Ezoic vs AdSense: How I Increased Ad Revenue by 262%

Advertising is a great, passive way to make money with your blog. And I had been running Google AdSense (with Auto-Ads) on this blog for over a year, until I was made aware of Ezoic. In this comparison and review I’ll be comparing the setup, ad rates, customer service, payments options and more between the two services.

But first. What exactly is Ezoic? Ezoic is a free-to-use digital platform for publishers which aims to improve both ad revenue and user experience.

I integrated Ezoic with my blog and, pretty much immediately, I was impressed with the results.

So, let’s delve into the figures and the details, with the aim of helping you figure out how to boost your blogging income. 

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Contents

• Ad Revenue and EPMV
• EPMV
• How Does Ezoic Increase Your Ad Revenue?
• Customer Service
• Payment
• Ezoic Vs MediaVine: A Comparison
• Which One Wins?

Ad Revenue and EPMV

Getting straight to the point, how do Ezoic and AdSense compare in terms of ad revenue? How much do you really earn? Is one better than the other? And if there is a difference, is it significant enough to warrant a change of service? 

In order to make it a fair comparison, we have to compare like-for-like. Unfortunately, Ezoic and AdSense differ in how they report their ad earnings-rate. 

Google AdSense gives you a wealth of information:

• Impressions: The number of ad requests generated for your blog’s users

• Clicks: The number of times users have clicked on ads

• Page RPM: The average earnings per 1000 page views

• Impression RPM: The average earnings per 1000 ad impressions

• Active View Viewable: The percentage of impressions that were viewable (over 50% of the ad seen for over 1 second)

However, it misses out on one crucial and simple data point. What is your actual earnings rate? How much are you earning for every 1000 site visits?  

Impression RPM or Page RPM can increase or decrease, whilst your actual earnings go in the opposite direction. 

Imagine, for example, that your Page RPMs decrease but each visitor views more pages per visit. The Page RPM metric would decline but your earnings would increase (because people are sticking around and reading more articles on your blog). 

Using Ezoic: The EPMV Metric

Ezoic takes the simpler, and in my view, more practical approach. They use one major metric:

EPMV or Earnings Per 1000 Visitors

This metric takes the more direct approach. If your EPMV is $15, you’ll earn $15 for every 1000 site visits/sessions. 

You can still work out your Google Adsense EPMV. Here’s how to do it:

1. Login to your Google Adsense account and take the earnings figure for one day.

2. Login to your Google Analytics account.

3. Go to ‘Audience’ > Overview > Sessions metric > Take the figure for the relevant day.

4. Plug the numbers into the formula below:

AdSense vs Ezoic EPMV

In the figure below, I’ve taken the EPMV figures for the 31 days prior to Ezoic integration (Google EPMV - In Blue) and the 31 days post Ezoic integration (Ezoic EPMV - In Green).

As you can see, the daily EPMV increased quite substantially within the first few days of Ezoic integration. 

The average Google EPMV, over the 31 day period, was $3.45. 

The average Ezoic EPMV, over the 31 day period, was $10.50. 

That means Ezoic earned me $7.05 more, per 1000 site visitors. An increase of over 204%.

What’s more, if you look at the average EPMV over my full AdSense history, it was only $2.90. Meaning in the first month of Ezoic use, I’ve increased my earnings per 1000 visitors by just over 262%. 

Of course, this won’t be the case for every single user. The results will be dependent on a lot of factors. Ezoic expects users to increase their ad revenue by 50-250%. I didn’t expect a jump anywhere near 262%, but it just goes to show, you don’t know until you try. 

How Does Ezoic Increase Your Ad Revenue?

I’d say Ezoic uses two main techniques to optimise your ad revenue.

1. Machine Learning

Ezoic is constantly testing and learning. It moves ads around and alters ad styles. But it also learns what your users like. Because advert optimisation isn’t all about piling as many ads on the page as possible. 

Lowering bounce rates, increasing user time spent on site, increasing page views per visitor. All of these factors come into play.

And what’s great is that this all runs in the background. Freeing up your time, meaning you can focus on what matters most, writing great content. 

2. Google Ad Exchange

Imagine you’re selling an item at auction. If there are only a few people in the room, there is little competition and the bids dry up fast. It’s likely that the winning bid was only a small sum of money. 

Now imagine you’re selling another item but before the bidding starts, the doors to the auction house open up and people come flooding in. 

Bidding starts and the price keeps climbing. The more competition, the more money you are likely to make on your sale. 

The latter scenario is effectively what Ezoic are doing by having access to Google Ad Exchange. They partner with a huge list of agencies, ad networks, advertisers, bidding tools and direct advertisers. 

This opens up the doors to the auction house, increasing competition for ad space on your site, driving up your EPMV.

You Will Still Earn Google AdSense Income

What’s interesting is that, if you have Google AdSense, you can integrate your AdSense account to Ezoic. And this is recommended. This is known as ‘Mediation’.

Ezoic and AdSense ads will compete for the same ad space on your site, driving up prices. If the Ezoic ad wins, any income will be added to your Ezoic account. If the AdSense ad wins, any income will be added to your existing AdSense account. 

You’ll see this income in your Ezoic account too. Under ‘Mediation’ in the Monetisation section.

You can integrate other networks via Ezoic’s Mediation app but, as stated “Ezoic already works with most of these partners directly to bring them into the auction on your behalf”. So this isn’t a necessity. 

It’s important to note here that Ezoic is an official Google Certified Publishing Partner. It was selected as a partner due to its ability to improve revenue for publishers, provide better user experience, all whilst complying with Google policy.

