What is going on with Mediavine and Raptive at the moment?

Hi Reader,

In case you’ve not heard, both Raptive and Mediavine have dramatically changed their requirements recently.

First came the news that you can now join Raptive ‘proper’ with just 25,000 pageviews. (It used to be 100,000 pageviews.)

Read about that here >>> Raptive Drops Traffic Requirement By 75% To 25,000 Views

Then came the news that Mediavine is basically changing everything!

From 15^th January 2026, bloggers will be able to join Mediavine Journey at just 1,000 monthly sessions.

Bloggers will then be able to join Mediavine ‘proper’ when they are earning at least $5,000 per year from ad income.

But that’s not all, Mediavine have also changed all the other levels...

Currently, they have 2 levels above ‘normal Mediavine’: Pro & Premiere

From January, there will be 4 levels above ‘normal Mediavine’, making a total of 6 levels!

BUT, here’s a really important caveat: as far as I can tell, the revenue share under the new system is not as good as under the old system for any level.

For example, if you are on the existing ‘pro’ tier (earning $100,000+ a year from Mediavine), you could be earning a 90% revenue share (85% + 5% for being with Mediavine for over 5 years).

To get a 90% revenue share under the new system you’d have to be earning over $500,000.

So, if you’ve been with Mediavine for a while, it’s almost certainly better to stay on your legacy tier than move to the new system. Thankfully, Mediavine does let you do that!

Here's how the new tiers compare...

Why the changes?

Obviously I don’t know for sure why Raptive and Mediavine are making these changes, but I can make an educated guess that it’s about AI, shrinking pageviews, and money!

These last few years have seen huge negative changes to pageviews and ad revenues for many bloggers, due the rise of AI – particularly AI Overviews and AI ‘slop’ websites, and due to a variety of ‘brutal’ Google updates, particularly the Helpful Content Update.

I can only assume that this will have had a negative effect on the amount of money Mediavine and Raptive make themselves.

Mediavine and Raptive are in direct competition and clearly will want to protect their own profits by getting more websites into their portfolios, so that they can make more money!

And I guess right now, there’s a race to get bloggers in as early as possible. A race that right now Mediavine seems to be ahead in, with its 1,000 session entry requirement for its Journey tier.

It will be interesting to see if Raptive changes again in response this, or sticks with 25,000, aiming to scoop people up before they hit the $5,000 needed for Mediavine ‘Official’.

But I think Mediavine’s move towards an earnings based tier system, rather than a sessions or pageviews based system highlights something else...

The huge strides in AI’s capabilities have made it harder for an ad company to tell if a site’s traffic is ‘real’ or not.

(I’ve heard plenty of stories of people who have used AI to generate huge amounts of generic AI content in a few days… which has initially delivered a huge amount of traffic, before they were rumbled by Google!)

But ad dollars don’t lie! By moving to an earnings based tier system, this should in theory help weed out the AI slop websites.

Who knows if it will work, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

What should you do about it?

Honestly, this is a really hard one to answer right now, as there are so many variables.

For example, if you have a blog that is currently getting 1,000 sessions, it might seem like a no-brainer to join Mediavine Journey…

But it’s worth bearing in mind that, even if you got an RPM of $33.80 RPM (the average RPM across all major ad companies), that would mean you’d be earning a grand total of $33.80 a month.

(And actually, Journey's average RPMs are much lower - just $11.50!)

But it gets worse… because putting ads on your site will slow your site down and have a negative effect on UX, meaning it is likely to take even longer to grow your website to a level where you can join Mediavine ‘Official’ or Raptive.

Personally, if I had a site that had only had 1,000 sessions I would not be putting ads on that site!

I think there are probably two things I can say though…

#1 If you have 25,000 pageviews and you really want to monetize with ads it’s *probably* a good move to join Raptive… I think for most people they will hit 25,000 pageviews, long before they get anywhere near $5,000 in revenue needed to get into Mediavine ‘Official’. (Average ad RPMs are $33.80 so 25,000 pageviews would likely deliver a monthly income of $845.)

#2 If you are on a legacy tier with Mediavine, I’d have a chat with Mediavine to double check if staying on your legacy tier would be better for you (it almost certainly will be) and then just make doubly sure that they know you want to stay on your legacy tier!

I think it’s also important to point out here that ads are not the only way to make money from a website, and they are consistently the WORST way to make money in RPM terms.

If you want to maximize the amount you make from your blog, you’d be much better off selling your own digital products, where the RPMs are much higher. (Digital products deliver an RPM of $283.64 on average.)

That means if you have a site that’s getting 25,000 pageviews, you’d likely get $845 per month from ads but $7,091 from digital products, based on industry averages.

I know which I'd rather have!

Which is best, Raptive or Mediavine?

Again, this is a really hard one to answer.

You’ll get people who move from one to the other and absolutely RAVE about how much their earnings have increased with their new ad company – but you can never see the counterfactual. Maybe if they had stayed with their old ad company their earnings would have gone up even more!

If you look at this thread in the Productive Blogging Community, you’ll see that it’s full of ‘I moved to Raptive and it’s way better’ stories.

