Mediavine vs Raptive – Which Ad Network Makes More Money?

Raptive vs Mediavine – Which Earns More?

The single biggest question most bloggers will have when comparing these two ad networks is simply this- does Mediavine or Raptive pay more? As two gold standards in the advertising industry, it often feels like they are vying for the title of highest-paying ad network.

To say this question is asked a lot in blogging groups is an understatement.

While this may be a loaded question and somewhat challenging to 100% pinpoint due to an array of reasons (year-over-year variability in the ad market, RPM guarantees, overall number of ads placed, profit split percentages, loyalty bonuses, etc.), all data collected from my two sites so far suggests the same thing- Raptive likely pays slightly more.

Now, before breaking down this analysis, we should point out three key details. First, I switched in early October at the start of Q4, when ad rates historically increase month-over-month. Second, Raptive gave me a +15% RPM guarantee for my first three months (the caveat was that if I didn't make +15%, they'd pay out the difference- not paying +15% on top of earnings). Finally, I had to agree to Raptive's ad placement settings to receive said guarantee, which felt like perhaps one or two more in-content ads than I had on Mediavine.

All of these can and do influence earnings.

Within the first week on Raptive, my Pittsburgh blog (which I moved from Mediavine's main product) jumped to over $40 RPM. By the second week, it was consistently breaking $50 RPM and holding steady, with one day pushing nearly $60. Overall, my first month on Raptive had an average RPM of about $47. Considering my RPMs on Mediavine for the previous year were around $28, and my RPMs for the previous month were around $43, I could argue that I saw a visible, albeit perhaps slight, jump.

Can I say with absolute certainty that our RPM increase wouldn't have happened in the same period if I stayed on Mediavine? Or that other factors, like ad layout settings, could be at play? No, I can't be certain- Q4 rises are very real most of the time, and it did feel like I have 1-2 more ads in-content than I did before. However, everything I'm seeing does suggest that I am earning slightly more, even when factoring in all the variables- as best as I can isolate them, at least.

Similarly, my wine blog (which I moved from Mediavine Journey to Raptive's main product) jumped to $12 RPM in the first week. By the second week, it was regularly averaging $15 RPM, with some days in the low $20s, and one outlier day at $28. Given that I averaged roughly $9 RPM on Journey before switching, this was a fairly significant jump- even if it was much lower than what I was hoping for when moving up to a premium product.

• I inquired as to why my wine blog had lower RPMs overall despite similar ads-per-session, and the response I was given was that I had a smaller US audience (66% USA vs 95%+ on my local site) and that alcohol content often has fewer advertisers due to being in a sensitive category. I didn't think those details would cause such a significant disparity, but I'm still pleased to see a rise here.

So, jumping from Mediavine to Raptive broke the +15% guarantee, and moving my wine blog from Journey to Raptive had an even higher jump, even if site-specific conditions did not get me to the level I hoped for. All in, I'm making a bit more money, and that's all that really matters to me.

• It is also worth noting that I had been with Mediavine for more than five years, so I was at an 80% profit share, with annual loyalty bonuses factored in (these loyalty bonuses appear to be going away for new Mediavine members as of January 2026). Raptive appears to have a 75% revenue share for all members. So that is perhaps another factor to keep in mind- I'm still ahead despite this.

A Running Log of RPMs By Month

To illustrate my earnings difference, I want to share Discover the Burgh's RPMs on a monthly basis in the years leading up to, and after, my switch.

For the purposes of this evaluation, we should note that the chart above Month 1 corresponds to October 2025, the first month that we switched from Mediavine to Raptive. So Month 2 is November, Month 3 is December, and so on.

A running table from 2023 onward is below:

From October 2023 to October 2024, our Mediavine monthly RPMs ranged from $22 to $44 with an average of $33. From October 2024 to October 2025, when we switched networks, our Mediavine monthly RPMs ranged from $22 to $43 with an average of $35- a year-over-year increase of about 6%.

