Alternative Ad networks - Rejected from most

[voLdie]

Interestingly, I just received a backlink outreach from a competitor who is in the same exact niche as me...

I browse through their site and see the mediavine logo on the ads... which tells me that it is not impossible to get accepted by them.

The differences:

• Their domain age/was born on 1998 which is significantly more than my 2018.
• Their website is not attached to a clinical practice.
• I guess I'll have to give it to them about overall aesthetics of the site.
• Their DR is HIGH @68
• My ahref traffic is higher than his and I've only started publishing content ~4 months ago so I believe I do a better job than him...

Conclusion:
I think I just need to let my site marinade and build up some branding power. Acquire some reputable high powered backlinks along the way. Increase traffic massively.

No reason why I can't get accepted after another 1-2 years. I think I'm just being impatient and want results ASAP.

Side note:
- The healthyads ecpm is pretty bad at the moment but its only been like a day, I'll give it some time...
- Adprime said that they can absolutely make it work but they are pharma heavy. Content which is geared towards consumers rpm = 5-15 but if content is geared towards healthcare professionals then it goes up to 25+ rpm

I also completed setup yesterday on Healthy Ads.

Total shit RPM currently but from my understanding, it can take time for your site to become available to better advertisers.

Their data seems to be lagging behind as well to some degree.

 

[JOoa0ky]

@voLdie yeah... its like not even a whole number lol...

Update:
- Adprime is under review
- Monumetric sent an email last night asking for more info so who knows.

 

[JOoa0ky]

For past 3 days Healthyads ecpm is like .27-.29

They said that they're not exclusive so I just turned adsense back on late last night and let them both run at the same time.

Adsense is actually doing multiples of what Healthyads is doing... I'm not sure if I can leave this experiment running for an entire month.

 

[contract]

One thing they told me is that all the exchanges don't like "blog carnivals" and "listicles" and "round-ups". Are you doing a bunch of any of those? (I'm doing a bunch of listicles but I waited till after I was accepted to start doing it).

Is your traffic mainly from tier 1 countries (USA, UK, EU, CA, AUS, etc.)?

Is your traffic spread across enough of those 1500 articles or is it largely coming from 10 or so?

That's all I can really think of that could be hurting you.

Yup, no 100 "x" articles apparently.

All USA, UK, CA, 95%. Mostly search traffic, nothing out of the ordinary.

I kept pushing back and forcing an answer since I had a previous relationship with them.. Seems like they are against anything that's not a how to or guide, or similar random long-format original content article. And you're right, most traffic going to 25/1500 articles. Waiting on things to rank. Honestly, I think it was partly just my new rep. I've had sites in the past get approved with none of that. People taking their jobs too seriously these days lol. I bet if I can get my traffic level up to my last site, they'll approve without blinking like last time.

Adthrive, same deal.

Monumentric approved..

Got the wife's blog approved on SheCollective, so we're all good. Going with them.

 

[JOoa0ky]

So Adprime sent me a contract to sign... they said they were non-exclusive but I see in the agreement it specifically states:

"Exhibit term: 1 year initial term; 1 year successive renewal terms"

I just want to be absolutely sure... if I give them ad slots X, Y, and Z.

Questions:
1) I would be stuck with serving their ADS in X, Y, and Z for 1 year... correct?
2) A year seems like a long time doesn't it?
3) What are the terms for like Mediavine and Adthrive who are both exclusive?

 

[Ryuzaki]

@JOoa0ky, Mediavine wants exclusivity. Once you sign up, you're locked in for 90 days (because you won't see their true potential before 30 days at least anyways and they don't want you wasting their time since there's no setup fee). After that, you need to give a 30 day notice before you can bail without breaking the contract. I double checked it here, and I'm sure you can find similar info from AdThrive.

A quick note is that if you sell a site and it's going to stay with Mediavine, they don't care about the 30 day notice.

 

[JOoa0ky]

@Ryuzaki thanks for confirming.

So then yeah... Adprime asking for 1 year is a little excessive...

Monumetric says that site and content is not an issue. Its pending advertiser approval at the moment.

HealthyAds is saying that it takes about 30 days to see improvement? ECPM at the moment is less than a whole number. I have adsense running alongside it and google is doing multiples of what HealthyAds is doing >_>

 

[Ryuzaki]

HealthyAds is saying that it takes about 30 days to see improvement?

This is the case with every network. Advertisers have to become aware that your site is now available in the inventory, and they have to refresh their budgets and set up their campaigns again. And then you need to be patient as more and more of these advertisers do this to up the bidding pressure. Then they'll need to start getting more data about impressions and viewability before they start increasing the bidding pressure on each other. Happens with every single network.

Their eCPMs being less than a dollar sounds like crap if that's your total RPM for the entire site and all ad slots. But if it's for a single ad slot then that's may be reasonable, considering you'll have a ton of ad slots, and hopefully they'll refresh.

If they suck for you, Monumetric will probably do okay. They have a clean execution that loads fast and looks fine. They're missing some tech that could bump up their RPMs but I've only seen any of it employed by Mediavine and some of it is their own invention, too. Monumetric seems like a nice step towards better RPMs (as opposed to people always going to Ezoic, which is pretty garbage).

