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Media.Net Review: Better than Google Adsense?

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Media.Net Review: Better than Google Adsense?

Stream SEO is known for writing reviews of different advertising platforms for every niche and country available out there. It has been our focus for many years because we know, no ad platform fits every website or blog in this world. Adsense can be great, but working with other networks can be a better choice. You just need to know how to chose them based on your niche, geos and other factors.

While we have reviewed several smaller alternatives in the past who deliver ads in various ad formats such as banners, interstitials, mobile ads, pop ups, etc. Today, we’re going to review one of the top competitors in this space – Media.net (sign up here).

Media.net is one of the Best Adsense Alternatives

Media.net is a contextual Ad Network which powers the  Yahoo!-Bing contextual ad platform and guarantees not only high quality but also high paying ads. It gives publishers access to over $5bn of advertiser’s search demand. So it’s rightfully known as one of the Best Adsense Alternatives.

If you want to run with the top networks, you’ve got to work with Google, Facebook or Bing/Yahoo, and we have covered a lot about Adsense and some of Facebook Audience network recently, so it was only time to write and show media.net works.

For those who don’t know what a contextual ad platform is, it means that the advertisements are based on the context of the page. This means if your website content is about yoga, your visitors will be shown ads related to the yoga industry such as yoga pants, yoga mats, yoga online courses, etc.The performance of contextual ads is usually better as compared to other kinds of ads because when an user lands on a website,  and sees ads that are in sync with the webpage he is more likely to click on them rather than something that is completely random and unrelated.

As a high-quality ad network Media.net only accepts websites that have premium content, irrespective of the scale and size of the blog. The returns that publishers can expect with Media.net are as good as with Adsense, in fact, sometimes it’s even higher. If you are looking for an alternative to Google Adsense, I’d say without a doubt, Media.net is your answer.

Media.net Review – Publisher Requirements

As mentioned before, Media.net (sign up for a free account here) is a high paying contextual ad network and one of the Best Adsense Alternatives. Media.net looks for high-quality publishers and only allows websites with premium content. If you are looking to make money fast with your low-quality blog, well Media.net is not for you.

MediaNet has several guidelines in order to approve publishers to their program, they only allow websites with premium content. If you are looking to make money fast with your low-quality blog, Medianet is not for you. As one of the Best Adsense Alternatives, MediaNet looks for high-quality websites but when you are approved you’ll enjoy the benefits of it.

The following guidelines will help you understand and determine whether your website is suitable for Media.net or not. We have included this information because we always receive specific questions about what a particular advertisement network allows and what it doesn’t.

media net review publishers program guidelines

The Media.net program is currently only open to websites that:

  • Have content in English
  • Receive majority of their traffic from United States, United Kingdom or Canada
  • Contain mainly original content
  • Have content that is updated regularly
  • Does not infringe any third party intellectual property rights
  • Have reasonable volume of visitors already using the website.
  • Does not contain excessive advertising
  • Have a reasonable amount of content
  • Have navigation-friendly website design

You are likely to get rejected by Media.net if your websites contains one or more of the following:

  • Software Piracy such as warez, torrentz, cracking, hacking, phreaking or similar illegal downloads
  • Free hosted pages
  • Hidden links and text
  • Under construction, parked pages or pages without content
  • Deceptive or manipulative content or construction of sites to improve search engine ranking
  • Sites that redirect traffic to another site other than ones specifically approved on the Program
  • Promote activities generally understood as Internet abuse such as sending of unsolicited bulk electronic mail or the use of spyware

Media.net will not approve websites that promote, contain or link directly to:

  • Adult, Pornographic or any illegal content.
  • Tabacco, alcohol, ammunition, hazardous substances, illegal drugs, gore, violence, gambling and racism content.
  • Pages containing profanity or content that and/or discriminates or is offensive to any section of people.
  • Hate, violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization.
  • Sale of counterfeit products, imitations of designer or other goods, stolen items or any products that infringe intellectual property rights of other parties.
  • Programs which promote invalid click activity by paying users to click on ads, browse websites, read email etc.
  • Websites that contain forums, discussion boards, chat rooms, or any content area that is open to public updates without adequate moderation.
  • Sites with content that has been generated using computer programs and hence may not be comprehendible.
  • Sites with fake news.

