Media.net is a contextual advertising platform like Google’s Adsense, but not really. As a blogger, I’m always interested in anything new that can compete with Google since Google is a monopoly. If you depend on Google too much for revenue or traffic, you will likely feel some pain sooner or later.
It’s good to experiment in blogging because you never know what works until you try. In fact, it’s the same thing with anything in life. So when Media.net contacted me about their product, I said why not!
In this post you’ll learn why Media.net has great potential, but still needs work to become a successful advertising platform. You’ll also learn what not to do if you are trying to build momentum and a good reputation.
THE PROS AND CONS FROM A PUBLISHER’S POINT OF VIEW
Pros Of Using Media.net
* Outstanding customer service. I want to send a shout-out to my representatives Vivek Shah, Nidhi Shankar, and Nandita Iyer. They were all super response to all my inquiries and requests. If you ever try to get a response from Google’s customer service, you might be waiting until Tiger Woods becomes a priest. Vivek, Nidhi, and Nandita are all based in India. Customer service is tremendously helpful for new and veteran bloggers alike.
* Control over advertising. Because customer service is good, I was able to just send them a message telling them to take off ads I disliked such as “Multi-bagger penny stocks” and other random keywords that aren’t related to the post. Furthermore, I asked the team to do the text coloring for me, which they did and matched quite well.
* Customization of ads. Media.net provides a bevy of different ad shapes and sizes to fit your specific blog. You are also able to match the contextual ad texts to the text of your blog’s links to make them blend better. The customization is very easy to use.
* Ads pop up within your site’s frame. If someone clicks the text ad, a new window will pop up with a list of ads within your site’s framework. This ads further dimension of customization that should increase click through rates over time. Your readers do not have to leave your site, which is a great bonus if you care about metrics such as average time spent per page, and number of page views per unique visitor. The stickiness of your readership is important.
* New partnership with Yahoo! Bing as of 9/27/2012. This is a huge development for the Media.net platform. To be able to partner with tech titans Yahoo and Microsoft should potentially provide for a premium advertisement pool for publishers to display, more customization, better contextual advertisements, and higher quality mobile advertisements.
Sample Media.net Income Report
Cons Of Using Media.net
* Payout needs improving. Despite being promised a much higher payout than Google Adsense and other contextual advertising platforms the initial results didn’t pan out. My 45 day average RPM/CPM (Revenue/Cost per thousand impressions) was around $1.50. In other words, if I had 10,000 page views, my revenue comes out to 10,000/1,000 X $1.5 = $15 a month. Between Yakezie and Financial Samurai, there were over 180,000 pageviews according to Google Analytics, and over 300,000 impressions based on Media.net’s dashboard.
Since the initial trial period, Media.net has improved their algorithms and advertisement offerings over the past six months which has resulted in a more than doubling of RPMs over a monthly impression count of 300,000 a month. I’m extremely pleased by the improvement of their RPM/CPM because they took the time to listen to my concerns and did something to improve the conversions!
* Double click method (could be positive). If you use Google Adsense, you get paid if someone clicks your ad. If you use Media.net, you don’t get paid until someone clicks your ad again in another window. It’s double confirmation, to ensure quality control. Hence, the chances of you having a reader click your add is perhaps 50% less than if you had Google Adsense. During the initial rollout, the RPM/CPM was too low to warrant me using their product after the trial run. However, since the RPM/CPM has more than doubled, I am more than happy to use Media.net as the contextual advertisement platform of choice.
* May slow down your site. The more you put on your site, the slower it gets. You can see on the bottom of your browser how your site reads various URLs to load data. The slowdown isn’t drastic, it’s just another thing that can bog your site down. You have to upload a javascript, which may also increase security issues. These issues are not Media.net specific.
* Needs more contextual improvement. Media.net’s algorithm puts the highest paying contextual ads first and then the most contextual ads. Not bad for you and me the publisher, however, ideally, you want the highest paying contextual ads that are also most relevant. The partnership with Yahoo! Bing should improve the pool of premium advertisers.
Sample Media.net Ad Types
AN X FACTOR
The biggest reason I’ve been using Media.net since 2009 (5+ consecutive years) is the service they provide. I have a dedicated rep and a team of 5 other backend Media.net employees who are constantly looking to improve the ads on Financial Samurai. What I most appreciate is someone who is responsive and can solve problems when something looks off (irrelevant ad). I also like how Media.net customizes the landing page whenever a visitor clicks an ad.
I had lunch with one of the reps in San Francisco in March 2014, and he told me about all the great things they are doing with Yahoo!. It feels great knowing that there’s a good partnership and a great time of 700+ people looking to make Media.net a great Google Adsense competitor.
I have never once gotten a response from Google Adsense about a question. They are just too big, and don’t have time to deal with most of us. This is unfortunate given I’m based in San Francisco as are they.
GETTING BETTER WITH TIME
Now that Media.net has improved their product over the past 12 months since I first wrote this review, I am much more comfortable recommending Media.net as an excellent alternative to Google Adsense. It warms my heart to see a client listen to feedback on how to improve, and go out there and make the improvements happen! I’ve witnessed Media.net’s advertisement offerings improve dramatically as they’ve signed up more clients. Their mobile advertisement platform is also quite attractive as well. With the Yahoo! Bing partnership, I expect even better things from Media.net going forward.