In the first three months on Raptive, from October to December 2025, our RPMs ranged from $47 to $57 with an average of $54. We will be the first to point out that this covers Q4, which is typically offers the highest RPMs of the year, so seeing large numbers like this is not a surprise. That said, from Q4 2024 (on Mediavine) to Q4 2025 (on Raptive) our RPMs increased an average of 64%!

In Q1, we were bracing for a large drop in RPMs, but were pleasantly surprised that our January 2026 average hit just over $34 RPM and February 2026 average hit $44- figures we normally see in the latter half of the year, not Q1. Even with a notable drop, we were still up 55% year-over-year!

It wasn't until we got into March and April that our RPMs started to decline, with April to July 2026 showing drops of about 5%-9% YoY. For a while, we weren't sure what was going on here as it didn't make sense to see an RPM decline moving into Q2 and Q3- especially because our absolute earnings were seemingly rising.

This is where our analysis gets tricky, because I changed some settings on my site that may have influenced my RPM calculations on the Raptive side of things. So if you want to get really nerdy, let's dissect that more.

So, Why The Change Starting in March?

There are a several possible explanations for this; however, the leading contender is an analytics reporting change and not a change in ad performance/earnings proper.

After talking to Raptive, the most plausible explanation is that this change happened when we switched from WP Rocket to Perfmatters at the end of February, as we switched from delaying analytics to not. When delaying analytics from loading (as we did on WP Rocket prior to March 2026), this often results in some sessions not being recorded properly- particularly those with short view times or others that may or may not have triggered ads.

Fewer sessions recorded likely results in a higher RPM calculation as earnings are distributed out over less logged traffic. (Raptive has an article about this, if you want to read more.)

Coincidentally, we started seeing a +20% to +30% increase in reported traffic compared to the prior year starting around when we switched, as well as a decrease in “monetized sessions” on our Raptive dashboard by a similar proportion- illustrated in the above graph.

Prior to this change, Raptive was showing our percent of monetized sessions hitting 105-125% (with an approximate average of around 110%), whereas after ranged from 75-90% (with an approximate average around 80%). Something clearly was changed here on the reporting side of things, as these same ratios kept popping up, making comparing RPMs from before and after the change somewhat difficult.

The rest of our Raptive and Google Analytics data synced up nicely overall, including ad viewability rates, so this suggests a high probability of a reporting/calculation change stemming from switching plugins is the sole culprit.

The monetized RPM chart within Raptive was perhaps the most interesting, because my daily monetized RPM very rarely dropped below $40 from March to July after the switch. On average, my monetized RPMs were more like $45 to $50 on this chart view, and not the $35 to $38 that I was seeing reported on the main earnings tab. This is pretty much proportional to the change in monetized sessions almost too well once again.

If that logic holds, my calculated RPM change from March 2026 onward (compared to the prior year) would probably then go from -5% to -10% YoY to somewhere between +20% to +40% YoY on any given day if my napkin math is correct. This is a lot closer to what I would have otherwise expected given the earlier uptick I saw in Raptive RPMs before switching to Perfmatters.

To be fair, there could be other issues at play, too, and I want to touch on those briefly as well.

When traffic goes up, ad buyers can decrease, resulting in lower RPMs. There is also a war in Iran that started at the same exact time this change happened too (and I have 96% USA traffic). Or perhaps Raptive is just that much better than Mediavine in Q4 which trailed over into Q1 for me this year. Whether or not these have a large enough impact to matter is hard to say.

But considering I have not seen a change in monetized traffic percentage on two other sites that still use WP Rocket (and are both showing ~110%-120% monetized traffic like my local blog was), I'm going to have to hazard a guess that this discrepancy is primarily due to a reporting/calculation difference. I am still seemingly earning more money on Raptive at the end of the day, after all, and that's all that really matters to me.

So, despite this fun detour into random back-end changes that influenced reporting, how about we circle back to more things I like about Raptive?

