Everyone in the blogging space has heard about Mediavine’s entry level program by now.
What’s less clear is whether running Journey ads on your site is worth it compared to other ad networks like Adsense.
I’m going to cut straight to the chase:
If your content is text-based (e.g. articles, guides) then you absolutely should join Journey today and enjoy the high RPMs it affords to such content.
If you have a tool-based website or any site where the homepage is the primary traffic driver, you may want to consider other options that are better optimized for this kind of traffic distribution.
However, it’s still possible to make Journey work for a tool site if you’re willing to do some restructuring.
We’ll explain more about the ‘conflict’ between Mediavine ads and homepage traffic and how to resolve it.
No in-content ads on the homepage
Mediavine is geared towards long-form blog content because it provides more opportunities to display different kinds of ad units, one of which is called the in-content ad.
This ad unit appears in-between paragraphs and they keep showing up as long as the user keeps scrolling, making it quite lucrative if you have lots of paragraphs.
But this ad unit doesn’t appear on the homepage, even if you have a static homepage with lots of text!
Fewer ads = fewer ad impressions = less money
This is really important because I know that many tool websites receive most of their traffic on the homepage as this is where the tool is located.
And it’s not just the homepage that sees less ad units. All pages (e.g. the page template in WordPress) are not fully optimized for in-content ads.
This makes sense since you don’t really want to monetize the contact page, privacy page etc.
Indeed, there are some fundamental differences between pages and posts when it comes to WordPress.
So, if your website has multiple tools across different pages, your RPM on each page will be low due to the lack of in-content ads.
In the hypothetical example above, the tax calculator generates the majority of traffic, but it makes less money than blog posts with much less traffic.
It’s because the calculator is on the homepage and doesn’t benefit from any in-content ads, which causes ad impressions per pageview to stay low.
Achieving higher ad impressions is super important for your earnings potential because it acts as a multiplier of your CPM.
This can be fixed by relocating the tool.
Use the post format in WordPress
In order to maximize your ad revenue with Journey ads, you should move your tool(s) to a post template instead of a page template.
Then add lots of text and any images if necessary—make sure the information is meaningful, such as a description of how the tool works.
Also consider pushing your tool towards the bottom of the post so that the user has to scroll to access it.
This way, Mediavine can bless your content with plenty of in-content ads, elevating your RPM as a result.
Once you’ve made these adjustments, it’s time to apply for Journey!
Journey traffic requirements
When the program launched, it was said that a minimum traffic of 10,000 monthly sessions was required in order to be accepted.
But this requirement seems to have loosened in recent months—perhaps Mediavine didn’t want to be overwhelmed with applications in the early stages of their new product?
As long as you are receiving some traffic on a consistent basis and giving Mediavine a bit of data to work with, I would encourage you to run their Grow plugin for 30 days and see what happens.
Tips for getting accepted into Mediavine
I can’t say for certain whether it helped my site get approved, but I highly recommend purchasing Mediavine’s own WordPress theme called Trellis.
I’m using it right now if you want to see it in action.
Their own team of engineers designed it and it’s optimized for speed, user experience, and most importantly, ad revenue!
Why might this theme improve your chances of being accepted into Journey? Because as part of the approval process, Mediavine checks that your site can handle their ads and integrate with their systems.
By using Trellis, you will totally ace the technical requirements and the onboarding process will be seamless.
The site design will put you in a good position for earning high RPMs, which is also something that makes Mediavine happy, since they take a cut of your revenue.
Summary
Journey by Mediavine is definitely worth it for websites with textual content.
Tool sites and homepage-heavy sites can greatly improve their Journey RPMs by using the post format in WordPress and lengthening the content with texts and images.
And choose your WordPress theme wisely because this also influences the approval process.