If you are looking for a Google Adsense alternative, then Media.net is the top choice. I have tried everything from Infolinks to Chitika, and nothing works as well as Media.net. In fact, Media.net is my main source of contextual advertising and Google Adsense is second.
You can sign up for Media.net here. It’s worth giving it a try for six months. I’ve given it a try for five years and am happy with the results!
Looking to learn how to start your own profitable website? Check out my step-by-step guide on how to start a blog. It’s one of the best things I did in 2009 to help earn extra money and break free from Corporate America!
Hey Sam,
The first two weeks or so were pretty good, but it’s been drying up this month. It is matching Adsense in terms of RPM, but not in terms of gross since there are a lot less impressions with the network targeting US, UK, and Canada only.
I’ll give it some more time to see, but if it underperforms Adsense consistently then I’ll have to switch back.
Give it a couple more weeks, and I’m guessing the performance will drop further unfortunately.
Even Chitika is working well for all types of traffic. They are now having two advertising companies in their ad exchange.
Of course for you Chitika is better. Because the founder of Chitika is Indian.
Thanks for the report on Media.net. I was wondering about them. Sounds like I’ll be sticking with Adsense for now….
A whopping $13.15 in the last 30 days. But $12.86 of that came from one single click. Not a great start, although I agree that customer support is attentive.
$13 bucks a month, nice! :) If only you could get like a hundred of those clicks.
Usually it starts off great and then fades… so, don’t get your hopes up.
UH….really? Since Media.net does NOT show earning based on clicks AT ALL, I doubt this comment. They only show Impressions and they distinction of RPM. No clicks.
I’ve been considering taking it down as well.. I’ll give them one more month. Glad to know I’m not the only one who felt this way.
Given the RPM, i’ll need likely a year to get $4 to get to the $100 payout. I am starting to think it simply is not worth the wait …
Not sure if you can survive in Somalia for $4 a year.
I have media.net and adsense ads on my blog currently. Ofcourse I don’t get nearly the page views as you so, the beggar destroys my earning :-(. I’m glad you broke down the comparison between the two. I must admit I have yet taken the time to understand how advertising works. But if you’re not going to use Media.net who will you use?
I will simply use no contextual advertising. I’m not really fond of having advertising in the main content body of my site(s) unless they are really unobtrusive.
Maybe if I no longer have a job, and blog full-time will I maximize every portion of revenue out there. But for now, I’d rather keep things simple.
Thanks for letting us know about Media.Net. Since I can’t use AdSense, I’m always interested in hearing about the alternatives.
Another thing to consider is your user experience. Having a reader click through twice for an ad is a lot (almost sounds like a bait and switch if I read your description correctly?). And then what? What are the odds of that reader returning to your site?
Indeed, which is why I prefer banner ads and ads that are outside of the content box. Unless I’m just hurting for cash, it’s not worth it at these low rates right now.
I do believe users will keep coming back if the content is good enough though.
I’ve got media.net so it’s showing up when you have Google, Yahoo, or Bing as a referrer only (sorry Google Reader Users!) and I’ve been having the same problem. Lack of clicks.
I did want to give it a month, so I’ve got about a week left, but if I was done with the months today I would have no way of justifying it. However, I agree, the customer service is superb!
Unfortunately, I’m not sure if you will see a change. Remember, I’m giving you a 300,000 impression monthly sample set. It depends on your writing too i.e. affiliate post writing.
Actually you would make much more by panhandling.
I wanted to try it with BP, but your impressions blows BP’s impressions out of the water, so I highly doubt it will reach anywhere to even get a payout. I didn’t like the 2 click model. You mentioned about the first click taking someone to page within your own site, in fact I saw that as a disadvantage (purely in terms of advertising). I am not going to do further when I am already confused, so most people won’t click it the second time. The high RPM initial month is mostly (in my opinion) because people think it is a new navigation “you” have in place, so they click to explore. They don’t realize these are ads. I clicked on one of the sites thinking it was a navigation bar. I visit 100s of sites a day, so I am sure a naive user would click too. After that it became obvious those are ads, so the CTR drops.
Only advantage for media.net is that it is a “potential” competitor and if google kicks someone out, they have an option to do contextual advertising.
Yes, I concur with exactly what you said. Initially, there will be a boost as readers are “fooled” into thinking it’s part of your navigation bar. Then, if the actual advertisements are not good, not helpful, and lack variety, then few will ever click again. If Media.net had 10X more clients, and not the same ones over and over again, it would really help. But alas, they don’t.
I would think a good strategy for them would be to build goodwill with bloggers in the PF space. It’s just so strange.
Sam,
Thanks for your review. I appreciate you taking the time to try Media.net and provide your pros and cons as you have.
It’s certainly a shame that the RPMs did not meet your expectations.
The revenue earned is based solely on value driven to the advertisers. We have some publishers making well above a $50 RPM. It depends greatly on the content and your visitor’s propensity to interact with the ads. As you mentioned, it doesn’t make sense to change the subject of your posts just to earn more from “higher paying” ad topics.
I would like to address a couple of the items you discuss:
1. double-click method: Media.net offers both one click and two click ads. Our search targeted ads product delivers one clicks ads when your user originates from a search engine.
