Raptive Review – Increasing Programmatic Ad Earnings

How Much Do I Earn On Raptive?

Let's just dive into it and tackle the most important question all bloggers have for ad networks- what are the RPMs like?

This is always a bit of a loaded question, because rates are impacted by many metrics like the number of ads, audience locations, blog topics, season, etc. But given that, it is still worth sharing my data all the same to give a snapshot of how things look for me.

After my switch to Raptive in October 2025, my Pittsburgh blog's RPMs hovered between $45 to $55, with an average of $50 once my rates stabilized during the first month. My best day in the first quarter was about $78 RPM on Black Friday, and Q4 RPMs averaged closer to $60 overall. It is worth noting that I do have quite long articles on this site, so some of my top-performing posts have relatively high RPMs compared to others, likely due to a large number of ads and a strong US-based audience.

All told, really impressive!

I also had my wine blog added to Raptive, which had RPMs hovering between $11 and $27, with an average of just about $18 for Q4. This was much lower because my Pittsburgh site had a 95%+ US audience, whereas my wine blog was 66%, and due to the fact that many advertisers often don't promote on alcohol-forward sites like this one.

So while I was hoping for a bit more in terms of RPM here, especially considering my average number of ads viewed per page was similar to my Pittsburgh site, I can understand why the earnings are much lower.

So when I say that your earnings can vary considerably purely by the content of your site, I really mean it!

While we have a full breakdown of how this compares to my performance on Mediavine and Mediavine Journey, respectively, in our Mediavine vs Raptive article, for those who don't want to take that deep dive, I will just say that I am earning slightly more on Raptive for both sites.

So all minutiae aside, that we discuss in the article comparing the two top-tier ad networks, Raptive pays quite well, and I am a happy user.

• Note: At the time of my onboarding, Raptive gave me a +15% RPM guarantee for three months when moving from Mediavine. I should disclose that the guarantee was not that they'd pay 15% on top of normal earnings, but rather that if my RPMs did not exceed +15%, they'd pay out the difference. This may have been a limited-time promotion, as RPM guarantees may change or only be available for certain sites with traffic/income requirements. I am only sharing this to be fully transparent.

My Favorite Non-Revenue Feature? Article Analysis Tools

One of my favorite features of Raptive, outside of making money of course, is their content optimization tools. Not only does Raptive have ways to make more money via ad settings, but they also have ways to analyze your content to try to increase traffic!

The first tool that I enjoy in the Content Optimization section is the analysis tool for existing posts. You can create a brief for any article with a target keyword. Once generated, which takes a few moments, you can hop into a landing page that looks quite similar to conventional SEO tools. You get a breakdown of your article's word count, a “content grade” score, keyword volume, and a list of the top 10 results in Google for that term, alongside key site/article details, to name a few.

If you click the Content Grader tab, your article gets imported into Raptive, and you can run a grade checker, which gives topics and keywords that competitors have used in their articles that you may want to consider. It is quick, easy to follow, and perhaps most importantly, free as part of being a Raptive user!

Beyond this, their Content Optimization section can track your keywords and do conventional keyword research as well, so this one reduces the need for me to pay for most third-party keyword research tools- it is that good. (I'm sure it is not as complete as some services, but for me, I'm quite happy that these are available at no extra charge.)

Is this enough to justify joining Raptive alone? Probably not, but it is a very nice perk all the same.

Raptive Lowered Entry Requirements in 2025

One of the most interesting things about Raptive is that in October 2025, they did something a bit unusual in the programmatic advertising market- they lowered traffic requirements for entry.

Prior to October 2025, Raptive had the most stringent traffic requirements for entry, with 100,000 pageviews a month being the norm for main sites, roughly 30,000 page views a month for second sites, and a second-tier product, called Raptive Rise, for those whose primary site was in a lower traffic tier (similar to Mediavine's Journey).

As of mid-October, Raptive slashed their traffic requirements and rolled Raptive Rise into one main product with a 25,000 pageview a month threshold for entry, noting many things like the challenges content creators are having getting traffic, and that great bloggers do not necessarily have high volumes of pageviews.

As much as I would like to say that this was the reason why I switched to Raptive, I will admit that I moved my content over a few days before this change was announced, and my motivating factor was that my second site, The Grape Pursuit, got accepted at 25,000 pageviews per month along with my Pittsburgh blog, Discover the Burgh (which was at just over 100,000 page views). This let me upgrade from Mediavine Journey and earn higher RPMs on my wine blog, although as noted above, it was still a bit lower than I'd like due to site-specific issues.

Still, Raptive is making moves in the programmatic ad space and is now open to more and more creators, which we fully support. The barrier for entry is much lower in all the best ways possible!

• Note: In response, Mediavine lowered Journey's entry requirements to 1,000 sessions a month and made upgrading to Mediavine's main product revenue-based- once you hit a $5,000/year income, you're in, which may be easier said than done for some bloggers. We discuss this dynamic more in our Raptive vs Mediavine article; however, we can see many scenarios where bloggers on Journey could likely qualify for Raptive before getting upgraded to Mediavine, and as such, we could see jumping networks being a logical decision. But read our full breakdown article for more on why we think that.

Overall, Raptive is a stellar premium ad network, and I'm really excited to see high RPMs, clean ads, and an impressive dashboard. It is a nominal step up from where I was on Mediavine, but at the end of the day, more money is more money, and Raptive, so far, has given me exactly that.

Are you looking to join Raptive for your display ad network? Click here to apply!