What Mediavine Looks For In An Application

Here at Mediavine, we have the pleasure of working with thousands of publishers who have made blogging their full-time business or lucrative side hustle.

On average, we receive around 75 to 100 applications a day, and launch ads on around 75 to 100 sites per week!

Each one of those applications is reviewed and processed by real people. Not a scanner or some sort of automated system. To maintain great quality relationships with our publishers and advertising partners, we have one of the most stringent review processes around.

A common misconception about Mediavine’s application process is that as long as your site meets the 50,000 sessions per month requirement, you’re in!

While having sufficient traffic is very important, there is a lot more we are looking for when reviewing your application.

The Basic Requirements:

• Original Content. This means that your content is not duplicated or crowdsourced from other sources around the web. Your site cannot be made up completely of round-up posts that link to other sites without any input from you.
• We require exclusive access to both your mobile and desktop ad inventory. This means that you cannot serve ads from any other sources that are programmatic in nature. This allows us to negotiate great rates for your ad spaces and ensure premium inventory.
• Placement of affiliate links and banners are perfectly fine and even encouraged to diversify your income. But programmatic advertising, meaning ads that change based on the reader, is not allowed.
• Your site design must accommodate our ad placements. We utilize well-researched placements that produce excellent viewability and performance.
• Your site must have at least 50,000 sessions a month because we have found this to be the ideal time to add display advertising to your site. Your sessions must be verified by Google Analytics. If you are using an alternate analytics tool, unfortunately, we can not accept that.
• You must be in good standing with Google. You cannot have been banned from Adsense or any other Google product.

Once you apply, we aren’t just evaluating one piece of your traffic. We are looking at how it all works together.

So What Are We Looking At?

Who is visiting your site?

Did you know that not all traffic is created equal? Research has shown that traffic from certain regions of the world won’t monetize well with our advertising partners.

Therefore, if too much of your traffic is coming from regions that our partners aren’t interested in, we won’t be able to work together. And it is a bummer. But we know that when we sign on publishers, they are looking to maximize their earnings. And if we find something that will get in the way of that, we can’t in good faith start a working relationship.

What are your readers reading?

We want to see what you write about and what posts and pages are most popular amongst your readers.

We believe content creators should write about what they are passionate about! But some topics are off-limits for advertisers. If your site is about a topic that advertisers don’t want to be associated with their brand, they aren’t going to bid, and we likely won’t earn well for you. Our ad partners are required to uphold a PG standard in their advertisements and creatives, and so we have to expect the same from our publishers.

Additionally, if your site topic in general is not off limits, but you have trending posts that might be, it could prevent you from earning well with us. We may have to decline for that reason.

Site Layout

Because there has been extensive research into what monetizes well, we look for certain things that we know will work for our ad setup.

Does your site have a sidebar?

We can work with sites without a sidebar, but it can impact earnings and cause lower RPMs without one.

Does your site publish long-form content?

Long-form content has been proven to work well for SEO, and it monetizes well with ads. Short content doesn’t typically monetize very well with our setup.

Is the site being updated regularly?

We look for sites that are producing new and quality content on a regular basis.

Because, with advertising, it is not a one-size-fits-all thing, sometimes this means that a site won’t work.

Being accepted into Mediavine is a relationship that we want to be mutually beneficial for all parties involved. We want our publishers to flourish and grow sustainable businesses, and we want to match our partners with quality sites to place advertisements that allow them to meet their business goals and objectives.

We hope this helps you understand what it is that we are looking for as we continue to grow and build relationships with more of you in the blogging community.