We’ve run a number of tests, and I can assure you that the double click method works quite well. It delivers a good user experience and improves the overall results for advertisers, which means they pay more for the ads.
Functionality: We currently offer 10 different ad sizes, including all the major IAB sizes, from within your publisher console. We can also create others when it makes sense. We are working on adding more functionality where you can change colors within your ads; for now your account manager can assist with this.
Thanks again for taking the time to try out Media.net.
It seems that the majority of publishers that I know have some very low RPM numbers. You’ve quoted your $50 RPM many times, but know that number is VERY misleading, and I recommend you either quantify and prove this, or stop saying that. Eventually, the truth comes out, making your company look very bad.
I can assure you that after 300,000 impressions in 45 days, the double click method hasn’t worked well since the ads on page one are DIFFERENT from the ads on page two.
You’ve got to a better job Andrew if you are indeed the Senior VP of marketing. 1) Deliver what you promise, and 2) spend time getting to know your customers, and 3) work together with your customer to work out a better solution.
Please explain this drop off:
Sept RPM: $44.07
Oct RPM: $2.36
Nov RPM: $0.16
Those are my numbers and it feels like something fishy was happening early. It certainly wasn’t on my end.
I admit, I dumped the non-performing content ad, however, the web bar ad has declined each month as well.
I have very similar trend in my numbers. Your payouts beat me by a bit but I have the same drastic drop month over month.
And no answers, aside from “you did great month one” (paraphrase).
Not acceptable IMO.
My experience with Adsense is so poor (no payment yet), I would not consider a similar service. I think the SVP is sticking with their marketing plan blindly and not adapting to the market. He/she may change after time, but it does nt matter. Thanks for the feedback, I would pass on this servicee anyway.
Yeah, it’s interesting to observe the lack of effort by the SVP to want to work with publishers, the Network, and myself to build some momentum.
I guess stubbornness can really get in the way of development. What’s the phrase, “cut off your nose to spite your face”? It’s perplexing.
I do believe everything is rational, so they either are making a ton of money and don’t really care about us small folks, or they will improve their product offering or go bust.
I’ve been contacted several times by outlets like this, some investing-related outfit and others. They all start out with the same claim, “out payout is much higher than Adsense”. Right off, that’s bullshit. For one, how can they possibly know what your ECPM is with google? It’s against the TOS to publish that yourself, and the variation is HUGE across blogs, types of content and even within a blog. Time and again, after pressing them for their ECPM, comparing what other bloggers say, it’s never true. It’s logical right? Google has the best reach, advertiser diversity, lowest overhead per transaction and account, how could anyone this small beat them?
I was hopeful Media.net could provide something comparable, but as you can see from my post, they pale in comparison.
Yes, their pitch was misleading, as how do they know what one’s Adsense revenue/CPM is? I was thinking they very well could provide a better rate since Adsense takes 40% or so. But, after a 2 month trial, what I see is disappointing.
Wow! I was about to try it out on one of my site… this doesn’t sound appealing at all. How does it compared to your adsense income (percentage wise) for a similar period?
Since you took down Adsense on your site, I definitely wouldn’t bother with Media.net.
I remember Google Adsense to be about a US$3-$5 CPM on average i.e. much worse.
I was not thinking of adding it to TFB but to another of my site which display Adsense. Oh well, I guess the big G will keep its monopoly for a few years!
Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t bother unless you want to see 50-70% less revenue.
Hey Sam, quick question:
have you separated FS stats from the Yakezie? I highly doubt that the Yakezie crowd would be entitled to clicks on adds as people from a community usually don’t click on them. Just thinking that the CPM might be slightly higher… or maybe not ;-) I’m just curious.
Good question. I think the yakezie.com RPM was actually higher at $1.25/CPM! Whoo hoo! lol.
Good to know about it Sam. I wouldn’t try this unless I hear they improved. I can’t believe a senior VP coming to put a comment on blogs. at most Andrew might be a social networking agent working over there. But, miracle do happen.
Glad to know I’m not the only one who felt this way. It’s sad too because the customer service is wonderful.
It is sad. My reps are good folks! I still have hope though! Capitalism should make their product offering better over time!
Obviously we get different results on different sites. I invite anyone reading this to try it for themselves.
I wish you all the best with your blogs.
It’s misleading to always highlight the biggest RPM you have. Instead, talk about the median or average, so the publisher doesn’t waste their time after the trial period. Do you not think highlighting the average/median is a more honest way of going about things?
How long have you guys been around anyway, and where was the company founded?
Ive been really disappointed with the service myself, extremely low RPM. I didnt even realize that they had spelling errors, and didnt consider the affect it had on my site load time. Their customer service has really been emailing me lately to customize the ads based on my search results, it just seems that they require so much work/info from me.
I went through the same experience. The first 10-15 e-mails were fine, but the e-mail chain quickly ramped to 70+! I hope they become more automated.
I’m looking at your Media.net sidebar right now. It has ROTH IRA spelled “ROTH Ira”. “Ira” is wrong, and that’s embarrassing to you as the blog owner, and that media.net doesn’t know this or fixes the typo. The readers will also wonder what’s up?
Thanks for pointing out the spelling errors. That is embarrassing. I’m contemplating dropping them myself, but really would like to collect the first $100 at least. Unfortunately like everyone else, my RPM is dropping on a weekly basis.
