Mediavine is a premium display ad management network that boggers can use to effectively monetize their websites. It’s rated as one of the highest-earning ad networks out there for bloggers and other content creators.
The network is very popular with bloggers in the food niche, travel niche, family and parenting, hobbies and interests, home and garden, health and fitness, personal finance, education, style, shopping and fashion, and arts and entertainment niches.
Mediavine is an ad management network that requires exclusivity for managing your display ads. In other words, you are not allowed to use any other ad network while using Mediavine. Although you’re still free to use affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, and so on but not any other ad network.
Of course, that is a direct downside however, the majority of the bloggers still prefer media vine as the best and go-to network for displaying ads on their websites.
Bloggers Choose Mediavine for These Main Reasons:
- Mediavine offers some of the highest RPMs in the display ad management industry.
- Mediavine applies lightweight ad tech that doesn't slow down websites.
- Mediavine only works with premium ad partners, and every ad unit comes with an ad reporting button for real-time quality control.
- Mediavine applies dynamic ad placement. It places ads automatically for optimal viewability and user experience.
- Mediavine has a very user-friendly dashboard that clearly shows key metrics for website page views, RPMs, sessions, earnings for the current month, and past payments.
On top of all these benefits, bloggers and webmasters should know that Mediavine is the most selective ad management network when it comes to signing up with them. Some bloggers even take months and tons of effort in order to get that approval to join Mediavine.
In this article, we are going to address that issue by laying down a strategy that can help you join Mediavine and start earning from it according to Casey Bottecilo of Bloggingguide.com.
Requirements to Join Mediavine
On their main website, Mediavine states the requirements every blogger has to meet in order to join their platform. However, the requirements stated by Mediavine should be viewed as the minimum requirements to be accepted into their ad network. Simply reaching these stated metrics does not guarantee that you will be accepted!
Mediavine has 4 official application requirements for any website that a blogger submits for review:
- 50 000 sessions in the past 30 days (based on your Google Analytics report).
- Good standing with Google AdSense.
- Long-form, engaging content.
- Original content in any lifestyle publishing niche.
1. 50 000 Sessions in the Last 30 Days
In order to be considered for Mediavine, your website must have received 50 000 sessions in the last 30 days, as measured by Google Analytics.
For most bloggers, this demand for traffic is the most significant barrier to admission. While not an impossibly high threshold, 50 000 sessions often indicate that your site receives significant traffic, which for most bloggers implies a significant time investment in creating high-quality material.
Mediavine requires 50 000 sessions, not pageviews. Many other ad networks use pageviews as their baseline metric, so some bloggers miss this key detail. A pageview is when a page on your website is visited by a user while a session is a collection of pageviews by a user.
So pageviews are some number that is larger than your sessions. The ratio will vary depending upon how users engage with your website but as a rough guideline, 50 000 sessions typically translates to 60 000 - 100 000 page views.
Mediavine measures your site’s metrics using data from Google Analytics. For most bloggers, this is pretty simple to check as they already use Google Analytics. But for those bloggers using another tool to track website traffic, you should keep in mind that you need to configure Google Analytics for at least 30 days in order to have this report before submitting it to Mediavine.
2. Good Standing with Google AdSense
The second requirement for applying to Mediavine is that publishers must make sure their website is in good standing with Google AdSense and Google AdExchange. This means that you cannot have been banned, rejected, or have an open dispute with these networks.
"If you’ve ever been banned, rejected, or had an unresolved policy violation with Google AdSense, we won’t be able to add you to the Mediavine Publisher Network." — Mediavine.
Note: This does not mean that you need an existing AdSense account to apply to Mediavine. You can make it even during the period when you're applying for Mediavine.
The application process usually takes less than 24 hours, but can be as long as 2-3 days. So you might as well apply to AdSense first, before applying to Mediavine, as you will ultimately need access to Google AdExchange.
3. Long-Form, Engaging Content
The third requirement to apply to Mediavine is you must have a blog with long-form, engaging content. Long-form blog posts are generally at least 1 000 words and oftentimes are much longer.
Basically, Mediavine wants publishers who are creating content with enough substance so that they can place ads in your content without overwhelming your readers.
Engaging content is obviously subjective, but this generally refers to content that has a high dwell time, infographics and charts accompanying the text, and other features that keep your readers interested. Most importantly, you must have content that people would organically want to read.
More specifically, you should not have bot traffic. Mediavine will verify that you only use verified and white-listed traffic.
4. Original Content From Any Niche
The final Mediavine requirement is that you produce original content for your blog in any lifestyle niche. While historically, many of the prominent bloggers using Mediavine were food bloggers, Mediavine will consider applications from pretty much any advertiser-friendly niche.
