Alternative Ad networks - Rejected from most

JOoa0ky

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Hey, so I've received 3x rejections in a row:
  1. First was from Adthrive with no explanation. I asked them if it was my niche but they didn't specify except that their advertisers usually don't change their mind.
  2. Next was from Mediavine yesterday. Asked for clarification but haven't heard a response yet.
  3. Then I also applied for Ezoic yesterday morning and received a rejection late in the evening yesterday.
I was confused at first because website traffic and content are pretty solid IMO...

Analytics last 30 days:
Screenshot_2022-07-23_6.59.44_AM.png



What I Think:
It is definitely my niche because it can't be my website stats. I dug a little further and saw on Ezoic's requirements page:

That also linked out to Google but it said:
  • promotes harmful health claims, or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus.

Definitely because of high scrutiny for YMYL. I am in the healthcare niche and content are so. With that said, it's not like I'm just some random Joe Schmo writing healthcare content. I am a licensed doctor and still actively practicing.

Anyone have any ideas about some non-traditional ad networks?
- So far, I've sent an inquiry to Adprime and HealthyAds but its the weekend so no response as of yet (:

If this doesn't work its a tad of a shame... since all of the traffic that I've generated were a result of publishing content starting this April. I expect to reach 1,000,000 pageviews by the end of the year or at least close to it, last few days were 11k+/day. Although I guess adsense is still running and that's a positive I suppose.
 
Why not monetize it with affiliate marketing? Did ezoic reject you or Google ad manager did?
 
@Zyzz Ezoic

Recommendation for an affiliate? Content is like 99% informational so there isn't really like a lot of products.
 
JOoa0ky said:
I am a licensed doctor and still actively practicing
Click to expand...
JOoa0ky said:
Content is like 99% informational so there isn't really like a lot of products.
Click to expand...
That's golden, IMO.

1. Take an affiliate product
2. Locate the health problem/issue it solves/helps
3. Go to Quora and find frequent question around this issue (or there was a great hack how to find Quora queries using Ahrefs or such a while ago here in the forum)
4. Write authoritative long read answering this question
5. Laugh on your way to the bank
 
^^^^^^
Seriously this op.
Just do Quora and reddit.
Get a hundred good long form answers out there and you will just clog the serps up.

If you can work out a brand name to drop in a way that triggers people to look it up you can use this to get into all sorts of weird traffic flows.
 
I’ve not used AdPrime but I’m aware it exists. I don’t know how well it performs but you could prob find some reviews.

Another option is BuySellAds where you’d sell “direct” to advertisers by listing specific ad slots and the CPMs you demand.

I would also look at big health sites and determine the networks they work with if any. Should be obvious in their privacy or disclosures pages or labeled on the ad units themselves. Can dig into the source code to see if that reveals anything too like embed codes, etc.
 
Also in the health niche and got told to fuck off by Ezoic.

Adsense approved me but the RPM is dog shit.

Pushing 20k sessions in the last 30 days. I am monetizing with affiliate shit now and seeing a bit of traction. Mostly sketchy products which is not preferable but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I'm trying to get on Playbuzz/Ex.co for video ads but we will see.
 
Golan said:
That's golden, IMO.

1. Take an affiliate product
2. Locate the health problem/issue it solves/helps
3. Go to Quora and find frequent question around this issue (or there was a great hack how to find Quora queries using Ahrefs or such a while ago here in the forum)
4. Write authoritative long read answering this question
5. Laugh on your way to the bank
Click to expand...
Thank you, I'll take a look into it. Maybe do 1 or 2 articles as fish bait to see what happens. Haven't really touched affilate at all so it'll be completely new.

@secretagentdad although honestly, I would prefer to not write too much about products

@Ryuzaki have you used buysellads before? For some reason I get the feeling that they require a ton of traffic or what not. Like I need more weight or leverage to use it?

I do know that healthline does direct ads.

@voLdie yup. Just adsense hahaha.

Now I'm wondering if there is like an alternative niche that I can do!
 
@DarkRed I'll send in an application today and keep you guys updated (:

I don't see any specific requirements on their site aside from just tiered page views / month.

Then again neither did mediavine... on a side note, like more than half of mediavine's links are all broken. They need a better webmaster.
 
Update: I sent inquiries to a couple of ad networks:
  • Adprime
  • Healthyads
  • Deepintent
  • Pulsepoint
  • Tapnative
It seems like there are niche health ad networks but they seem less common than the ones that are frequently talked about. Can barely find any information of them online nor reviews by users.

Only Healthyads got back to me with a reply but they seem pretty slow. They did say that they do take healthcare content and that my site qualifies, which is good news so I applied shortly after.

