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 and get a 10% bonus in your earnings for the first 3 months 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 a 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.
The Media.net program is currently only open to websites that:
- Have content in English
- Receive majority of their traffic from the 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 a reasonable volume of visitors already using the website.
- Does not contain excessive advertising
- Have a reasonable amount of content
- Have a navigation-friendly website design
You are likely to get rejected by Media.net if your websites contain one or more of the following:
- Software Piracy such as warez, torrent, 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.
- Tobacco, 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 that 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
- Full Name
Shortly after signing up, you will receive an automated response by email informing you that Media.net has received your application.
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.
This means their team personally checks every website manually. This helps them get the best quality of websites and therefore get the 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 that would not only contain your login credentials but also some ad codes to get you started right away!
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 and you’re good to go.
Media.net Review – PubConsole and reporting dashboard
Media net’s dashboard has been completely renovated in 2019 and now you get access to their brand new PubConsole, where you can check everything around your stats and earnings.
The general dashboard view gives you a quick glance at your 24-hour earnings but also to your weekly and monthly earnings as well as your overall earnings for the year.
It will also show you impression and RPM trends as well as live impressions detected in your site in the last hour:
Moving to the reporting area, you get to see your revenue and impressions by ad units filtered by dates.
As you can see, if you get high-quality traffic from English sites you can get some really nice RPMs above $10 USD.
You can also check out landscape and trends by ad units, sites (in case you have more than 1) and channels:
Besides that, the dashboard allows you to create ad units and add new sites to get approved for Media.net and does its job well.
I will show you how I implement ads down below as we’re now using a new tool to do inject the ads in our sites. But first, let’s take a look at Media.net’s ads…
Media.net Ad examples
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 ads are basically keyword blocks with several neatly placed keywords that link to the advertiser’s page. Your account manager 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.
For example, I implemented Media.net’s ads here at Stream SEO for a test and we recently got a new website design. After implementing the ads inside the posts, sidebar, and homepage I let my manager know so they could start working on the look and feel.
Here’s how the look at the top of my homepage and also in the sidebar below the email opt-in form:
I even got a few emails from people asking me which type of ads was I using because they looked beautiful and blended well with our new website design!
Here’s another example of how the ads were rotating with different styles. I took this screenshot from an ad right below the title of a post:
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 some time to get familiar with your website so that it can automatically optimize and display ads that’ll help you maximize your revenue.
Media.net WordPress Plugin integration
Since WordPress powers close to 35% of the websites around the globe, it was only natural for Media.net to create a plugin to help you inject your ad codes in an easy and quick manner.
You can go ahead and install their WordPress plugin and after that, you will be able to log in and see a quick glance of your ads right from your WordPress dashboard.
However, what I like the most about the plugin is that it can help you inject the ads whenever you want without having to deal with code or external plugins to manage your ads.
What you need to do is create the desired number of ads in your Media.net PubConsole and then ignore the code they give to you to insert them in your website.
Instead of copying and pasting the code, you only need to go to your WordPress plugin and select the “Configuration” menu from above and you will be presented with a ton of placements to inject your ads without having to deal with code yourself:
Media.net’s WordPress plugin allows you to inject ads in your home page, posts, pages, categories and more. Each type of page can be customized with different recommended ad locations as shown above.
If you want to go deep and optimize your ad locations and styling, even more, you can go to the advanced editor and edit things like the look and feel, margins and CSS of your ads. but I tend to leave this to my account manager as they know what works best.
Overall, I’m really happy with the new WordPress plugin and it’s an easier way to implement your ads without having to copy and paste code in your theme settings or worse.
Of course this only works for WordPress publishers. You can always copy and paste your codes if you’re using a different CMS.
Media.Net Review – Payment Methods
Media.net is extremely particular when it comes to payouts. We’ve got our payment regularly every single time:
2019 Update: Media.net doesn’t pay via PayPal anymore. We have been receiving our payments through Payoneer without problems though. Payoneer has lower fees than PayPal so we’re actually happy with the change.
Here’s a screenshot of the payment we received before the end of 2019 without any issues:
Media.net always pays in time and usually even a few days before the expected date, which is on a monthly NET 30 basis. The company will be shown as Z1 Digital in case you’re wondering about that.