Media.net Advantages

  • High performance contextual ads
  • High Paying native Ads
  • Approval takes 2 business days or even sooner
  • Dedicated Account Manager
  • No specific Minimum Traffic Required

How to Sign Up/Registration Progress

Applying to Media.net is easy and fast, the approval process can take some hours to a maximum of 2 business days on an average.

Go to Media.net (click here to register). You’ll be asked for:

  • Your Website URL
  • Email
  • Full Name

media net sign up

Shortly after signing up, you will receive an automated response by email informing that Media.net has received your application.

media net review sign up

After this, you just need to wait for your website to get assessed. If your website doesn’t comply with the program guidelines, you’ll receive a rejection email. We actually submitted an alternative website (not Stream SEO) that we knew most probably wouldn’t get accepted to gather more information for this article.

media net request denial

This means their team personally checks every website manually. This helps them get the best quality of websites and therefore get best advertisers with high paying CPCs/CPMs without putting their reputation in danger.

On the other hand, if your website is suitable for the Media.net publisher partnership program, you’ll receive a welcome email which would not only contain your login credentials but also some ad codes to get you started right away!

media net request approval

In this email, you’ll also receive the codes of the most popular banners to put it on your website right away.

You’ll also be assigned a PERSONAL Account Manager who will constantly monitor your account and will give you the best suggestions to help you make the most of your blog.

Once you are approved, you can log in and find that the dashboard is very friendly and easy to use. But first, you need to add your account details such as Name, Address, Telephone Number and at the bottom you must accept the terms and conditions of Media.net in order to proceed.

The next step is to configure your preferred payout method.

Payout Settings

Everyone who is interested in working with Media.net should know that:

  • Media.net Pays on a Net-30 Basis
  • Earning Threshold is $100 USD
  • Available Payment Methods: “Payoneer”

In order to select a payout method, do the following:

  1. At the top right you’ll find your website name and a drop.down menu. Click on it and select “Payout Settings“.
    media net review payout settings
  2. Select your preferred payout method. You’ll be shown the available payout methods, which are currently “Paypal” and “Wire Transfer“. Update: Unfortunately, Media.net only pays via Payoneer as of 2019.
    media net payout methods
  3. You’ll be asked to fill out information depending on the payout method you choose.
  4. Click on “Update Information” to save changes.

Media.net Review – Features

Dashboard

Every time you log, (click to sign up) you’ll be shown your dashboard with the estimated revenue and impressions. You can select the date range directly in the drop-down menu located at the top left of your revenue report.

media net review dashboard

At the top you’ll find 5 tabs:

  • Dashboard
  • Reports
  • Ad Units
  • Site Management
  • FAQs

media net dashboard menu

At the top right, you’ll find a drop-down menu with the name of your website. When you click on it you’ll find:

  • Account Settings
  • Payout Settings
  • Logout

media net review settings

Reports

In the Reports section, you’ll be able to see reports:

  • By Account
  • By Website
  • By Ad Unit

media net review reports

You can see these reports using the available date ranges:

  • Today
  • Yesterday
  • This Week
  • Last 7 days
  • Last Week
  • This Month
  • Last 30 Days
  • Last Month

Or you can select a specific day or date range in the calendar.

Ad Units

In the Ad Unit section, you can create, edit and manage all your ad units.

media net review ad units

On the right side of every ad unit you’ll find some useful information like size, last modified date, ad ID and some useful shortcuts:

  • “Get Code“
  • “Edit“
  • “View report“
  • “Hide“

By default, you’ll be shown your active ad units. You can also select and view your hidden ad units or if you’d like you can also view both of these together. In the drop-down menu below “Ad Units”, you can select the ads you’d like to show.