Raptive's Content Optimization Tools Are Plus

One of my favorite features about Raptive is its dashboard. The analytics breakdown of articles is what I'd argue is a gold standard for analyzing performance.

But their Content Optimization portal takes it one step further and is a built-in workhorse for keyword research and article optimization. This portal allows for keyword research without having to pay for a 3rd party tool, tracks your top-performing keywords, and even lets you create a “brief” for any article on your site, which analyzes its keyword performance and gets article-specific recommendations in just a few moments.

When creating a brief, you start by selecting an article, typing in a target keyword, and off you go. Within a minute or two, a brief is prepared using their proprietary software, and you can review many recommendations.

The brief itself presents data from the top 10 posts for that keyword, the keyword volume, a breakdown of word count versus suggested word count (if analyzing an existing article), and much more. The Content Grader tab pulls the text from an existing article into the dashboard and gives you a grade of your article and keyword suggestions that others in the Top 10 are using- showing when you use them, and when you do not.

So if you're looking for a quick win, this one is fun to play around with- all included for being a Raptive member. This is perhaps not a reason to switch over outright, but it is very nice to have all the same, and it is one slight mark in favor of Raptive in my opinion. If anything, I don't feel like I need to pay for a mid-tier keyword research tool anymore, which helps save a bit of money as well.

That said, both Raptive and Mediavine's dashboards give you pretty excellent control over your ad inventory settings. Naturally, both networks have an incentive to encourage you to show more ads because more ads equal more revenue. But it is nice to see Raptive go one step further and provide tools to optimize traffic to articles in addition to ad display settings. More traffic also means more money!

The Remaining Differences are Minor

From there, I must be honest that Raptive and Mediavine are more similar than dissimilar, in all the best ways possible. They have almost identical ad types and placement settings (both could account for my manual placement through div tags in the Classic Editor), and the quality of the ads is at the level I expect from top-tier advertising networks.

They're both great.

During the initial setup, as part of my RPM guarantee, I had to agree to Raptive's ad placement terms. While they honored my div tag placements as requested, which I asked about at sign-on, I did notice a few subtle differences- like more ads before my <!–more–> tag at the start of articles, especially on mobile, the scrolling sidebar that replaces ads as you go down (Mediavine had this setting, but I think Raptive's is a bit more prominent), and a slightly different video player setup.

The latter was perhaps the most interesting, as it appeared to import my Mediavine uploaded videos (which were quite old) and triggered autoplay on those. In contrast, on Mediavine, I was using their ad-only Universal Player. Thankfully, I uploaded some recent Reels and replaced those, but that jumped out at me all the same. (I still need to investigate if I can just run video ads without my own being thrown into the mix, and yes, that's on me to do still.)

So, apart from these very minor differences, I would say that Mediavine and Raptive are very, very similar all around. Raptive may pay a bit more, at least in my circumstance, and they have a slightly more robust dashboard. But beyond that, it feels like a lot of the same- just with a little more money in my pocket at the end of the day.

• If you upload Reels/TikToks to a site-based video player, be sure to remove any audio, as copyright licenses typically do not transfer.

The Main Reasons Why I Switched to Raptive

I want to end this one with some commentary on why I switched from Mediavine to Raptive, as that was the second most frequent question I got from blogging colleagues (after the big RPM question addressed at the start of this article).

To be honest, I am a huge fan of Mediavine. I had been with them for 8 1/2 years, was one of the earliest adopters in the travel space, made roughly $450,000 in lifetime ad revenue, and never once had a bad experience with them. For those who read our newsletter regularly, you likely have seen this commentary a lot- so suffice it to say that this decision was not made lightly.

I ultimately switched to Raptive for two reasons beyond hoping for higher RPMs on my local site, which I also have seemingly achieved:

First, and perhaps most importantly, they accepted my wine blog at a lower traffic threshold that allowed me to jump from Mediavine Journey straight to Raptive. My income went up, and more money for wine is never a bad thing.