Yes, you might as well earn enough to collect the $100, that’s for sure. I think collectively, we can encourage their product to get better.
The problem with keeping ads on there to reach the $100 is that it may never happen. Once I expressed frustration repeatedly at the huge flux in revenue from day to day, I started making almost nothing. I am at $98.56 and the month is almost over. I’ve been within $2.00 of getting a check for over a month now.
I tried them out and quickly took it down. Thanks for the detailed review that confirms my decision.
Thanks all for sharing your experiences on Media.net. You saved me a lot of time I would have invested in vain on these guys.
I never tried it. I was tempted when people were reporting these giant payouts the first couple of months, but then it seemed reality hit and more and more people saw what you reported. I still think it’s shady that they never addressed why things were so great in the beginning then fell off a cliff. I’m sure they won’t like this review but it’s brutally honest, and maybe they’ll take it as an opportunity to improve.
I doubt it MB. My experience is that whenever I email, yes, I get a quick response, but there is never any improvement. I’d like to get a 2nd payout when I get another $4 in clicks, but i’m not sure that is going to happen given my Nov RPM: $0.16
Perhaps they’ll respond right here! It has to be the combo of something new the readers see, and click on to see what’s up, and then the resulting same old stuff over and over again b/c the client inventory is not deep, which leads to a drastic decline.
I really appreciate you guys trying this out. I had been following the reviews in the forums and saw how things started dropping off. Do you think people are just becoming ad blind in general? It seems like they would perform well at the beginning probably because readers didn’t realize they were ads. But then as time went on the clicks would drop off.
That really sucks about the double confirm too. Sometimes an ad click is a mistake but regardless, it’s still a click.
As Suba and another said, I’m sure readers “wisen up” after a while, realizing the ads are ads, not a navigational tool. But, it’s all about the search traffic who clicks anyway.
I’m completely ad blind, except when it comes to anything interest rate related.
Wow – thanks for the info. I am giving it a shot, but I haven’t been making very much with either adsense or media.net. After reading one challenger making $80 per month from media.net, I figured I would try it out. So far, nothing close to that figure, but it’s beating out adsense so far. But then again, 95% of my earnings come from one click. Strange how that works…
No prob. I would honestly focus on just producing more content and connecting than dealing with contextual advertising at your stage. Your goal should be to try and keep as much traffic as possible and build a community around your site.
Thanks for the advice. Good info! I will be sure to do that.
After reading different reviews, I also want to give it a try. I have so much of variation in RPM from adsense, it ranges from 0.50 to 11$. Also wanted to know, if there are any good fixed CPM ad networks?
Sam,
I think you sort of mentioned it and everyone on the forum absolutely brings it up…the practices are SHADY. Take a look at your numbers once again, were they all earned in the span of certain days like mine were? While not impossible it certainly seems pretty improbable that I could make 30 bucks in one day and then ZERO the next?
I’ll agree their customer service is amazing, but that earning path seems to be a little to shady for me.
I’m not sure. I recall seeing a couple $0.00s over 45-60 days, but not many. The average was always around $8-$15 a day, which does equate to around $300-$350 a month.
I would say it does look strange if you have impressions only in the hundreds a day and have $30 one day, $0 next.
I really don’t think it was just me that had this shady result.
I had similar peaks in revenue. 1/3 of my September revenue was earned in one day.
Its possible they have some advertisers who have large payouts and that these show up as large peaks in income. For example if you get someone to sign up for a credit card the credit card company may pay out a $50 commission. So you might see a relatively big payout on one day cause one visitor randomly followed an ad and triggered a larger payout.
This kind of thing would look flatter over a site with a larger amount of traffic cause they’d see those 1 in 1000 payouts much more frequently. But for sites that get a few hundred visitors a day they’d be more random and the $20-$50 payout would cause larger peaks.
I saw similar revenue pattern from some affiliate commission sites in the past. I don’t think theres good reason to assume its shady simply cause the revenue bounces up and down like that.
Just speculation and opinion.
A lot of my great hits were on specific days, especially early. I’m skeptical too. (and now doubt i’ll ever get to that $100 mark even tho i’m SO close) given i’m being vocal about it publicly.
Thanks for the review. They have been emailing me but I wasn’t comfortable signing up with them until I knew more about them. This review confirms my suspicions.
Yeah the 2 click model and low CPM turned me away as well. That is embarassing they had that spelling error. At least they fixed it once you pointed it out. I haven’t been using Google Adsense either. Not the biggest fan especially with no customer service.
It really was shocking b/c the spelling was so obviously wrong, and the ad was in a spot above the post. Oh well.
I am with the Single Saver. They are persistent to try to get you to sign up, but I just never committed. I definitely won’t now.
I tired them for a month myself and the payout was awful. The service was really good but as far as profits go Adsense trumps.
Thanks for your honest review Sam. I’m intrigued by the business aspect of it. If I was the SVP, and saw that an influential blogger was getting such low rates, I would at least provide a minimum guaranteed RPM.
If you have the median RPM of $3, you should be earning $900/month on average. So, a $200 increase to your $345 is still below market rate. And frankly, $200 is nothing if they really do believe in their product.
Good tip about protecting one’s clients from their superiors. I’ve had things fall apart before too. Maybe Media.net will make good and offer you something better in 2012!