If you click on the “Plus Icon” at the left of each side unit you’ll be shown your ad unit preview.

Create New Ad Unit

In order to create a new ad unit:

  1. Click on the “Ad Unit” Tab.
  2. Click on the blue button “Create Ad Unit“.
    You’ll be shown the available ad sizes and the most popular sizes:
    media net create new ad unit size name
  3. Type a “Name” for your new Ad Unit.
  4. Select your “Preferred Ad Skin” from the available ad skins and then customize it according to your site design and colors. you can see here at the Stream SEO’s sidebar that I’ve put one as an example for you with the colors of my website.
    media net create new ad skin color
  5. In the “Color Customization” section, you can select specific colors for your ad elements.
  6. If you want to see how your ad looks before saving, click on “Preview” at the bottom.
  7. Once you are done, click on the blue button “Save & Get Code“.
  8. You’ll be shown your ad code in order to paste it in your website. Copy the code.
    media net create new ad code
  9. Paste the code in your website, for example, in the sidebar.
  10. Your ad unit will be displayed immediately on your website.

Contextual Design

As you may have noticed, the format and design of Media.net ads, are different and quite unique. Media.net primarily has contextual ads, which are specially designed and customized in order to give users a consistent user experience.

media net ad example

Media.net ads are basically keyword blocks with several neatly placed keywords that link to the advertiser’s page. You can select a “skin” or a format and customize it and make an ad unit that blends in with your website and gives you the best results.

Media.net analyzes your website for a couple of days and decides which keywords should be displayed and accordingly displays keywords that are most relevant to your website’s content. This is precisely the reason, it takes time for the ads to optimize for your website. Over time, Media.net learns about the keywords that work for you the best i.e. the ones that receive more clicks and drive revenue for you. Media. Net’s best practices suggest that you must run their ads on your website for at least 15 days in order to give their system sometime to get familiar with your website, so that it can automatically optimize and display ads that’ll help you maximize your revenue.

Media.net displays several ad sizes, featuring the most popular sizes for bloggers:

media net ad unit sizes

As you can see, the format is focused on keywords, in every size – some of them suit perfectly in the sidebar of a blog, while some of them are suitable between the blog posts and some can be placed below the article. It’s up to you to test different ad sizes in order to find which ad spot performs the best for you.

Site Management

In the “Site Management” section you can add other websites that you’d like to monetize with Media.net and submit the same for approval.

media net site management

FAQs

In the “FAQs” section you’ll find knowledge based with tutorials and the answers of frequently asked questions.

media net site faqs

Media.Net Review – Results and Payments

As we’ve covered the sign-up and configuration process, we also wanted to test Media.net right away on a particular website in order to let the system learn and optimize for better performance.

We left the system running a little bit more than 30 days in a young website that receives less than 100 visits per day just to see how it performed. The following report shows the last 30 days for this particular website:

media net income revenue report

As you can see, even small and fairly new websites can monetize their traffic with reliable ad networks such as Media.net. It’s also interesting to see the live impressions (blue box in image above) where it shows you the impressions of the last 60 minutes, and we did a small test and sent around 50 visitors from social media and it seemed to work well and update every hour.

Also, Media.net is extremely particular when it comes to payouts. We’ve got our payment regularly every single time:

media net review - payment method

We’re now making more than $2,500-$3,000+ per month with Media.net. Can’t complain about them.

Media.net Best Practices and Conclusions

After you put your ad in your website, Media.net recommends waiting for 15 days in order to allow the system to gather data, learn and optimize each of your ad units for maximum performance.

In order to improve your ad performance, place it in positions that receive good visibility. e.g. In the blog posts between paragraphs or below the post. The sidebar is normally one of the most common places to put ads but it won’t perform as well as inside the content because the CTR will be lower.

Since the ad units require engagement, the placement is crucial but the quantity also matters. That’s why you should place 3 ad units on each page of your website.

Customize the ads in order to make it look integrated into your website and try to use the most attractive colors from your website’s color palette. As you are displaying text, use a background color that allows your visitors to read your ads properly.

