Review Information Last Updated on: September 7th, 2016

September 1st Update: We’ve seen much much higher earnings with Media.net in the past few months and have gotten amazing feedback from some of the bigger publishers in our readership as well. We’ve re-reviewed the company and their rating has been increased to five stars!

Introduction to Media.net

Media.net is a leading ad tech company comprising of 800+ employees exclusively focused on developing innovative monetization products for digital publishers. By revenue, Media.net runs the #2 largest contextual ads program globally and work as the trusted advisor to top management across various large publishers.

They have a global footprint of offices spread across New York, Los Angeles, Dubai, Mumbai, Bangalore and Zurich. Some of their publisher clients include Forbes, Hearst, Meredith, Yahoo, MSN, Reuters, Kiplinger, The Street, Ziff Davis, NY Daily News and many more.

Here’s our Media.net review:

• What We Like: Low traffic minimum; personal support; intuitive dashboard with real-time reporting, high payouts
• What We Don’t Like: They’re still relatively new to the scene; often does not monetize as well as AdSense.

Publisher Requirements

• Publisher Terms: http://www.media.net/legal/tos
• Traffic Minimum: None.
• Publisher Language Requirement: Must be primarily English.
• Prohibited Publisher Content: Adult, Tobacco, Alcohol, Ammunition, Hazardous Substances, Illegal Drugs, Gore, Violence, Gambling, Racism, Hate, Racial Intolerance, Prescription Drugs, Counterfeit Products, Stolen Items.

Advertisers & Offers

• Advertising Types: Display.
• Offer Types: CPC.
• Verticals: All.
• Network Size: Unknown.
• Sampling of Publishers: Unknown.

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Tech Implementation

Media.net Tech Implementation Rating: 5 out of 5.

• Creating an Ad Unit: Creating a new ad unit is a simple enough process. Choose an ad size, design layout, and customize colors.

  Then implementing the unit on your site involves simply copying and pasting a few lines of HTML code (Javascript) into your webpage’s source code.

• Display Ad Unit Sizes Available: 336×280, 300×250, 728×90, 600×250, 160×600, 728×20, 600×120, 468×60, 200×200, 250×250, 120×600, 120×300, 300×600, 160×90, 180×150.
• Implementation Technology: HTML, JavaScript.
• Compatible with Google AdSense: Yes, as long as ad units are not styled to look like AdSense units.
• Mobile Ad Units Available: Yes.
• WordPress Plugin Available: No.

Publisher Reporting & Admin Control Panel

Media.net Publisher Reporting & Admin Control Panel Rating: 5 out of 5.

• Control Panel: The publisher admin control panel is easy to navigate, with different pages for reports, ad units, and site management. The main dashboard defaults to displaying a graph of revenues and impressions from the last seven days. Below the graph are revenue estimates for YTD, last month, this month, and last processed day.
• Reporting: Creating reports is a very intuitive process. While the default is to display revenues and impressions from the last seven days, you can select today, yesterday, this week, last week, this month, last 30 days, or last month in the dropdown, or enter a custom date range. In the table below, you can sort by impressions, RPM, or estimated revenue. You are able to segment your reports by site or by individual ad unit.
• Control Panel URL: https://control.media.net/home

Payment

Media.net Payment Rating: 5 out of 5.

• Publisher’s Share of Revenue: Unknown.
• Payment Methods Available: Wire transfer or PayPal.
• Payment Terms: Net-30.
• Minimum Payout Threshold: $100.

Account Help

Media.net Account Help Rating: 5 out of 5.

• Knowledge Base URL: None available.
• Personal Account Manager: Yes.
• Easy to Contact Support: Yes.

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Editor’s Media.net Review

The following review was updated by Karl Kangur on September 7th, 2016.

Media.net is one of the biggest (and best) alternatives to AdSense. This network features primarily contextual ads that work in a slightly different manner than standard display ad units. Though included within traditional sizes (e.g., 728×90 and 300×250), these ads often feature multiple linked keywords. Clicking on a keyword does NOT generate revenue for the publisher, but brings up a second screen displaying relevant ads. Revenue is generated when visitors click on one of these ads. In other words, Media.net ads function in the same way as AdSense link units.

Because Media.net features primarily contextual ads, there are a few items that you’ll need to be aware of. First, it may take a while for the ads to optimize to your site. The ads will analyze the content shown on your site, and display keywords that are deemed to be relevant to the surrounding content (i.e., contextual). As the sample size grows, an algorithm will determine which keywords generate the highest number of clicks and revenue for the particular audience. So if you’re going to test Media.net, you should commit to a fairly large sample size in order to accurately gauge the earnings potential of this network.

Second, Media.net ads will often work best when there are one or at most two ad units per page. If used in multiple positions, there will be considerable overlap among keywords, and users will experience diminishing returns in eRPMs. As such, start with using a single Media.net ad unit, and evaluate the incremental revenue generated on a unit-by-unit basis (i.e., with no other ad units running Media.net ads). You may also want to consider implementing frequency capping of Media.net ad impressions. For example, you may wish to limit impressions of Media.net units to two per user per day, and allow AdSense to kick in after that (this would make for a good experiment to run). In other words, Media.net is generally best used as a complement to AdSense, instead of as a complete replacement. 

One of the biggest advantages (and ways in which this network differentiates itself from Google AdSense) is access to a dedicated account rep. Whereas AdSense is a bit of a “black hole” when it comes to questions or requests for help, Media.net gives publishers access to an actual human being who answers questions and even makes suggestions for opportunities to improve earnings. For anyone who has ever been frustrated by an inability to get questions answered by AdSense, this can be a valuable benefit.

A few other suggestions to consider when experimenting with Media.net:

• If serving Media.net ads through an ad server such as DFP, your impression count may differ materially (10% to 15%) from what they show in their dashboard. Be sure to calculate eRPM as revenue / missed AdSense impressions to get an apples-to-apples comparison to AdSense.
• Unlike AdSense, Media.net performance metrics are not available in real time. In some cases, you’ll have to wait until the afternoon of the following day to see how your ads performed.
• Media.net also offers more advanced advertising solutions, such as sponsored search results (click on a link under “See Also” here to see this in action). If you have a large traffic base, this may be an interesting opportunity to recycle visitors and monetize exiting traffic.

Bottom Line: We’ve had great results with Media.net; certain ad placements have definitely outperformed AdSense, and resulted in a material increase in overall earnings. Given the nature of Media.net’s contextual ads, it’s critical to understand the limitations and optimal settings when evaluating this product.

References

• http://contextualads.yahoo.net/about.php
• http://www.media.net/aboutus

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