Hi Peter, thx for your comment. I think his response just makes me want to work harder to build Yakezie’s presence on the web. I think because he isn’t familiar with our Network, there was no desire to provide any incentives and develop the relationship to leverage participation and endorsements.
Thanks for your insight here Sam. You have saved me the trouble of experimenting with their service.
I just signed up for their service and got the approval today. I’m glad to read this. I won’t spend much/any time with them.
Never hurts to try. Let us know if you see the outsized bump in the first several weeks, and then a large fade. Maybe you will be the outlier! Just know it takes +30 days and $100 cross threshold to get paid by them.
Wow, great information. I appreciate the reminder that Google is unreliable and it’s important to diversify your revenue streams. Actually, there’s a lot of this conversation on the forums as well.
Thanks… always good to know what is out there and who might come knocking. And now I’m inspired… begging it will be for me!
I’ve been holding off to see what everyone else thought. I guess if you don’t start off on the right foot you’ll never get into the race and they certainly don’t seem to have a chance right now. Shame really as would love some adsense alternatives.
Forest, I recall you killing it with your Adsense block. There’s not need to change or fix what’s not broken.
I can’t believe they were using your site for marketing purposes without your permission, even after you specifically stated you couldn’t endorse their product yet. That’s a little shady in itself. But then if they’re going to use you for marketing purposes, you think they would at least want to pay you the difference that you requested in order to keep you as a customer, and then just to write it off as a sponsorship fee of sorts.
Very interesting point you made about employees being careful when introducing your boss to customer service situations, especially if the boss is not customer-service oriented.
Yeah, perplexing, isn’t it? I was shocked and very worried that they were using Financial Samurai in their marketing pitch after just one week when I could not verify the veracity of their product.
Oh well.
I’ve tried it on YIAC and took it down within days. It just didn’t work for me. I put it up on My Tenant from Hell and zip, zilch, nada. In contrast I’m earning money (not gettin rich though) from the big G.
I wanted to give them a fair shake, but I don’t think that it will work with some of our sites. I might continue to give it a go on the niche sites though. Nothing to lose.
I was curious about them as well but thought I would sit back a while and see what the overall opinion was. Don’t think I’m going to give it a try now. Definitely would like to find an adsense alternative though…
Sounds like the SVP really screwed it up! Thanks for the honest feedback. It would be interesting to see a wave of reviews now. It’s so easy to do poorly once the bad reviews start. Maybe the SVP doesn’t really care at all and is planning on switching obs. Otherwise, he should have helped you and at least honored their initial statement to get you to sign up.
Sure, no prob. I’ll ping the team again before year end to see if they have any good solutions. It’ll be interesting to hear what they say!
I have been contacted by them a few times. This post is enlightening. It’s disappointing that you aren’t making at least on par with what you were initially promised.
Hi Folks,
Media.net contacted me saying they took my review to heart and have implemented “multiple proprietary changes” to their advertisement platform which has yielded better results for their clients.
I’m skeptical, but i guess it doesnt hurt giving it a try for another 30 days on FS and report back. All I want is alternative great ad platforms for the good of all publishers and clients that are simple to use.
Sam
I really appreciate the information about Media.net. I was contacted by them recently. Believe me, I’m open to anything new out there, especially better alternatives to Adsense, but I sense they’re probably not worth my time.
Thanks for the detailed analysis. I also did try the media.net ads and after 20k impression on 2 of my sites i had earned $1.19 . I think its not worth or they need to improve.
With adsense I was making U$180 daily, and obviously without reason my account was banned. Then I placed media.net ads in my sites and I started making $100 – $115 daily but with the recent G panda updates now I’m making $50. Better than nothing.
Whats your website?
Thanks for the article. I have just heard from them. No way am I going to even try them.
Hey Sam!
I forgot about that post but the past 2 comments remind me you wrote about Media Net. Can you tell me why you are still using them on Financial Samurai? Did the results improved?
Thanks for the heads up. I received an email today about joining the network but if the payouts are minimal & it creates a site slowdown than it’s not worth it in the short + long term.
Hello everyone,
I also use Media.Net on my site. At first I was very pleased with the results, but from month to month the earnings drops. At the same time the number of visits to the site is even increasing (95% organic US visitors). We’ll see in future if this continues I’m going to another ad network.
Thank you so much for the informative comments. Media.net approached me, also, and a quick search of “reviews of Media.net” led me here. I’ll definitely not be using them. I’ve been through many ad companies that act like Media.net. Very grateful for reviews.
Wow no wonder people hire Crystal for this stuff!
I was curious about Media.net and got my main site approved this morning but now I am not sure if it would be worth it. Thanks for your review!
We just recently removed them from our website. It was paying us well for the clicks but whenever it came time for payout they never paid us without any explanation or response to our inquiry to this matter.
I’m surprised they wouldn’t pay. Do they just ignore you when you email and ask?
A rep from Media.net has commented here. Try him.
Chris, our minimum payout is $100. You will be paid 30 days after the end of the month in which you hit the $100 mark.
Financial Sumurai can confirm our regular payments.
Thanks,
Andrew
Sam, Recently got banned from google adsense. Had a great traffic day and the next day google banned my adsense account. I’m currently appealing. I noticed on your site today that you are running medianet. Have you reconsidered using medianet?