Remember, you must be patient and wait until you can see better results. We noticed an increase in revenue and clicks after a couple weeks of working with them, and this is something I recommend doing with every ad network you test.

For us, they are truly one of the best alternatives to Google Adsense. So, if you want to maximize your revenue and minimize your effort sign up and get started now. Their approval rate is fast and easy, so start testing media net or if you’re already working with them – please leave a comment below, we’d love to know how your experience has been so far. I hope you enjoyed this Media net review.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I’m really itching to get Media.net approval asap
    Does Alexa Rank play any role in the acceptance by Media.net
    I read somewhere that it does. its that true?
    Also, my viral website holykey1.com finally crossed the 1 million Alexa Rank to 980,426 just yesterday

    Its this the best time to apply or i should wait a little bit
    Thanks

    Reply

    • Alexa Rank doesn’t play any role in this case.
      Real traffic is what counts, especially if it’s from tier 1 countries like USA.

      Reply

  2. Thanks for a great article. I think I tick all the boxes, English language content, top two countries are the UK and US, 1000 pages of original content about studying, writing and British history and politics, no sneaky SEO tricks. But, I’m currently migrating my site from Adobe Business Catalyst into WordPress – this will be a combination of custom design, a new blog design and homepage using sub domains to divide out and modernise the content. Should I wait until my new site is up and running or apply now to see if they like the site in general? Cheers

    Reply

    • Hi Elizabeth.
      If your site looks fine right now you could apply as it won’t matter which platform you use later.

      About your migration, if your site already has traffic (I know it does) just be careful about the transition and keep the same URL structure to preserve your rankings.
      Since you mentioned you’re going to use subdomains it might be a hassle later.

      Reply

      • Thanks for the speedy reply. I think I’m a bit nervous about getting rejected on a site I know needs a bit of TLC. Can you apply more than once?

        Reply

  5. Thanks for this information. I also use media.net and gain good revenue from it from designblaz.com
    I love how you summarize the topic very Insightful and helpful blog.
    Keep it up

    Reply

  6. Excellent and helpful review. I have a question though if you could please help on with.

    I am interested in developing a website, which will contain embedded videos from Youtube or Dailymotion or Vimeo about one particular topic. The videos will be strictly from channels of original creators. The sole purpose of this idea is to enable viewers to find videos about that particular topic simultaneously on one page. We expect to generate a minimum of 5000 views per day and these might go as high as 100,000 views per day.

    It will require a lot of hard work on my part as I will have to look for such videos and upload their links on daily basis. I am talking about at least 20-25 videos daily. Managing the Archives as well on the way. There is so much of work as the topic I am concerned has daily uploads of new videos from the creators and I wouldn’t like to miss any of those to ensure continuous and return viewership. In addition to this, it requires a lot of financial input as it is suppose to be a pretty big portal

    In all of this business model, my earning will be based upon ads placed on my web pages by your organization and some other. So before I embark on this venture, Please advice, if my website will get approved from them or if there will be issues? And I need to know if the business model is accepted to your organization.

    regards,
    DRT.

    Reply

    • You can check out their requirements.
      The country where most of the traffic is coming from, along with the niche is also important for many networks.
      Also since you’re going to upload videos you might want to consider video specific monetization networks.

      Media net is NOT my organization, so just go ahead and check all that info in their website 🙂

      Reply

  7. Hi, I would like you to join our affiliate program.

    I cannot find any contact details on your website.

    Please sign up or contact me if you have any questions.

    – Hassan

    Reply

  11. Hi Servando Silva!
    I really love your article and it is helpful
    but now I have a problem related to media.net. On March 2018 I have earned $120 until day 2, April 2018 they still not allow me to withdraw my earning. I don’t know why? If you have any idea related to this problem please, let me know.
    Thanks

    Reply

    • It’s not a problem.
      You get paid what you earn on a NET 30 Basis.
      So what you earned on March will be paid the last days of April. What you earn during April is paid at the end of May, etc.

