Getting accepted into either Mediavine or AdThrive is hard for any blog. Both services have upped their entry requirements over the years, making it pretty tough to get accepted.

Mediavine

• Requires a minimum of 50,000 monthly sessions before being considered (applicants with an existing site in Mediavine Pro can onboard sites at 25,000 monthly sessions).
• Mediavine receives 75-100 applications per day and accepts only a very small percentage of these sites.
• Mediavine looks for sites with long-form, richer content, usually exceeding 1000 words for the average post. This is an important metric for consideration.
• Your site must be in good standing with Google AdSense, and if you’ve ever previously been banned, you’ll be shut out from even applying.
• Your site should have at least 40% of its monthly traffic come from tier 1 ad countries.
• No single page should account for more than 10% of your monthly traffic.

Raptive

• Raptive requires a minimum of 100,000 monthly pageviews before being considered (applicants with an existing site on Raptive can onboard a secondary site at 30,000 monthly pageviews).

Update: Raptive has an invite only program called Raptive Rise, which allows sites to be onboarded with 50,000 pageviews.

• Like Mediavine, Raptive is highly competitive, accepting only 18% of applicants.
• Raptive looks for sites with long-form, richer content, usually exceeding 1000 words for the average post.
• Your site must be in good standing with Google AdSense, and if you’ve ever previously been banned, you’ll be shut out from even applying.
• Your site should have at least 50% of its monthly traffic come from tier 1 ad countries.
• No single page should account for more than 10% of your monthly traffic.

Next up, we get into the number one reason most people consider Mediavine and AdThrive over most of the other networks – revenue. Both networks are easily the most lucrative in terms of RPM, and publishers know it.

RPM stands for “revenue per mille,” or how much a publisher earns for every 1,000 impressions their site gets. Put simply, if you make $50 in ad revenue from 2000 impressions, that’s an RPM of $25. While RPM isn’t the only metric by which publishers rank their ad networks of choice, it is one of the most important.

Mediavine vs. Raptive RPMs

• Generally, RPMs are very similar on both networks. Keep in mind that it is hard to compare networks (even if you switch your site between them) due to seasonality, Google algorithm updates, and temporary ad deals which are sourced by employees at both companies.
• Raptive periodically offers publishers switching to its network a temporary guarantee of higher earnings:

• However it’s worth noting that in order to get this RPM guarantee, there are a number of requirements on the type and frequency of ads you run on Raptive. For example, you must use sticky footer ads, sticky sidebar ads, content and recipe ads (if applicable), and Raptive’s sticky video player.

Mediavine vs. Raptive Payment Schedule

• One key difference between the two platforms is the payment schedule. Mediavine pays on a NET 65 basis (meaning you get paid 65 days after the end of each month). Raptive pays publishers on a NET 45 schedule. The sample payment dates are shown in the tables below:

Mediavine vs. Raptive Revenue Share

• Revenue share refers to the percentage of your ad earnings that a publisher earns. Both Mediavine and Raptive have a base revenue share with 75% of ad earnings going to the publisher.
  
• While Raptive refuses to increase revenue share from its base 75% level, Mediavine offers several ways to get a higher revenue sharing.
• First, Mediavine also increased your revenue share if you hit certain ad impression thresholds.

  If your site produces 5 million ad impressions over the previous 30 days, your revenue share increases 5% to 80%, 10 million ad impressions over the previous 30 days, your revenue share increases an additional 2.5% to 82.5%, 15 million ad impressions over the previous 30 days, your revenue share increases another 2.5% to 85%.

• Additionally, Mediavine offers a loyalty bonus, which is an additional portion of revenue share added to each of your Mediavine site’s earnings on a daily basis. You get a 1% bonus, per year, for up to 5 years (or a total of 5%). This bonus is purely based on the total length of time your site has been with Mediavine (not based on site performance). This means that even if your site never hits any of the higher tiers of Mediavine, you can reach a total revenue share of 80% (75% base +5% Loyalty Bonus).

• Between the bonus for ad impressions and the loyalty bonus, publishers can reach a maximum revenue share of 90% with Mediavine.
• Publishers can also receive higher revenue share, as part of the perks included with becoming a Mediavine Pro or Mediavine Premiere publisher.