But I stumbled upon a thread in someone else’s group a couple of days ago and people in that thread were saying the exact opposite – that their income had plummeted since joining Raptive.

It’s also really important to underline that RPM is not the most important metric – REVENUE is.

You can easily crank up your RPM by slapping a ton of ads on your site, but that will have a hugely negative effect on your user experience, which will in turn lead to fewer pageviews and therefore LESS REVENUE overall.

Conversely you can take measures, as I have, to reduce ad density, which will deliver a much better user experience. Of course that means my RPMs are not as high other bloggers, but because of that improved UX, I get a lot of pageviews, leading to HIGHER REVENUE overall. (And my pageviews have actually grown YoY, at a time when many people’s pageviews are getting lower and lower.)

One thing I hear anecdotally from people who made the switch from Mediavine to Raptive recently is that Raptive slapped a lot more ads on their site. So obviously in the short term their RPMs and revenues went up, but over time both their pageviews and revenue started to dwindle. I also hear anecdotally that some people felt their sites were significantly slower after moving to Raptive.

These are all things to bear in mind when considering whether to stay or switch - in either direction.

What are you doing, Eb?

Finally, in case you are wondering, here’s what I’ll be doing…

Easy Peasy Foodie

I have been with Mediavine for nearly 8 years and I still don’t plan on switching to Raptive any time soon.

I have a 90% revenue share, my RPMs are up 82% YoY, and on a good day I get more than $1,000 a day in ad revenue (and there have been quite a few good days recently 🙃).

Could I get more with Raptive? Maybe, who knows?

Am I willing to risk what I’ve got to see if I can get even more with Raptive? Hard no!

There is always a risk in changing - I might get a higher RPM, but I could also get a lower one. Or it could have a significant negative effect on my pageviews - in which case, even if I got a higher RPM, my overall revenue would be less.

I am very happy with the level of service I get at Mediavine and the income is more than I could’ve imagined in my wildest dreams when I first started out – why would I mess with that?

Of course, I will 100% be staying on my Legacy Pro tier, as I get a much better deal there than if I switched to the new equivalent.

Productive Blogging

I have never put Mediavine ads on PB, despite having been eligible for them for about 5 years.

I earn a far better RPM from digital products than I ever could from ads.

And when digital products are your primary revenue source, adding ads into the mix isn’t generally advisable for a whole host of reasons:

Ads distract visitors from your own products
You could end up advertising a competitors products
Ads can create a confusing user experience (the ad could literally be saying the opposite of what my products teach)
They can slow down your site – leading to fewer visitors and fewer sales
The purpose of ads is to get clicks on those ads, so you are literally sending people away from your website and therefore harming your product sales!

All of which means it makes no sense to slap ads on PB when ad RPMs are on average $33.80 and product RPMs are on average $283.64!

Productive Blogging News

DPSA Challenge 18 is LIVE!

Challenge 18 of the Digital Product Success Academy launched on Monday!

Challenge 18 is called The 40 Day Summit Challenge – it teaches you how to take part in… and more importantly, make money from, online summits.

I teach how to identify the right summits to take part in, how to put together a summit talk that converts, how to ensure your talk is watched by as many summit attendees as possible and I go deep into my Backend Sales Strategy.

If you are already a DPSA member, you can access it right here >>> Challenge 18: The 40 Day Summit Challenge

If you are not yet a DPSA member, you can JOIN HERE to get access to The 40 Day Summit Challenge... as well as all of the previous 17 Challenges!

Black Friday is coming soon!

Wondering if I am doing a Black Friday Sale this year? The answer is YES!

However, this year I've decided to do something a little different…

Keep an eye on your inbox to find out what that is.

I'll be sending all the details very soon!

But in the meantime, deals from other companies are already trickling in...

I've started a thread in the Productive Blogging Community where I'll be sharing all the details as they come in, including the deals, coupon codes, dates etc. so you can see everything in one place!

Head here to see the Black Friday Deals that have already been announced!

SEO & Blogging News

Google Warns Against Relying On SEO Audit Tool Scores Just another reminder from Google to take SEO Audit Tool Scores with a large grain of salt! As this article says, ‘Generic checklists waste time on low-impact fixes while missing critical issues. Tool scores may flag normal site behavior as problems. They assign priority to issues that don’t affect how search engines crawl your content.’

What is the inevitable evolution of LLMs and search? This is a long read, but super interesting. It basically talks about how the current AI bubble can’t last because it’s not sustainable, and what is likely to happen post bubble burst… definitely worth a read!

Lazy link building strategies that work This article shares some non-spammy link building strategies that don't take much effort but result in high quality links.

Over to you…

I’d love to hear your thoughts about the recent changes to Raptive and Mediavine!

Will it change what you do?
Or will you stick with where you are?
Or have you decided not to bother with ads at all?

Hit REPLY and let me know!

Happy blogging!

Eb 😊
---
Eb Gargano
eb@productiveblogging.com
www.productiveblogging.com

P.S. Want to know the best way to monetize a blog? Read this >>> What's the best way to monetize a blog in 2025?

Productive Blogging