General Review:
We have reviewed a number of contextual ad networks & Media.net scored as the best network outside of Google AdSense. Many smaller ad networks have a huge fall off, to where if you earned 50 cents or a dollar a click with Google AdSense, you'd see nickle and penny clicks. Thankfully Media.net is nothing like that & they are perhaps the best network at competing with AdSense on a CPM basis. Their interface is quite easy to use, both in terms of creating & customizing new ad units and in tracking performance reports.
Applying
Application only takes a couple minutes. Account approval may take 4 or 5 business days to about a week. Once your account is approved, each additional site you submit must also be approved, but your account representative can help with that and getting additional sites approved should take a day or less.
They have high traffic quality standards and manually review all sites to help maintain network quality. They require English as your primary language & that your site receives the majority of its traffic from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Other publisher requirements are posted online. Their terms of service are published at media.net/legal/tos and their program guidelines are published at media.net/legal/programguidelines.
Earnings Payout
Media.net pays on a Net-30 basis and has a $100 minimum earning threshold.
You can select Paypal or bank wire transfer as your payment method.
RPM / CPM Rate
The earnings potential for any ad network is driven by
the depth of the ad network
the relevancy of the ads
how tightly ads can be integrated to fit the theme of the site
the commercial appeal of the publisher's topic
Ad Network Depth
Since Media.net leverages the Yahoo Bing Network, it has significant ad depth inside the United States. Shortly after its launch in 2012, Media.net CEO Divyank Turkhia stated: "Media.net has contextually optimized over $200 million worth of internet traffic." 6 months later their ad network already had over 2.5 billion pageviews.
While the earnings from Media.net are typically not vastly better than AdSense, they may be quite close to par and tend to outperform networks like Chitika, particularly when the published content is tied to a high value topic where pay per click (ppc) prices are significant. The cost per click (cpc) will vary across networks and topics, but in my experience the gap between AdSense and Media.net is far less than the gap between Media.net and networks like Chitika or the in-text ad networks like Infolinks, Kontera & Vibrant Media IntelliTXT. I've even seen some cases where Media.net outperformed AdSense on some topics. You don't have to chose one or the other though, as Media.net ads can be used in conjunction with AdSense ads on the same site.
Ad Relevancy
Publishers who have had experience with the (now defunct) Yahoo! Publisher Network may recall the ads in Yahoo!'s old network were not particularly relevant. Ads in the Yahoo! Publisher Network lacked relevancy in part because Yahoo! placed excessive weight on the CPC which the advertiser was willing to pay. That in turn led to substantially lower ad clickthrough rates (CTR). And when some of the top paying advertisers like Vonage lowered their bids, ultimately that led to drastically lower RPM.
Media.net is primarily a contextual ad network. Select publishers may be invited to sign up for the premium display advertising partnership Media.net has with Google, to complement the contextual ad performance with display ads. By leveraging ad retargeting features, display ads can help put a floor under the earning potential of pages covering topics of limited commercial appeal. Media.net also has mobile-specific ad units.
Ad Integration
When a person sets up AdSense ads or other contextual ads on their site, there's a bit of a sense of "you're on your own." Worse yet, there is often a bit of a conflict between the recommendations from the AdSense team and the search quality team at Google.
One of Media.net's big points of differentiation is they have a team of over 450 employees who work on the product and help publishers better integrate the ads into their websites, including making the ad units really match the look and feel of the site. On some higher revenue sites Media.net will help create custom ad units. For instance, on TheStreet.com here's an example of an ad unit.
We have reviewed a number of contextual ad networks & Media.net scored as the best network outside of Google AdSense. Many smaller ad networks have a huge fall off, to where if you earned 50 cents or a dollar a click with Google AdSense, you'd see nickle and penny clicks. Thankfully Media.net is nothing like that & they are perhaps the best network at competing with AdSense on a CPM basis. Their interface is quite easy to use, both in terms of creating & customizing new ad units and in tracking performance reports.
Applying
They have high traffic quality standards and manually review all sites to help maintain network quality. They require English as your primary language & that your site receives the majority of its traffic from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Other publisher requirements are posted online. Their terms of service are published at media.net/legal/tos and their program guidelines are published at media.net/legal/programguidelines.
Earnings Payout
Media.net pays on a Net-30 basis and has a $100 minimum earning threshold.
You can select Paypal or bank wire transfer as your payment method.
RPM / CPM Rate
The earnings potential for any ad network is driven by
the depth of the ad network
the relevancy of the ads
how tightly ads can be integrated to fit the theme of the site
the commercial appeal of the publisher's topic
Ad Network Depth
Since Media.net leverages the Yahoo Bing Network, it has significant ad depth inside the United States. Shortly after its launch in 2012, Media.net CEO Divyank Turkhia stated: "Media.net has contextually optimized over $200 million worth of internet traffic." 6 months later their ad network already had over 2.5 billion pageviews.
Ad Relevancy
Publishers who have had experience with the (now defunct) Yahoo! Publisher Network may recall the ads in Yahoo!'s old network were not particularly relevant. Ads in the Yahoo! Publisher Network lacked relevancy in part because Yahoo! placed excessive weight on the CPC which the advertiser was willing to pay. That in turn led to substantially lower ad clickthrough rates (CTR). And when some of the top paying advertisers like Vonage lowered their bids, ultimately that led to drastically lower RPM.
The good news with Media.net is it puts ad relevancy front and center. This leads to a high level of user engagement with the ads, which in turn drives a much better yield for publishers at a better RPM rate. Their ads have a 100% fill rate and use page level precision targeting.
Media.net is primarily a contextual ad network. Select publishers may be invited to sign up for the premium display advertising partnership Media.net has with Google, to complement the contextual ad performance with display ads. By leveraging ad retargeting features, display ads can help put a floor under the earning potential of pages covering topics of limited commercial appeal. Media.net also has mobile-specific ad units.
Ad Integration
When a person sets up AdSense ads or other contextual ads on their site, there's a bit of a sense of "you're on your own." Worse yet, there is often a bit of a conflict between the recommendations from the AdSense team and the search quality team at Google.
One of Media.net's big points of differentiation is they have a team of over 450 employees who work on the product and help publishers better integrate the ads into their websites, including making the ad units really match the look and feel of the site. On some higher revenue sites Media.net will help create custom ad units. For instance, on TheStreet.com here's an example of an ad unit.