Media.net Best Practices and Conclusions
After you put your ad on your website, Media.net recommends waiting at least 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 of 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 your 10% bonus for 3 months 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.
Hello Servando, I see Steam Seo is now showing ads. Do you also use the services of ezonic / adpush to optimize?
Hello Eli.
Yes, we’re giving Ezoic a new test as they have recently improved their platform and we’re seeing some great results so far. we will update our review about them next month with more data 🙂
how to delete my rejected domain on pubconsole of media.net? please help me.
If you want to send it for approval again you can always contact your account manager.
This is awesome – always leading with value! Can’t wait to dig in. Thanks Servando !
Hi, Servando! I have some questions.
1. Do they still limit 3 ads per page like before?
2. Do they ban a website that contains affiliate links?
Hi Roth.
No, I have had more than 4 ads without problems and affiliate links don’t matter.
Hello there,
Follow your blog for a long time
There are many exciting content.
I have a few questions and would like to ask
1. What type of website would you recommend to a novice,
Come as a publisher
2. What type of website does a novice create, it is easier to get a lot of traffic
3. As a publisher, what type of advertising do you find more profitable?
This is the problem i encountered
Thanks for answer!
Hello man.
Hope I can help you with some answers:
1. A website in the niche you’re passionate about, but doing some keyword research to see how the competition works in that niche and how they make money from it.
2. It all depends on keyword research, to be honest. Low competition high volume websites tend to earn very little money per view though, so it’s all balanced.
3. it depends on the niche as well. Some verticals do better with ad networks, some others with affiliate products and some others doing direct deals with advertisers or promoting specific products or even your own product. It all depends on the vertical you’re working in.
Let me run their ads for ages and were really pushing me to implement them site -wide, built up about a tidy sum, then terminated my account and froze payment stating “low quality traffic”. They did give a prior warning 3 weeks, and I presumed it was due to world-wide traffic. So I immediately started only showing their ads when on US, UK and Canada. But this wasn’t enough for them. My website has been running Google ads and Carbon buysellads for years without a hitch.
Hi Mark.
That’s an interesting story.
Where was your traffic coming from? Was it organic or paid?
I haven’t had any problems with them so far.
100% organic, spread across the globe. About 30% from the premium countries, but after I got the warning I disable the ads for non-premium countries using an IP checking service. After I did that the RPM went down considerably anyway.
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
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.
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
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.
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?
Thanks for the Review of medianet
Thanks for the information. I have been looking for Adsense alternative for my site.
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
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.
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 🙂
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
Thanks but we’re not looking for new affiliate programs at the moment.
I never knew about them until recently, have signed up, great so far.
I think media.net is the best google adsense alternative for publisher.
this is worked for me
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
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.
Thank you for your kindness answer, but finally, they don’t pay me. I contacted my account manager and they reply me.
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.
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.
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.
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
What was the reason it was rejected?
If the reason was not the domain name changing it won’t do anything for you.
Help with what exactly?
HI,
This is my website canifo.com please check as per your view and let me know the website level for improvement
Hello. We don’t offer services like that.
its is good for bloggers but most of time there are many problems occurs.
Hi. Can you mention what problems have you had with them to share with the community? 🙂
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.
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.
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.
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?
Hi Servando.
Thanks for the great information. I just signed up.
What do you think of my site. It is a news aggregation page.
http://www.theaquarianreport.com
Cheers and regards.
It looks like old style 1.0 sites in my opinion. Did you code it yourself?
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.
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.
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.
What was the reason of the rejection?
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
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 🙂
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
Have you got an Adsense account?
My adsense has not been approved yet….would you kindly check my site http://www.mahvish.com
I can’t do anything to help you approved as I don’t work for Google though.
Well, you have some interesting posts. But where are the ads?
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Thank you for this article,can we put adsense with media.net or media with propellerads ? 2 or 3 campagny in the sametime ?
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.
Thanks! I just applied and hope to get approved. Can you say media.net is better than adsense?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Your site is in English but your main geo is India, so that’s why they didn’t accept it.
Try some these alternatives.