Another AdSense Alternative = No Good

Rejected by MediaVine

[Sally Stitts]

After 17 days of waiting, I received my reply from MediaVine -

Hey (name),

Thank you so much for sending in your analytics. We did receive word back from preliminary approvals today, and the majority were unable to approve your site. We are not provided with details; it's just a simple approval or rejection, so we can't provide more insight. I'm sorry about that.

We know that if we have several advertisers refuse to work on a specific domain, we simply will not earn well for you. We would never want to lock you into a contract when we wouldn't earn you the most money possible, so we are unable to work together.

Thanks so much for taking the time to apply,
K. G.
Publisher Support | Mediavine

Another potential AdSense alternative bites the dust.
A bit on the smarmy side, wouldn't you say?
"HEY, You" - nice salutation. Classy.
Translation = "Not good enough, jerkface, take a hike." "You're just fine, but no, you are not."
Thanks.
I wonder just how much my 16-year old site was judged by the recent decimation of my backlinks and traffic by Google. Maybe a lot?
Back to slamming my head against the brick wall that is the big G. My headache is getting worse.
.

[universenet]

They can not work with anybody because they do not have enough advertisers .. correctñy.. they do not have any serious advertiser
so how working with publishers ?
So they are like a spammy

[azlinda]

@Sally, I received the same reply from MediaVine two weeks ago for my 20-year old site.

[azlinda]

I just checked a website in the same category as mine that uses MediaVine. The ads they are showing are no better than the ads that Google puts on my page. In fact, they're the same ads. In some places, only the MediaVine logo showed at the bottom of where the ad should have been. I'm thinking they have a very low inventory. We're probably better off not putting all our eggs in a MediaVine basket anyway.

[Sally Stitts]

So, something that gave us a glimmer of hope, is ... BOGUS?
HEY! azlinda - tee-hee-hee. Many thanks for the feedback.
One thing we learn here for certain - Misery does like a bit of company, in so far as receiving confirmation
that maybe, just maybe, we are just one of many, and have not been singled out for unique, ugly stupidity, or something.
"It's not us, it's THEM!" I feel better now.

Oh, Yeah. Not to mention the all-or-nothing requirement. Excellent point. I was concerned about that.
Looks like I won't have to worry, cause I sure ain't gunna do it now. I'm not THAT desperate.
.

[azlinda]

I'm glad you feel better now, Sally. And you are SO right. Misery does love company. I can honestly say that I will never have much good to say about Media Vine. They left a very bad taste in my mouth for sure.

I don't recall exactly how long they took to respond to my application, but I remember it was longer than the 14 days they mentioned that it might take.

Another thing. Someone posted here that they are making 3 or 4 times with Media Vine than what they were making with Google. I'm having a difficult time believing that. After all, most of the ads they use are Google ads!

I've crossed MediaVine off my list also. This competitor that I looked at has a much lower Alexa US ranking (meaning her number is a lot higher than mine) than I do, so I'm sure it wasn't because of my traffic.

[Sally Stitts]

@azlinda
Ditto to everything you just said.
.

[universenet]

do you remind buy and sell?
do you remind yahoo publisher?
Chitika?

They dissapered because one big player.on ads was better all time ... will not say a name

[azlinda]

@universenet, yes, I remember both of them.I don't think Chitika gave much warning about closing down. They were here one day and gone the next without any fanfare.

[matbennett]

I presume that "preliminary approvals" is they touting the domain to the SSPs that they work with. I know that they position themselves a lot around the exclusive campaigns but, like everyone, they are reliant on the big SSPs to provide fill. Seems odd though that any site "so bad" to get rejected by most of their demand partners would even make it through internal QA and be put forward. My company is in a similar space to Mediavine. At the end of the day it is each SSPs decision on whether to run with a particular domain. If (for example) Rubicon says no then there is little that can be done about that. However we'd usually only expect to see everyone say no if there were serious traffic quality issues or someone had put forward a domain with questionable content. (both of which I am assuming are NOT the case above).

I wonder whether you domain has ended up on one of the traffic quality blacklists (IAS/Forensiq/whiteops etc)

We are also seeing some SSPs being a bit pickier about working with lower traffic domains (sub 500k pageviews/month) and only counting pageviews from their target geos. Again though, that would normally be known before putting forward a domain.

[Dimitri]

I don't think Chitika gave much warning about closing down

Several years ago, when they told me that the European Union was part of the Third World, I understood the end was nigh...

[trebuchet]

Someone posted here that they are making 3 or 4 times with Media Vine than what they were making with Google. I'm having a difficult time believing that.

I've moved to Adthrive, which is a similar company to Mediavine only with higher thresholds, and I can assure you it's true. In the first week I moved to Adthrive I made more than in my previous month with Adsense. Both companies do show a lot of Adsense backfill, admittedly. It's their premium campaigns that are the real earners.

I'm sorry you didn't get approved but both companies are notoriously picky about content and traffic. I guess that's why their RPMs are what they are.

[Dimitri]

Both companies do show a lot of Adsense backfill, admittedly. It's their premium campaigns that are the real earners.

Are you sure the backfills are from Adsense? At media.net, years ago, they (media.net) told me they could serve premium "Google" ads "too", and to activate this, they sent me to a page a Google to apply, then, after a few days, I started to see "Google Ads" in media.net slots, it the same look and feel as Adsense ads, but I think it's something again different.

[matbennett]

It's Ad Exchange not AdSense. That includes AdWords demand, hence the familiar look. Some people like to refer to this as "premium google ads" or "adsense premium" which isn't true but does help explain it simply.

[Dimitri]

"premium" always sounds good :)

[matbennett]

"premium" always sounds good :)

Especially when there is a prevailing myth about "Premium AdSense" / "AdSense Premium Publishers". Quite a few of our competitors work quite hard to perpetuate that, but I think it is misleading.

[trebuchet]

Yeah, poor terminology on my part. It's AdExchange rather than Adsense. Though I'm quite sure Adsense ads are used to plug holes.

At the end of the day, these ad networks are nothing more than gated communities where the client pays more to access better quality traffic (US, marketable and engaged with the content) than on the GDN (Asians, bots and grab-and-run readers). That's all it amounts to.

[Evan Salamanca]

If your traffic is too low, then that’s doubtlessly the reason. If you have a few posts hit it big or your traffic grows again, it wouldn’t hurt to try again. I had to apply for some networks over 5 times before they gave up and accepted me (I.e. Media.net)