Indeed. Please see the bottom of the post.
Hi Barb…My main website was banned with 24 hours notice. This came years after having my own personal manager at Google who encouraged me to do the very thing they ended up banning me for!…”Policy changes” I appealed but it no luck. They are now trying to get me to optimize my other site. In fact their advice led to a decrease in revenue. I don’t trust them. My replacements have Advertising.com and and Casalemedia and affiliate programs. Can’t beat the $2500-$3000 monthly revenue with Adsense though.
Thanks, Appreciate it.
Why does Google keep giving misleading advice and then go out and ban / close account under the blanket “Policy violation”.
I don’t know, but during those few weeks that my site was banned from Adsense, many others were also banned without explanation, or some vague explanation like “your site isn’t conforming to our policies.” Then you’d email back to find out what you did wrong and you’d get a list of possible things that got you axed. So you had to guess which crime you committed. Many of us web site owners were perplexed and voiced our concerns on the Adsense Forum.. This was in July 2010. I don’t know what’s going on with Adsense and their changing policies these days.
I don’t know why websites are working with them where as other advertisers are giving 3 fold rates as compare to them on US, Canada and Australia inventpry. Travora, Admeld are the example.
I also dislike the Google Monopoly, they are becoming too big and it feels that you have no control over their methods. I have for example been making hq gaming videos on youtube and google shows “as seen on site: ” and ofc it is not mine. These videos are difficult enough to make but advertising an competitors site with it, Don’t like that at all. Well .. that is just off topic. Welcoming alternatives to Google, but at the same time don’t want to lose money, either.
Have read many reviews about medianet. This one seems to be honest and exposes the problem of clicks to get credit and low payouts. At least no one has to commit to them and can say goodbye overnight. Unfortunately it seems that some of the alternate ad companies are not worth the time to spend signing up. They are working harder at making a profit but neglecting the people helping them make their paycheks. After having my adsense account suspended I learned many accounts have been getting dumped. Some very well known people and sites have been suspended losing large sums of money.
Hi, It’s been about 3 months now since you posted an update. Have you received any payments from them? Thanks
I have. Thx.
Thanks so much for the quick reply. We really need “real” people’s experience when it comes to applying for Ad networks. More power to you Financial Samurai :)
Does anyone use cpm programs such as technorati?
I use Technorati Media for my sites and I have nothing but good things to say about them. Their customer service is top notch, they pay out on time, and great at optimizing accounts. I highly recommend them.
Hello, I have just started using this on one of my sites. I am currently using it with Adsense, not as an alternative. Do you think it is better to replace Adsense, or run the 2 side by side?
Jon, worth doing split testing. Only you will know. I prefer Media.net due to their customer service, and now tie-up with Bing/Yahoo.
[…] keyword research if your main monetization method is contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Media.net. In this case, you are focusing on shear numbers. Click through rates are usually pretty low for […]
I found your site when searching for review of the Bing/Yahoo network. I cannot find the ads on your site, have your removed them?
i’m on my first week testing this on one of my websites. the RPM is very low, but I’m willing to give it a month to see if it will go high after they get enough data of my visitors. most of my visitors are coming from search engines and from US.
I understand, I have been accepted for my site. But not sure if I should implement it. I am going to see how yours develop and then decided. Will you keep me updated.
with adsense being so hard right now to publishers its a good thing that there are sites that can compete with the adsense giant
How many minimum visitor to get approved an invitation media.net?
I have request an invitation but always disapproved.
They are looking for high quality unique content, not so much of minimum visitor. I started my website 2 months ago and have fairly low traffic, submitted a request for invite and was accepted the very next day. I am currently test performance on my site.
I started using Media.net a couple weeks ago. The RPM is horrible, but like you said, they have great customer service. So, I’m giving them a month.
I am just completely puzzled by it. My RPM is $0.00 day after day after day – I earn nothing regardless of my number of visitors. I queried this and was advised to put the ad box at the very top of my website above the fold, and above all of MY content. It’s already the top most ad box on my site – and all the others do OK. It’s like they aren’t selling advertising on my site – they are giving it away. 2 weeks in and nothing to show for it. I agreed to give it 4 weeks – but not sure I should continue wasting my time.
Hi Deby, if it’s not working for you then definitely move on an try something else. It’s not a waste of time to try. It’s a waste of time to continue doing something that’s not working. Good luck!
Hello, May I know the payment terms for Yahoo Bing Contextual Program (powered by Media.net)? Is it the same as Media.net of minimum $100 and NET30?
We have tried with one of our site, the RPM is very low, for the first week, we got only with .33 rpm giving us 3 dollars in one day very low compared to Adsense which gives us 1.5RPM. We just trying this for one month in one of our site, hopefully it will work.
Ok, sorry for this but my experience with Media.net was bad. They invited me to join before they partner with Yahoo. I decided to test it and run some tests. After testing this for a couple of weeks, the RPM was pretty bad compared with Google Adsense (the max RPM I got was $0.18 but in average $0.09, when with Google Adsense I get normally RPM $1.6). So, the end of story is this. More than 1 year later (in the middle I didn’t use their ads) when I wanted to terminate the account and get the misery $9.59 earned in my account (to buy a coffee), they told me that the min. threshold is $100 and that I can’t withdraw until reaching that limit. Ok, I understood that except that I want to terminate my account. You should check this if you want to improve your online reputation, if I want to terminate my account it is not fair to force me to continue. Moreover, if I want to terminate my account, who will keep that earned money? Are you going to return it to advertisers at least? Bad, bad, bad.