 

[JOoa0ky]

This is the case with every network. Advertisers have to become aware that your site is now available in the inventory, and they have to refresh their budgets and set up their campaigns again. And then you need to be patient as more and more of these advertisers do this to up the bidding pressure. Then they'll need to start getting more data about impressions and viewability before they start increasing the bidding pressure on each other. Happens with every single network.

Their eCPMs being less than a dollar sounds like crap if that's your total RPM for the entire site and all ad slots. But if it's for a single ad slot then that's may be reasonable, considering you'll have a ton of ad slots, and hopefully they'll refresh.

If they suck for you, Monumetric will probably do okay. They have a clean execution that loads fast and looks fine. They're missing some tech that could bump up their RPMs but I've only seen any of it employed by Mediavine and some of it is their own invention, too. Monumetric seems like a nice step towards better RPMs (as opposed to people always going to Ezoic, which is pretty garbage).

Monumetric gives off a better "feel" than the other potential networks. Just going off of how well their own websites are designed, they seem to be better than the rest.

That's for all of the ad slots... rates are hovering between 0.25 - 0.31 ecpm...
15k impressions a day earning about ~$3/day

 

[voLdie]

@JOoa0ky I am seeing the same.

RPM of 0.27 on Healthy Ads.

I am going to leave it running as I was told to give it a month as well.

I was just approved by Nitropay and their Ad tech appears a lot better and more modern.

Going to run them both I think 50/50 and then after 30 - 60 days switch to the winner.

 

[JOoa0ky]

@voLdie Oh wowzer, keep us updated on the Nitropay. Their website looks 5x better than the HealthyAds and hopefully that is reassuring.

I'll try to see what happens with Monumetric.

Right now, I let HealthyAds put in whatever they wanted but I also have Adsense autoads on at the same time. Currently Adsense is doing like 4-5x better...

For Adprime... I may have to put them on hold since I don't really want to be tied in to a one year contract right at the get go. The uncertainty of not knowing what else is out there would eat me alive.

 

[voLdie]

I am meeting with Nitropay shortly. Small shop and there all super responsive and friendly up to the founder so maybe promising.

I'll keep you all updated on the RPM for my health site.

 

[JOoa0ky]

Update: Approval from Monumetric late last night ~11pm but I already went to bed!
- They said that they DO have other healthcare sites with them.

Just going to move forward with them, not quite sure I have the patience to wait it out and see what happens with HealthyAds. At this point, I'll be thrilled just to see a whole number for RPM.

Also one interesting thing I noticed is that since I've implemented HealthyAds and I have Adsense running concurrently with them... The adsense earnings have nearly doubled. Like what or why?????????

 

[contract]

UGH!

Approved on Monumetric and SheMedia, but Google Disapproved our site for ads due to "low value content".

Talk about bullshit, so frustrating. We have short articles, but some are over 10,000 words. Professional logo, even a trademark, custom theme, etc. Just annoying. 1500 articles.

Is there any hope to get an appeal? They said they would submit for another review, but this is terrible.

Doesn't matter which network above, if you can't get Google to approve. Insane...

 

[Zyzz]

UGH!

Approved on Monumetric and SheMedia, but Google Disapproved our site for ads due to "low value content".

Talk about bullshit, so frustrating. We have short articles, but some are over 10,000 words. Professional logo, even a trademark, custom theme, etc. Just annoying. 1500 articles.

Is there any hope to get an appeal? They said they would submit for another review, but this is terrible.

Doesn't matter which network above, if you can't get Google to approve. Insane...

Resolve the issue before submitting it again.

 

[JOoa0ky]

@contract that's a lot of articles... how much traffic do you get monthly?

Quite curious about the rejection... but when you say rejected by Google do you mean rejected by Adsense?

With that many, I'm sure you have tons of pages ranking in the #1 spot. If they can attain rank 1 status then it must be valuable.

My suspicion, correct me if I'm wrong but maybe you have a lot of pages that DON'T RANK and drive ZERO traffic. If you have significantly more of these zombie pages vs ranking pages... it may be time to prune them. Resubmit sitemap. After google recrawls the entire site then reapply? The zombies could be dragging you down.

This is just my opinion but I personally believe that the strongest ranking factor is how much traffic you get or rather where your pages rank on the SERPs. Pages with zero traffic are non-valuable. If you rank #1, you can't but help but have the lion's share of the traffic.

High DA and High DR are meaningless if there is zero traffic. Moz and Ahrefs may think you're valuable... but Google's vote of most valuable page is publicly shown in the #1 spot on the SERP, which equates to traffic.

 

[Zyzz]

@contract that's a lot of articles... how much traffic do you get monthly?

Quite curious about the rejection... but when you say rejected by Google do you mean rejected by Adsense?

With that many, I'm sure you have tons of pages ranking in the #1 spot. If they can attain rank 1 status then it must be valuable.

My suspicion, correct me if I'm wrong but maybe you have a lot of pages that DON'T RANK and drive ZERO traffic. If you have significantly more of these zombie pages vs ranking pages... it may be time to prune them. Resubmit sitemap. After google recrawls the entire site then reapply? The zombies could be dragging you down.