Customer Service

There’s no doubt about it, signing up for and setting up Google AdSense is pretty easy to do. But in my experience, after the sign up process is complete, you feel pretty detached from the system. If I was having issues, I would have to turn to AdSense Help Centre, other blogs, friends or Facebook groups for help.

With Ezoic, it’s the complete opposite and I think, aside from the revenue optimisation, this is what draws a lot of new publishers to their platform. 

Account Manager

All Ezoic customers are given an account manager. Mine helped me setup and integrate the service with my website.

I’ve only ever chatted with my account manager via email but the response time feels more like that of a live chat than a traditional email thread. 

He has kept me incredibly well informed, especially throughout the setup process. And if there’s any news I should be made aware of, I tend to get an incredibly detailed email update. 

Troubleshooting Issues

Here is where Ezoic really shines. I’ll use a scenario that cropped up to illustrate. 

I attempted to improve my website’s loading times (to help SEO) by changing some of my LEAP settings on Ezoic. However, when I turned on ‘Lazy Load Images’ all of the images in my Squarespace summary blocks disappeared. I was also getting similar issues when I turned on ‘Remove Unused CSS’. 

I opened a ‘Help’ ticket and explained the situation. 

The Ezoic employee notified their tech team (usually when I’m told this I hold out little hope). And, sure enough, by the next morning, the tech team had fixed the issue. I was given a detailed response by my account manager and the situation was resolved. 

The customer service, both from my account manger and the Ezoic tech team set a really high bar. 

AdSense vs Ezoic - Payment

So you’ve earned ad revenue. Great! Now, how does it get from your ad network account to your bank account? 

There are three factors you should take into account. Payment type, threshold and timeline. AdSense and Ezoic differ slightly in some aspects and are similar in others. 

1. Payment Type

Google AdSense offers a range of payment options dependent on your payment address. Cheque, EFT, SEPA, Bank Transfer and Western Union Quick Cash. 

You will be paid in your payment currency directly and your AdSense account will report your earnings in your currency of choosing. 

Here in the UK, for example, I am shown my earnings in GBP and I am paid directly to my nominated bank account. The process couldn’t be simpler. 

Ezoic, on the other hand, reports all of your earnings in USD. You then choose from a range of payment options. 

Cheque, PayPal, Direct Deposit via Payoneer (US residents only), International Wire Transfer via Payoneer (subject to fees below or Payoneer Prepaid Card. 

International Wire Transfer via Payoneer Fees:

• Ezoic > Payoneer Account (in USD) = $0

• Payoneer USD Account > Canadian Bank (CAD) = 0.15%

• Payoneer USD Account > UK Bank (GBP) = 0.15%

• Payoneer USD Account > EU Bank (EUR) = 0.15%

• Payoneer USD Account > Pakistani Bank (PKR) = 0.15%

• Payoneer USD Account > Chinese Bank (CNY) = 0.15%

• Payoneer USD Account > Indian Bank = 0.50%

• Payoneer USD Account > USD Bank = $15

The cheapest option for me in the UK is to receive an international wire transfer via Payoneer. The Ezoic payment is fee-free and held in USD in my Payoneer account. I then withdraw to my UK bank account (charged 0.15%).

Bonus! Sign up with my Payoneer with my referral link and get $25 after you’ve earned your 1st $1000!

2. Payment Threshold

With AdSense and Ezoic, you have to meet a minimum threshold before your earnings are paid out. If the threshold isn’t met, unpaid earnings are rolled over to next month, in both cases. 

The Google AdSense minimum payment threshold is $100 in the US and £60 in the UK (check here for other currency thresholds). 

The Ezoic minimum payment threshold, all based in USD, is just $20. 

If you’re earning with Ezoic, this means you’ll not only likely earn more, but you’ll likely get paid more regularly too (especially when you’re just starting out). 

3. Payment Timeline

Both AdSense and Ezoic have a monthly payment cycle. This means that your month 1 earnings will be paid out towards the end of month 2, and so on. 

In the case of AdSense, if you’ve met the payment threshold the previous month, you’ll be paid between the 21st and 26th of this month. 

With Ezoic, if you’ve met the payment threshold during the month, your earnings will be paid out to you in 30-45 days. 

Ezoic vs Mediavine: A Comparison

I get this question a lot so, before concluding, I’d thought I’d address the comparison between Ezoic and Mediavine.

Here’s why I’d choose Ezoic over Mediavine:

• Traffic Requirements: Mediavine now has a very high traffic requirement (50,000 sessions per month). Whilst that is achievable once you’re an established blogger, it can take a while to get to that point. If you’re sitting with <50K sessions and you’re still with AdSense, you’re potentially losing out on a lot of potential revenue from Ezoic.

• The Waitlist: Once you hit 50K sessions, there’s a 2 month waitlist for Mediavine.

• Flexibility: You can apply to join Ezoic before you even before hitting 10K monthly page views with Ezoic Access Now. For websites with monthly page views above 10K, it’s easy to join.

• Adding Additional Sites: Once you’ve got 1 site approved with Ezoic, it’s a lot easier to get a 2nd site approved. This is not really the case with Mediavine.

• Customer Service: Ezoic has fantastic customer service. Probably near the best, if not the best, in the industry. Ezoic account managers are incredibly responsive and if they can’t answer your query, they’ll quickly point you in the right direction, following up after the fact to check your problem was solved.

AdSense vs Ezoic - Which One Wins?

If you’re just starting out on your blogging journey, Google AdSense is a great way of introducing yourself to advertising income. That said, when it’s possible for you to graduate to a service like Ezoic, I would highly recommend doing so. 

In the case of Ezoic, you’ll see a huge improvement in ad revenue and you’ll experience unrivalled customer service, making you wish you’d moved sooner.