I’ve had a bad experience with media.net, and like you, also an earning below the threshold. But IMO if the experience and CPM was bad, then good riddance. You shouldn’t worry about a payment below $10. I’ve heard of horror stories where Google would refuse to pay a publisher hundreds or even thousands because they feel that the publisher isn’t compliant with their policy.
I’m testing Media.net ads on my blogs since last one month. I’m very much disappointed with its performance. RPM is very low, just $0.15. I’ll not recommend this to anyone.
I have started using Media.net and i am very much happy with there customer service and RPM, but one thing they should do is to add Western Union as Payment Option, this will give great boost for Publisher to add there advertising network, Average RPM is arround $2 which is more than Adsense, I think this company will be much more popular in coming Years, They accept sites that have traffic mostly from US, UK and Canada.
I’ve been working with them through their US office and I personally found them not as easy to work with. I’ve had issues of not being able to HTML validate our web pages once I put their tags/code on the pages. Once I modified the code so the pages could validate, I get the following from them:
“So I spoke with our developers, and they were very insistent about not modifying the code on the tag. This can cause problems tracking impressions and ad clicks which could cause you to lose out on revenue. I also wanted to stress again that we handle all of the validation on our end, and these tags work fine for our entire publisher base.”
They have issues with ID being the same for all adds and attributes that can not be validated in its present form. Issues that you thing would be an easy fix on their end. Also their displaying ads seem to be the same no matter what the subject matter is on the page. They have a long ways to go to overcome the issues at hand including support ethics. I find them so far to be a little on the unprofessional side to work with. They haven’t won me over!
I have just started using media.net and I think I’m earning faster in it than in adsense but not so sure if that will translate to an actual payout. :D We shall see in the months to come :) thanks for the info.
No problem. Good luck!
i am using media.net but in the beginning the revenue was good but now a days i am getting less. I mailed to media.net but no response.would you telling where to contaact for that
We also noticed this last month that our earnings have really climbed up at the SAME TIME that the impressions they show in their stats are 60% lower. It’s like they are still fine tuning their data, and perhaps finding a way to ignore nonsense page loads like image search etc. Whatever they’re doing, we’re REALLY happy with the improvement they seem to be making, and we REALLY love having a rep we can email.
Seems like Adsense is way better than Media, their promised $2 / RPM is only the first day join, in the second and forth the RPM is only $0.0x. But I believe they’ll improve!
I have read a lot of negative reviews about Media.net – banning publisher’s account on reaching minimum payment, RPM that diminishes over time. Even publishers with over 75% search engine traffic from the USA and Canada are getting banned for no reason.
This company has over 400 employees who review and approve sites on a daily basis. So why should you ban a site that you approved in the first place?
Publisher support is really great and friendly but I don’t like Media.net’s lack of transparency.
One more thing,dealing with Ad networks is a headache because you have a middleman who can cheat you,delay your payment or just be a pain in the neck.If you have a high trafficked blog,you should try approaching advertisers to advertise directly on your website.Most of these PPC advertisers are paying too much on Ad networks and they will gladly advertise on your site if you have relevant content and good traffic
I too just started Media.net but only for experiment. I hope so that in future it will compete with Google ads.
what’s the minimum payment threshold of media.net
The only big competition to Google Adsense. I think, Microsoft and Yahoo can do this effectively.
I have started using media.net on my blog. Will share my experience soon :-)
I’m using it. it worked great for US/CA/Au/UK traffic. But for asian traffic, it yeilds very less. Seems they’ve no advertiser from Asia.
Do not use Media.net if you have huge traffic.They will pay you for 3 or 4 months,then ban your account.It’s for low traffic sites that earn peanuts.My traffic is over 80% USA/Canada from search engines but they closed my account giving a stupid,vague and unverifiable reason: “your site has been consistently receiving poor quality traffic”.Wait a minute,how does 99% search engine traffic from Bing/Google become poor quality? The morons at media.net should answer this.It’s not my fault if a damn advertiser can’t create a converting Ad !!!!
They were good in the first week, than the revenue and RPM dropped a huge way, providing $0.0 daily at times. They are not able to provide better ads and performance and since they started optimisation, the CPM wend down and they also lack to communicate. With $100 as required minimum and reading all that above, I am afraid, they pay only a very few publishers. Most of them give up before reaching the required revenue. I am afraid this is their intention and I am disappointed the Yahoo and Microsoft are giving their names was such unreliable service.
Yes. It is the true fact about Media.net ads. They have enough inventory on US, UK regions only. That also with double-click revenue model to publishers. Yet, Yahoo and Microsoft is smart enough to run this system under another name called “Media.net”.
Hey Sam, I followed your recommendation to use Media.net as an alternative to Google Adsense and till present I find it great. Thx for your advice!
I wish I saw this before I wasted a month on media.net
My RPM is .006 cents, not the .07 cents touted on the media.net stats.
http://fugger.ipage.com/medianet.png
I watch my stats, I served the ad 1.5 million times, they claimed 70k impressions @ .006 RPM is $4.20
Sure I got the $2 RPM the first day for 69 clicks, one of my highest paying days.
