If you’ve started out as a content creator and are beginning to attract some traffic to your blog or niche website, congratulations – you’re now ready to explore monetization options. This is the fun part. Being a content creator is a passion for many, but knowing that you can translate that passion into revenue provides a refreshing sense of the financial freedom that is within grasp. For small publishers, especially those just breaking past a few hundred daily pageviews, three major players come up time and again: Google AdSense, Ezoic, and Mediavine.

Each offers programmatic ad monetization solutions. That means that you don’t need to manually select and ad individual ad creatives to your website – which is a huge time saver. Their eligibility criteria, earning potential, and impact on site performance vary dramatically, though. Let’s compare them in plain English, so you can make the smartest move for your site.

Google AdSense: Best for Beginners

Overview

Google AdSense is the easiest way to get started with display advertising. Everyone knows the Google brand, and their advertising platform is widely used, which provides smaller publishers with ready access to a steady base of advertisers. You apply through your Google account, add a snippet of code snippet to your site, and within a few days (depending on approval time), ads will begin showing. Their “Auto Ads” feature even makes it so that you can incorporate both in-line and overlay ads on your website with just the one code snippet.

Pros

• ✅ Low barrier to entry – no minimum traffic requirement
• ✅ Easy to set up
• ✅ Full control over where and how ads are placed (manual or auto-ads)
• ✅ Backed by Google’s robust ad network

Cons

• ❌ Often lower RPMs (revenue per 1000 impressions) compared to some of the more specialized platforms
• ❌ Lack of support – you’re on your own unless you’re a large-scale partner. Google provides access to self-serve help resources, but make it very difficult to reach a real human if you have questions beyond that.
• ❌ Auto-ads can be ugly and disruptive unless carefully managed. In most cases, it’s best not to approve every style of ad unit.

Who it’s for:

Publishers with fewer than 10,000 monthly visitors or those just getting their feet wet with monetization. The ease of use, low barriers to entry, breadth of advertisers and customization options make this option a winner for many.

Want real-world discussion?

If you’re wondering what is needed in order to have a site approved into the AdSense program, check out this thread on r/Blogging where a number of new site owners break down approval experiences and provide recommendations to improve your chances of gaining entry.

Ezoic: The Best Transitional Platform

Overview

Ezoic sits between AdSense and Mediavine in terms of the size of websites that it targets, and the effective RPMs/CPMs that it generally returns to participating publishers. Once known for its AI-driven ad placements, it’s now a full-stack publishing platform offering site speed optimization, video hosting, SEO tools, a lightweight commenting tool, and more.

Ezoic once required 10,000 monthly pageviews, but with the Access Now program, there’s now no traffic minimum. Its larger publishers are eligible for more specialized offerings, though, so the network is still of greatest interest to sites that attract more than 10,000 unique visitors monthly.

Pros

• ✅ Generally higher ad revenue than AdSense, thanks to header bidding
• ✅ AI-based layout testing to improve UX and RPM
• ✅ Built-in CDN and performance tools
• ✅ Access to Ezoic Video, which pays well for embedded video content
• ✅ Decent support for smaller sites, with a pathway to improve their revenues as thewy grow

Cons

• ❌ Setup is more complex than AdSense and generally requires that Ezoic manage your DNS settings
• ❌ Site speed may suffer without careful tuning
• ❌ Ad layout changes can be aggressive if not controlled

Who it’s for:

Ezoic is well suited to both smaller and more established publishers. Although they recently removed their minimum traffic requirement, they’re still tailored primarily to publishers with 5,000+ monthly pageviews who are growing and producing quality content, but aren’t yet eligible for the more selective, premium ad networks.

Community verdict:

The Ezoic community forum is active and transparent. There’s also a recent post on PressingPublish where a long-time user of both platforms provides a detailed comparison of Ezoic vs AdSense earnings. Spoiler: most agree Ezoic beats AdSense in RPM, but some dislike its tech overhead.

Mediavine: Premium Ads for Premium Sites

Overview

Mediavine is considered a gold standard for larger lifestyle, food, travel, and parenting blogs. It offers highly optimized ad placements, top-tier advertisers, and a strong community – but has the strictest entry requirements of the three networks that we’re evaluating today.

Currently (in 2025), Mediavine requires 50,000 sessions per month as its minimum traffic requirement, and further requires websites to be based primarily on original, long-form content. This is generally not a network for SaaS applications, but for content-rich resources.

Pros

• ✅ Industry-leading RPMs, reported to be as high as $15–$40+ depending on niche
• ✅ Exceptional customer support and personalized account management
• ✅ Beautiful ad layouts with better UX
• ✅ Access to Grow.me, a powerful engagement and email collection suite
• ✅ Built-in video monetization and recipe card tools for food bloggers

Cons

• ❌ High entry barrier (50,000 monthly sessions is not an easy bar to reach for newer sites)
• ❌ Long review process – onboarding can take weeks
• ❌ Once you’re in, you must run a minimum number of ads

Who it’s for:

Experienced publishers with steady traffic and high-quality content in niches like food, parenting, home, and travel. Smaller sites won’t be considered, and Mediavine does require direct access to your Google Analytics data to verify your traffic claims, so there’s no way to “fake it till you make it” here.

Inside scoop:

Read this Mediavine onboarding breakdown on r/Blogging for details of one publisher’s early thoughts about the network, with updated peppered through the comments that follow the main post.

💰 Revenue Comparison

Note: RPM varies by niche, geography, and season. Sites in finance, tech, or health and those that target US-based users may earn more across all platforms.

Final Thoughts: Which Should You Choose?

Here’s the TL;DR:

• 🟢 New to publishing? Start with Google AdSense for a frictionless intro.
• 🟡 Got some traffic and want to scale? Apply for Ezoic, but be prepared for some technical setup.
• 🔵 Hitting big numbers with a quality blog? Go for Mediavine, and enjoy premium ad rates and pro-level support.

And remember: you can always switch as your site grows. What matters most is that you’re building something worth monetizing. Keep your focus heavily on building useful, engaging, and authentic content, and the ad revenue will follow.