This is just my opinion but I personally believe that the strongest ranking factor is how much traffic you get or rather where your pages rank on the SERPs. Pages with zero traffic are non-valuable. If you rank #1, you can't but help but have the lion's share of the traffic.

High DA and High DR are meaningless if there is zero traffic. Moz and Ahrefs may think you're valuable... but Google's vote of most valuable page is publicly shown in the #1 spot on the SERP, which equates to traffic.

He meant Google ad manager

 

[JOoa0ky]

Still onboarding for Monumetric... it's been a week already. They're pretty slow with the Ads installation, although I have been seeing the desktop ones active first. Past 2 days started seeing mobile.

Hopefully almost done. Super eager to find out what the RPM for that is. Just need it to be somewhat decent so that I can stop worrying about it and shift full gear into writing.

Yes, I am still writing all of the content myself and at times it feels like I make no progress because I refresh Ahrefs like 50x a day... Although If I zoom out and compare over a longer time horizon, it does seem like I do make progress.

This is the new stats as of today!

Previous pageview was 253,152 at the beginning of the thread @7-23-22.

My theory is that there isn't a single content writer out there that can out write me in my own niche.

I will take down Healthline given enough time.

 

[Cash Builder]

at times it feels like I make no progress because I refresh Ahrefs like 50x a day... Although If I zoom out and compare over a longer time horizon, it does seem like I do make progress.

You should really stop doing that. I check my stats once per day and even that’s too much.

After 6 or 7 days of traffic increases it puts me on a downer if there’s even a slight decline the next day.

If I checked everything once per week I’d be a whole lot happier, and that’s enough to catch anything major that’s happened.

 

[JOoa0ky]

You should really stop doing that. I check my stats once per day and even that’s too much.

After 6 or 7 days of traffic increases it puts me on a downer if there’s even a slight decline the next day.

If I checked everything once per week I’d be a whole lot happier, and that’s enough to catch anything major that’s happened.

I wholeheartedly agree but like an adrenaline junkie, I can't stop myself.

Also as I've been browsing and exploring around... I do see that handful of sites in my niche all have the Mediavine Ad logo.

That tells me that it is probably possible to join them.

I think it may have been that my traffic was pretty new? I mean domain has been in existence since 04/2018 but when I was applying, I've only been publishing content for like 3 months. Perhaps they were hesitant due to newness.

I think I'll try reapplying around December and see what happens.

---

Got an outreach email for links from cleveland clinic (: and I ignored them haha.

Also a buyout offer from a PE firm, which was surprising.


Game plan:
BTW guys, I've a 5.5 year lease left on my office so that's my timeline for making this all workout by then. Going to shut down the brick and mortar and either focus solely on website or I sell both (office + website) together.

 

[JOoa0ky]

Update: I actually just reapplied to Mediavine in the morning at like 6am this past monday.

Last time, I got a rejection within 48 hours. It's been 5 whole days and I haven't heard from them.

I assume I've at least made it a bit further than last time? I mean I literally like doubled my traffic and then revamped the entire website design...

 

[JOoa0ky]

Alright, just got the rejection again from Mediavine but at least they gave a reason this time.

After a thorough review of your site's traffic and content, we have decided that will be unable to work together at this time.

The advertisers that we work with require our publisher's content to be "brand safe."

In order to ensure that their product or service is being served next brand safe content, they use complex algorithms that comb pages for certain keywords and images, and if those image types exist they will refuse to place ads on that site.

Images including flesh and blood can end up be among those flagged, even if they are intended for medical or educational purposes.

We understand the purpose of these kinds of photos for a site like this, however Mediavine has always had a "publisher first" philosophy and we would never take on a site or ask you to sign a contract when we know going in that we just will not be able to perform well for you.

HMMM...
Delete all bloody photos? I must say there are a lot of them... guess I'm scaring away advertisers cause they think its a site for murder.

Suggestions? Curious as to whether traffic will nose dive or not. Delete and see what happens to traffic?

Brand safe and politically correct huh..

 

[DarkRed]

I am meeting with Nitropay shortly. Small shop and there all super responsive and friendly up to the founder so maybe promising.

I'll keep you all updated on the RPM for my health site.

Any update on Nitropay?

 

[voLdie]

Any update on Nitropay?

Granted I only tried them out for 3 weeks but the RPM was half that of Adsense, lol.

I would skip it.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

Delete all bloody photos? I must say there are a lot of them... guess I'm scaring away advertisers cause they think its a site for murder.

Suggestions? Curious as to whether traffic will nose dive or not. Delete and see what happens to traffic?

Brand safe and politically correct huh..

Try having two photos. One photo is what is shown on the site and another is what is shown if they click on the photo. The onClick photo can be via hyperlink or JavaScript, whatever those robots can not read, if they are going to scan linked to photos on your site. Then blur out the blood and give a warning.

I watch a lot of murder YouTube series and this is what they all do. They censor the shit out of the text and photos to get monetisation but you understand what the idea is if you're a human being.

I think the JS way to show a photo onClick is with a ModalBox. Good luck Doctor!