      Reply

      • Thank you for your kindness answer, but finally, they don’t pay me. I contacted my account manager and they reply me.

        Reply

      • Yes sure, I didn’t check Palpal account, they have paid me $128.40 with %10 of bonus since 26 April 2018. they really pay.

        Reply

        • Good to know you got your payment + the bonus!
          I told you they paid but you just have to wait until end of the next month.

          Reply

  12. Great…!! that’s great advice media.net good work, I read and also saw your every post, nice artical very usefull your post Thank you so much for sharing this and the information provide.

    Reply

  13. Hi, I always read your blog and all information in your is clear and helpful. but now i have a problem with media.net. I have applied media.net with my website healthyworkouttips.com it was rejected. so i have change my website URL from healthyworkouttips.com to thehealthyworkouttips.com. so, can apply media.net to be accepted?
    Hope you can reply!
    Thanks

    Reply

  17. Media.net may be O.K. for blogs and bloggers. For a daily newspaper it’s a disaster and unacceptable – here are just a few of the reasons why…
    1) Extremely low revenue despite requirements for high-quality content.
    2) Unacceptable for a “news”paper that Media-net refuses to serve ads if a headline contains censored words like “38 killed in suicide Baghdad suicide attack”..
    What do they expect? That newspapers (or independent bloggers) write
    “38 persons tragically lost their lives when a volunteer for paradise claimed his 72” ?

    That’s not only ridiculous, it is also an unacceptable- and very common – form of censorship – largely dictated by Google – that particularly harms independent media.

    This cannot stand, and clients should find alternatives that do not support censorship.

    Reply

    • Many of the top networks won’t stand violence and don’t want to appear in sites like that. It’s very understandable if you see it from the point of view of an advertiser.

      Unfortunately, most newspaper sites have very bad quality unless they’re the biggest ones and this happens. you can check many good alternatives here.

      Reply

  18. Hey Maryam, this is a great review. I also just started using Media.net and didn’t realize that I should use more widgets for engagement. It’s great that their accounts feature 2 factor authentication so we know our earning are secure. Thanks again for the tip. I will be sure to add a couple more widgets to get more clicks and payouts.

    Reply

  19. Good review and information. I have had Media.net for about 4 years, and it does very well in my niche.

    But today I logged in to change and add some ad units, and they have removed the “ad unit” button the top of the dashboard. Is this just temporary? I have emailed my account rep. Just curious if anyone has had this problem?

    Reply

  21. Earlier, I used this network but at that time they did not pay enough. Now after reading your review, i will go to my old account and place the ads again. Thanks for review media.net.

    Reply

    • When was this?
      They’re quite good nowadays if you’ve got the right traffic. SOme clicks are even paid at $2 each in the niches I’m testing.

      Reply

  22. Thanks a lot for these amazing Posts.

    I’ve applied for Adsense and also Media.net and get rejected.

    Any help from you will be grateful.

    Reply

  23. I have applied this ads network for more than 5 times, mostly they rejected my applications. Finally I’ve been rolling in, within about 24hrs. after they told me “Currently, this site doesn’t comply with our Program”. From my exp. here are some tips:

    1. A domain at least 1-2 years old is better than a fresh one.
    2. You have got some quality contents on your website, say 20-30 posts and some of the post should be readable and with a length of 1,500-2,000 words, with clear pics (I buy photos from time to time, not just google some CC0 pics then use them on my site)
    3. A clean layout, when I apply for their approval, I removed all the ads on my homepage
    4. I saw some people say that hosting IP is also important, I’m not sure that is a MUST, but actually my server is in USA, I think that might be helpful
    5. For traffic, you can buy some 1-tier traffic from FB ads or from Google, Bing, etc. Make sure send traffic from USA, UK, Canada, and other English speaking countries. Send traffic 3-5 days and do not stop during the review period, the amount is not a big deal actually, but you should know, the more the better.
    6. Keep away with Fiverr traffic, mostly they are bots or very low-quality traffic, you will be banned sooner or later if you use these gigs

    Reply

    • Hi Eric.
      Thanks for sharing your recommendations.