But your content must be original! So make sure you have not “borrowed” sentences/paragraphs from other blogs, as Mediavine will check.
Mediavine "Un-official" Application Requirements
This section will focus on the “Un-official” Mediavine application requirements. Please note these are not stated requirements by Mediavine but rather an aggregation of potential disqualifying factors based on hundreds of discussions with Mediavine applicants (both accepted and rejected). While these may not be hard and fast rules, they are mostly based on concepts alluded to in various Mediavine articles.
There are several “Un-official” Mediavine requirements that applicants are recommended to aim for. These are not firm requirements, but if you can meet all of these, your chances of being accepted to Mediavine will go up significantly compared to someone meeting the bare minimum requirements.
- 85% of your website traffic should be from Tier 1 Ad Countries (US, UK, Australia, Norway, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Germany).
- Your top page by sessions should generally not account for more than 9% of your total site traffic.
- Your website needs essential pages (About me/author page, Privacy Policy, Affiliate Disclaimer Page, Easy to Navigate Menu, etc.).
- Content is ideally both original and created manually (i.e. programmatic content can be problematic).
- No Tier 2 or Tier 3 Ad Country should account for more than 10% of your overall session distribution.
- Try to apply in a period of time where you do not have 1-2 days that account for more than 20% of your total monthly sessions.
- Avoid any content that may be remotely questionable (Adult, Gambling, MLM, Cryptocurrencies, Drugs, Weapons, or Anything Illegal).
- Avoid applying if you have rebranded your site or changed your site's URL in the past few months (ideally, wait at least a year).
- Try to keep your Average Session Duration over 1 Minute.
- Try to keep your Bounce Rate below 70%.
- Minimize the presence of your sidebar (or remove it altogether).
Even if you follow all these suggestions, Mediavine allows its advertising partners to vet any applicant without explanation in the external review, so there is still a chance you will be rejected.
Mediavine Application Timeline and Steps
Mediavine’s application process is generally more time-intensive than most other ad networks. You should expect the entire process (from submitting the initial application to seeing your first day’s earnings from your Mediavine ads) to take 4-6 weeks at least. Many successful applicants will know whether they’ve been approved or rejected from Mediavine within 3-4 weeks.
Mediavine Application Timeline
Mediavine states the following about the application timeline:
"Each application we receive is reviewed by a minimum of two different people on our team, and any site we’re considering turning down is examined by no fewer than three people internally. We take every Mediavine application seriously to ensure the highest quality of our platform as a whole. For this reason, don’t be alarmed if 14-21 business days pass from the time you submit your Google Analytics PDF until a final decision is made. Sometimes, everything runs smoothly and it may not take as long. Other times, if application volumes are extremely high or we need to dive deeper into a particular application, it can take up to 28 days."
Casey’s Personal Application Timeline
Casey says that he had read many “horror stories” about people waiting for weeks and not hearing back from Mediavine, even after they followed up. However, his personal experience may not be representative of the average applications made by other people. Below is the application timeline that Casey went through while trying to join Mediavine in March 2022.
- Apply/Submit Google Analytics PDF: Casey applied to Mediavine on the 3rd of March 2022. He sent in the PDF of his Google Analytics on the 4th of March 2022.
- Google AdExchange/Internal Review: wMediavine sent Casey a Google AdExchange request on 9th March 2022. On 10th March 2022, he was approved by Google.
- External Review by Advertising Partners: Casey’s website was then reviewed and approved by a panel of advertisers on the 10th of March, 2022.
- Accepted/Sign Contract: On 11th March 2022, Casey successfully passed the second phase of the review, and he was sent a formal contract offer to join Mediavine!
Casey says, "While this process was surprisingly quick, I had studied the pre-application checklist thoroughly, responded almost instantly to all email requests, and this took place mainly on weekdays which I’m guessing lead to faster response times.
Despite this relatively quick process, I exchanged literally 30+ emails with various Mediavine support team members so it did feel a bit tiring, but by staying on top of it, everything went a lot faster."
Mediavine Application Tips from Casey
This section will focus on some tips for navigating the Mediavine process according to Casey. These were all tips that he personally utilized in his own application process and to some extent, likely the reason his application was processed so quickly. They go as follows:
- Read all application-related emails carefully.
- Respond to Mediavine emails and requests ASAP.
- Create an AdSense account before applying.
- Be polite. Even if you are not accepted, you can always re-apply to Mediavine. There is no reason to burn any bridges!
Advice from Casey
My advice? Focus on meeting all these stated requirements, respond to each email as quickly as possible, and make sure your website feels like a unique website generated by a person as opposed to a program.
