month, and you need to provide Google Analytics statistics to that effect.
You also can’t partner with any other ad network once you sign up for Mediavine.
AdThrive
Pros:
- Certified by Google
- Excellent community engagement
- Huge potential earnings
- Customer care service is topnotch
Cons:
- Revenue reporting could use some improvement
- Requires you to place the main video ad high up on the page for maximum returns
- Doesn’t have an affiliate program
- No real-time data on revenue
AdThrive is a Google-certified online ad that employs a state-of-the-art system for placing ads. Aside from its proprietary ad placement technology, the company also maintains direct relationships with advertisers that bid directly with the firm for placement in Adthrive’s publisher network.
AdThrive has a pretty stringent quality assessment procedure for all applicants. You have a much better chance of being accepted into the network if most of your traffic originates from the United States.
After manually reviewing your site for conformance with initial requirements, your site and site traffic will be analyzed further for feasibility. If these meet with Adthrive’s approval, you will get a layout recommendation that is intended to attract advertisers for high-quality ads that will earn you maximum revenue.
Monumetric
Pros:
- Excellent personalized support
- Handles ad placement for you
- High-income potential
- Offers a wide selection of ad units
Cons:
- Has a high minimum traffic requirement of 10,000 monthly page views (note that at the moment they don’t accept small publishers due to the pandemic)
- Charges a high setup fee for sites with less than 80,000 page views
- Approval can take a long time
Monumetric started as “The Blogger Network”, but it still performs pretty much the same primary function today. Like all ad networks, it partners with publishers to increase their revenue from ads. The key difference is how Monumetric makes this possible.
Unlike other services that employ a “one-size-fits-all” approach to ad placement, Monumetric never bombards your site with irrelevant ads. Instead, it works with you to improve your site’s productivity and make the content and delivery more exciting.
This helps you generate more organic traffic and enables you to earn maximum revenue from the ads placed on your site.
Monumetric does have a somewhat steep requirement for applicants. You need to have at least 10,000 views per month and pass the 80,000 views per month ceiling to forego the high setup fee.
But if you are confident that you can pull in the numbers, Monumetric could be a great way to monetize your blog.
SHE Media
Pros:
- Ideally suited for blogs catering to female audiences
- Ads are relevant and matched to client websites
- Native and video ads are highly optimized
- Google certified
- Offers opportunities to join sponsored campaigns
Cons:
- Requires a minimum one-year contract
- No option to control the frequency of in-content ads
- Customer service is a bit slow
- Some of the ads can be quite intrusive
- Reporting could use some improvement
If you have a female-oriented blog that you want to monetize, SHE Media is the best ad network to help you achieve your goals. A partner network that monetizes blogs and websites catering to female audiences, SHE Media generates more than 50 million visitors per month.
This gives you an excellent opportunity to reach out to a pretty sizeable audience.
SHE Media also offers sponsored posts and paid product reviews. This gives publishers such as yourself even more opportunities for monetization.
Application to SHE Media is a fairly straightforward process. Your site needs to be geared toward a female audience and has been online for 90 days or more.
You also have to attract 20,000 or more visitors per month and allow commenting on your posts.
Ezoic
Pros:
- Excellent customer service
- Implements split testing
- Proven to increase revenue
- Has an affiliate program
- Modest page view requirements
- Setup is quick and easy
- Approves almost all publishing niches
Cons:
- Stopped offering live chat support
- Many publishers reported bugs and slow site speed
Ezoic is a Google-certified ad network that employs a range of state-of-the-art automated tools that could boost your earning potential considerably. Foremost of these is the ad revenue index metric that helps you determine your ad revenue performance based on the global market conditions.
Unlike many other ad networks that have increased their page view requirements to 50,000 or higher, Ezoic maintains a modest requirement of 10,000 views per month.
Even though the site is fairly small, it provides testing and optimization services for content and ad placement.
Ezoic also utilizes extensive data to determine your site’s ad tolerance and maximizes placement accordingly. This enables you to earn more revenue than if placeholders were used instead of ads.
Signing up for Ezoic is free, and you get to choose whether you start with an ad or layout tester. The service does review sites manually, so it might take a while before your site is approved. Once accepted into the network, you should see a considerable improvement in your site’s revenue shortly.
Final Thoughts On The Best Ad Networks For Blogs
These are only a few of the options available if you are looking for an ad network for your fledgling blog. Although they aren’t all the highest-paying ad networks in the business, we are fully confident in recommending them as the best ad networks for bloggers.
What all these services have in common is that they allow you to monetize your blog quite effectively. You could build up a substantial and consistent revenue stream with most of them even if your blog doesn’t generate plenty of views.
In any case, earning a good income from a blog depends mainly on the ad network you sign up for. Whichever blogger ad networks you choose, make sure that they meet your requirements and uphold your blog’s quality. Doing so will ensure that you get the maximum value from your site.
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