Direct answer: With 1,000+ monthly sessions from the U.S., Canada, U.K. or Australia, apply to Journey by Mediavine through Mediavine’s single application. Below that, stay on AdSense and build traffic. No public dataset ranks these networks by earnings, so compare them using your own RPM.
What to do
- Under 1,000 Tier 1 sessions a month: stay on AdSense. Spend effort on traffic and on affiliate or sponsorship income, which have no traffic floor.
- 1,000+ Tier 1 sessions: apply to Journey. Mediavine’s latest update (September 29, 2026) says there is one application for every program, and Journey is included in the automatic evaluation. mediavine
- 10,000–25,000 pageviews, 50%+ Tier 1 traffic, pages that can carry six ads: Monumetric’s Propel program is a real option.
- 25,000+ pageviews with strong Tier 1 traffic: add Raptive to the comparison.
- Ezoic: skip it. New sites need 250,000+ monthly users, or one of 20 Incubator spots a month.
The gates
Diagram text: AdSense has no minimum. Journey needs 1,000 Tier 1 sessions in 30 days. Monumetric’s Propel needs 10,000 pageviews. Raptive needs 25,000 pageviews. Mediavine needs $5,000 in annual ad revenue. Ezoic needs 250,000 monthly users.
| Network | Gate | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Journey | 1,000 sessions from tier-1 countries within 30 days | Mediavine blog, updated Sept 29, 2026 |
| Mediavine | $5,000 in annual ad revenue | Mediavine requirements page |
| Raptive | 25,000 pageviews; 50% tier-one traffic below 100,000 pageviews, 40% above | Search Engine Journal’s report of the announcement |
| Monumetric Propel | 10k–80K pageviews, 6 ad slots, $99 fee, 50% US/UK/CA/AU traffic | Monumetric (page undated) |
| Ezoic | 250,000+ monthly users; pre-Feb 19, 2026 publishers grandfathered | Ezoic support page Introducing Journey, A New Mediavine Ad Management Solution for Growing Sites – Mediavine +4 |
Journey process details, as of the latest official updates. The application is unified, with no separate Journey form. Grow is no longer required to apply, and Mediavine reviews sites using third-party analytics tools. Mediavine says it now uses Google Analytics to evaluate traffic. Journey is self-supported: Mediavine says one-on-one support is not offered through Journey. It is also sold to advertisers as a separate inventory pool from Mediavine. I found no data on how that affects Journey’s RPM compared with Mediavine’s. Journey by Mediavine: What’s New +3
Journey’s home page still says running Grow is a requirement, so official pages disagree. The newer Mediavine posts take precedence, but check the live application before you rely on either.
Terms.
- Raptive: its own help center states a 75% revenue share and Net 45 payment, with the first payment 45 days after the end of your first month on its ads. Raptive also claims a 75% average revenue lift for switchers. That is a first-party claim with no stated baseline. raptive
- Journey: earlier Journey pages list a 70% starting share and Net 65 terms. The September 2026 update doesn’t restate either. Verify both before applying. journeymv
- Monumetric: the program details above come from its own pages. First payment arrives 30–60 days after ads go live. Its publisher share and exclusivity terms aren’t published on the pages I found, so check the contract. monumetric
- AdSense account: keep it clean. Mediavine requires good standing with AdSense and Ad Exchange. mediavine
The break-even arithmetic
$5,000 ÷ 12 = $416.67 a month. The RPM needed depends on your pageviews:
| Monthly pageviews | RPM needed |
|---|---|
| 10,000 | $41.67 |
| 20,000 | $20.83 |
| 25,000 | $16.67 |
| 50,000 | $8.33 |
Formula: $416.67 ÷ (pageviews ÷ 1,000). This is a calculation, not a measurement. Compare it with your own RPM by page type and country, not with anyone else’s.
The only public RPM figures I found were from one blogger. They reported $10.27 to $16.99 per 1,000 pageviews across different months on Monumetric. That is one undated site, so I haven’t converted it into earnings, and you shouldn’t treat it as typical. atraditionallife
What I couldn’t verify
- Independent RPM by network, niche, or country. I found none.
- Raptive’s 25,000-pageview and tier-one thresholds from Raptive’s own page. They rest on trade-press reports of the October 2025 announcement.
- Media.net’s thresholds and revenue share. Sources disagree, and I found no primary page.
- Newor Media, Setupad and SHE Media terms, which I left out for that reason.
Test it on your own traffic
- Export 90 days of AdSense RPM by country and top page.
- Check your Tier 1 share in Analytics.
- If your Tier 1 sessions clear 1,000, apply through Mediavine’s unified application.
- After approval, compare the same pages month over month. Use three months before concluding.