• Notes: A few weeks after I switched to Raptive, the ad network announced that they would begin accepting all sites at 25k monthly pageviews, which I would have qualified for, and Raptive Rise was being rolled up into the main Raptive program for all users. This is likely one reason my wine site was accepted at its traffic level despite being lower than the previous second-site policy.
• Conversely, a week or so after that, Mediavine announced it would be upgrading blogs on Journey to the main Mediavine product at $5,000 annual revenue, and many bloggers were getting upgraded at lower traffic thresholds. My wine blog was not at $5,000 annual revenue, but had Mediavine offered to upgrade my wine blog to the main product, I admit that I would've likely not switched ad networks.

Admittedly, my switch came with the most unusual timing, and I do wonder what would have transpired had I just waited a couple more weeks.

Second, I was just genuinely curious to see how Raptive performed, and I wanted to be able to publish more comparative articles here at This Week in Blogging– like this one. I had been hearing more and more positive reviews of Raptive in recent years, almost more so than Mediavine in some cases, and figured if not now, when? The +15% guarantee, which overlapped right at the start of Q4, was enough to justify losing my +5% loyalty bonus from Mediavine.

So when I say that I have no negative opinions of Mediavine, I really mean it. They're a great ad network, and I love everyone that I have gotten to know from the company over the years. This one was purely a business move, and that's all it is, truly. I wanted to make more money.

Ultimately, Raptive is a stellar ad network, just like Mediavine. Although I would argue that the biggest benefit is that I seemingly earn a little more money on an RPM basis with Raptive, there are secondary benefits, such as a more robust dashboard, particularly with the integrated keyword research and optimization reports, that are hard to overlook.

Is that enough to justify a switch? Honestly, it's hard to say. Am I glad I moved? Yes. Is it primarily because I got my second site on at a lower traffic threshold? Absolutely, although I still wish I could hit higher RPMs on my wine blog (but, hey, site-specific concerns!). Should you switch? Really, it's up to you.

We can see compelling arguments for moving. We can see other equally reasonable arguments for not messing with what works, especially if you have a Mediavine revenue share bonus that is getting grandfathered into legacy plans come 2026. (More information about Mediavine and Raptive policy changes can be found here.)

But if you're able to get into both Mediavine and Raptive fresh from another ad network, or are in Mediavine's Journey product and can get into Raptive before being upgraded to Mediavine's “Official” product tier, we can see why Raptive has an edge in these two cases. Mediavine seemingly has a glaring gap for mid-sized bloggers at the moment, and we're not sure if this will be addressed in the future. That said, they're both very similar, and that's all there is to it- I'd be happy on either, to be honest!

If you are considering switching to Raptive from Mediavine, however, we'll leave you with one final thought: you may want to be strategic about when you switch.

Most ad networks have a 30-day cancellation policy, and the ramp-up period for new sites takes a week or more before RPMs normalize. Timing your switch could also interrupt things like peak earnings season, which is why I moved in early October, not late November. All of these considerations, and more, are worth thinking about if you are on Mediavine and thinking of moving to Raptive, or vice versa. (I'd argue less so if moving from mid-tier ad networks, because you're far more likely to have higher RPMs very quickly, like I did moving from Journey to Raptive.)

I genuinely think both of these ad networks are gold standards in the programmatic advertising industry. But if you have a compelling reason for considering switching to Raptive, however personal that is to your own blogging journey, we can't really argue against it. This may not be any fault of Mediavine's, because we adore them, but sometimes it is just business.

So, thank you, Mediavine, for all the love, support, and money you've earned us over the years. And I am excited to see what Raptive does next!

Have you switched from Mediavine to Raptive, or from Raptive to Mediavine? How did your earnings change, and what do you think of the networks? Comment below to share!

To submit an application to join Raptive, click here. To apply for Mediavine at the Journey level, click here.

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