      3. This actually helps with many ad networks. Eithe ryou have a very clean layout ready for ads, or you have the ads of their bigger competitors so they want you to swap.
      4. The IP probably doesn’t matter as much considering a lot of prople use VPSes or shared hosting, but I’m sure an IP from USA (very common) looks better than an IP from nigeria, just to say an example.
      6. This applies every single time 🙂

      Reply

  24. Thanx for one more motivational writting. I have been using media.net with propeller ads, but still I hardly make $1/month as I have less than 100 visitors per day from countries with poor CPMs. I will definitely work hard to make it a good amount one day.Regards
    Founder of mahvish.com

    Reply

  25. Well, great article i must say i have a blog hosted on google blogger, and i submitted this site to Media.net but everything to no avail is up to 5times now that i have been submitting this site they will never approve site hosted on Googles Blogger.

    One thing about this AdNetworks is that they take the rest of the world for granted, they try to prove that the rest of the world are nothing since my country is no US or Canada why should i target audience from this countries just to get approve. same as google ad-sense.

    My site primarily target audience from my country and my second primary audience come from the us and Switzerland but still they insist it must come from the us where as they have advertisers from my country. I’m a good Nigerian and ireceive traffics from Nigeria http://www.ebiraland.com.ng

    Reply

    • Yeah, having a blog on blogger is an issue and that’s why I don’t recommend it.
      Try moving to wordpress or some other platform where you actually own your own content.

      As for the performance of other countries, it’s all based on advertisers and demand/offer.
      So tier 1 countries will always have better rates for this reason unfortunately.

      Reply

      • Hi i read ur blog and i want more information about adroll.com for publisher.
        i have website called http://www.superbhub.com and have 15000 page view per month it is new website.
        so could u please suggest me for best way to get more money

        Reply

        • Hi.
          I have’t worked with Adroll before, so I’m not sure what to say about them. look for reviews from other sites and contact them to get a feel of what you’re looking for.

          Reply

          • ok thank you for your reply and can you share us how to create money from facebook like as other website like as a content.ad by being publisher.
            it is also possible from facebook..

            hope you will reply soon

            Reply

            • You might want to read this article to get an idea of how that works.
              The article talks about Adsense but read part 2 as well and you can apply the same concept to any network.

              Reply

  26. Thank you for this article,can we put adsense with media.net or media with propellerads ? 2 or 3 campagny in the sametime ?

    Reply

    • Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem for both cases you mentioned.
      3 networks at the same time is a bit too much in my opinion, and not only will users not like it but you’ll hurt the performance of all of them. I like focusing on 1 or 2 maximum at any given time for each website.

      Reply

    • No. I’d say they’re on par if you have the right traffic and countries. They have some advantages especially in how they help you more and assign you a manager, and their approval time is way faster than Adsense, but in terms of performance I think they’re similar.

      Reply

  28. Media.net like others good ad medias, they don’t accept a new websites for publisher because there is no traffic. It’s a frustration most newbies like me have. Any solution how to get accepted with a new websites?

    Reply

    • did you get rejected for that specific reason?
      When I talked with my manager we noticed they mostly want English speaking sites, but they said there was no problem even for sites with little traffic as long as it looks good and has the right traffic.

      Reply

      • Hi,
        Thanks for your response.
        My site is in English and the niche is funny. All about funny pictures and videos. My site hosting server is in India. Could it be that the reason, I wonder.
        I applied as a publisher at revcontent and this is what they wrote :
        “Thank you for your interest in Revcontent. At this time your site does not qualify to run Revcontent widgets. We evaluate applications based on traffic, site audience, geography, and content.”
        The same thing happened with me with ad media. Didn’t apply for adsense becos I got blocked from invalid click. It was a mistake to buy a gig from a fiverr for traffic. A mistake that caused my adsense get blocked.

        Reply

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