In reality I was making .000003 cents per RPM.
I started out happy to be able to talk with a real person. Rohan was working with my site and assured me they were monitoring and tweaking. What I noticed over the four agonizing months I kept the ads on my site was just how radically my earnings would flux from day to day. It truly appeared as if media.net may just be using small sites like mine for SEO research, so as not to bother their big money sites with fluxes like what I saw. What infuriated me most of all about media.net was that when I got up to $89 and change, just $11 from what would have been only the second check I got from them, my earnings just went to zero. Media.net refuses to pay me the $89 they owe me and want me to keep their non-paying ads on my site. Madder than a wet hen. That would just about describe where I’ve ended up with this very frustrating experience. Hope others fare better.
I have finally, after two more months, reached the $100 payout. I will update here if I don’t get it. I like the media.net ads and I like that they will tweak them to your website but there is too much vagueness about traffic and earnings, the fluxuation day to day is not logical and I just feel something is going on behind the scenes. I stand by my earlier theory that they may be using small niche sites like mine for market research, constantly playing with the ads. It’s the only way to explain the drastic flux in my mind because it doesn’t happen as drastically with adsense, day to day. I’m very disappointed that this isn’t a viable monetization tool but, at least in my experience, it is not.
In which Time Zone are their Reports?
Don’t understand the comments on people making enough with Media.net to finally see a payout, and then losing their accounts. Perhaps the traffic is from countries other than the UK, USA, and Canada. Our sites are all USA, Canada based and in the loans niche. Daily income is approaching $100 a day now, while customer service is still excellent. We discuss ad placement, traffic, etc. etc.
Nope. Just had mine suspended and balance frozen. Media.net approached me to include their banners on my two original content websites. Both are over 90% usa traffic and the rest is mostly Canada/GBR. After 3 months, they suspended my account, locked me out and don’t answer emails for no apparent reason. I run various other networks including adsense and have never had a single violation of any type, let alone a suspension. Pretty sure that this is a scam to keep one month of publisher revenue. Perhaps that’s the only way they are profitable? Their RPM was just average on one site, I had previously dropped them from my second site due to dismal RPM and a 15% discrepancy in missing impressions that I’ve never observed with other networks. I’m only out $100 since I only had one banner running on one site as a test. If you have multiple sites and placements, beware of this scam. And as with all less reputable networks, run a small test first until you see at least one payout before you increase placements or add sites.
@TZ you will never understand until the day they ban your account.Of course the customer service is excellent,they give you a dedicated manager but that doesn’t mean anything and it doesn’t guarantee you anything.My traffic was 100% search engine with over 80% from USA.I started out making $100 a day with one website,then it increased to $200-$250 a day when my traffic increased.They paid me $8,000 that I made in my last month before banning my account.
@DG – Did you actively check with your rep on you advertiser conversions? We check all the time. Here is the quote from our rep’s last email.
“No changes need to be done at your end. We’ll be making the changes from here. And you needn’t worry about the advertisers. We’ve had such a long and successful partnership with you thanks to your high quality content and traffic.”
@TZ my website was very focused and getting relevant traffic from the search engines. When I was banned, I tried Ads from Adstract and Propeller. My conversion rate was consistently between 8 and 12%.A thousand clicks would get me approximately 100 conversions, so there is no doubt that my traffic was converting. The representatives from Adstract and Propeller even emailed me to appreciate my high quality traffic and conversions. Every time I tried to remove their Ads, they would ask me to put them back. The Adstract rep was exceptional, she would call me several times in a week to make sure I was happy with the CPM.
How does Adstract pay compared to Adsense and Media.net? Just in case I get banned from Media.net some day.
Adstract pays for conversions. They are useless if you can’t make conversions. Most of their Ads are downloads and installs which pay between $0.40 and $1.20 per download. I was earning around $60 a day.Media.net is way better at $200 per day. If I had Adsense I was going to make $400 a day.
What I don’t like about Adstract is that they don’t pay on time. You have to log into your account and approve an invoice. They are a small company which is desperately looking for publishers.
my website bandrahouse.com used to make 40$ a day with adsense and then it got banned saying invalid clicks ,i dont know which visitor clicked so many times on my adss that it got banned but ..i am tensed that will it happen with my media.net account if someone clicks..from a cybercafe or from anywhere else..and those clicks get counted as invalid clicks..?..and my website appears in search engines only when someone types in the domain …unlike yours which comes up just by typing the relating content..can you guide me with that..plz..
crap… I’m gonna be extremely upset if I have to take down all these Media.net ads. I was getting a certain number of impressions daily which was calculating to a few cents per day (not much but hey I’m a new blogger) now all of a sudden I’m getting zero cents even though my impressions are increasing.. WTF???! If this doesn’t work I’m totally anti contextual blog ads.
You should ping them and ask what’s up!
Will definitely do that. So this didn’t happen with you after you first started? I also read somewhere that you just have to wait for them to update it manually or something?
I am extremely happy with Media.net. After getting dropped by Google Ads without warning, reason, or response, I looked for an alternative. My earnings from Media.net is more than DOUBLE what I earned with Google Ads. My RPM is $1.30.