I also learned that Pulsepoint, which was recommended by like 2-3 people on one reddit thread... apparently got acquired by WebMD. Lol?

So you basically think you're competing against WebMD but in actuality, no... they already own you.
 
For a family-friendly big brand site with 1500 articles, some over 8000 words.

I worked with both in the past no issues, ever.

Anyone have a connection or rep? I'd be willing to pay $1K for an approval.

I keep dealing with terrible support reps who don't get it.

Have things changed? I don't get it..
 
contract said:
For a family-friendly big brand site with 1500 articles, some over 8000 words.

I worked with both in the past no issues, ever.

Anyone have a connection or rep? I'd be willing to pay $1K for an approval.

I keep dealing with terrible support reps who don't get it.

Have things changed? I don't get it..
Click to expand...

One thing they told me is that all the exchanges don't like "blog carnivals" and "listicles" and "round-ups". Are you doing a bunch of any of those? (I'm doing a bunch of listicles but I waited till after I was accepted to start doing it).

Is your traffic mainly from tier 1 countries (USA, UK, EU, CA, AUS, etc.)?

Is your traffic spread across enough of those 1500 articles or is it largely coming from 10 or so?

That's all I can really think of that could be hurting you.
 
Update:
- I got approved for Healthyads
- I also have a scheduled call with Adprime tomorrow...

Plan of action:
- Going to give Healthyads a twirl for like 2-4 weeks to see what kind of numbers they give me.
- Then maybe switch to Adprime and see what they can put out?

Sounds reasonable yeah?
- Really hoping I can get a mediavine or adthrive equivalent somehow.
- As soon as the site is decently monetized I can plow straight ahead.

Issue is that there is barely any information on both of them online.
Its not like mediavine, adthrive, ezoic, etc where there are tons of reviews and comments which give you a rough idea...
 
JOoa0ky said:
Update:
- I got approved for Healthyads
- I also have a scheduled call with Adprime tomorrow...

Plan of action:
- Going to give Healthyads a twirl for like 2-4 weeks to see what kind of numbers they give me.
- Then maybe switch to Adprime and see what they can put out?

Sounds reasonable yeah?
- Really hoping I can get a mediavine or adthrive equivalent somehow.
- As soon as the site is decently monetized I can plow straight ahead.

Issue is that there is barely any information on both of them online.
Its not like mediavine, adthrive, ezoic, etc where there are tons of reviews and comments which give you a rough idea...
Click to expand...
Applied to Healthy Ads & Nitro Pay.

Still waiting to hear back but I will add my data here as well if I can get them going.
 
JOoa0ky said:
Plan of action:
- Going to give Healthyads a twirl for like 2-4 weeks to see what kind of numbers they give me.
Click to expand...
Only thing I would suggest is giving it a solid month or two. It can take a while for all of the advertisers to start bidding on your site, assuming that Heatlyads is similar to other networks in that sense.
 
@Potatoe duly noted. I'll try to give it 4-8 weeks. If it improves every week I'll hang on to see where it caps off.

Gonna collect some data for you guys.

@voLdie Healthyads was quick, approved in 2 days.
 
Just got approved to Healthy Ads...it appears they are the same as Gourmet Ads.

This is like 8 years old but Pinch of Yum was doing $0.43 CPM with Gourmet Ads. Not good.

Who knows where it's at these days. Going to test.

"After that, we’re using Gourmet Ads, which has almost 100% fill with a CPM of $0.43."
- Pinch of Yum | Income Report
 
voLdie said:
This is like 8 years old but Pinch of Yum was doing $0.43 CPM with Gourmet Ads. Not good.
Click to expand...
That's because of this:

"We’re using Say Media as a second-tier advertiser on Pinch of Yum (coming in after sovrn). The CPM has been coming in a bit above $1.00 and the fill rate is a low 10%. After that, we’re using Gourmet Ads, which has almost 100% fill with a CPM of $0.43."​
​
They were running their own waterfall instead of making all these companies compete against each other with header bidding.

What this means is Sovrn's advertisers got the first chance to bid, which isn't going to be that great from my experience with Sovrn. Then and only if the ad slot didn't get filled, it went to Say Media. Then, if the ad slot STILL didn't get filled, Gourmet Ads got a chance to fill it (and of course they had a 100% fill rate since they could place any low bid and get the slot. Which is exactly why the CPM was only 43¢. They weren't bidding against anyone else. They were getting it for peanuts.

You'll likely fare much better. I haven't used Gourmet Ads but they aren't existing off of 43¢ RPMs. But their own internal bidding pressure is going to crush it when they aren't seeing "yeah, this is the 3rd shot of the ad not getting filled, no need to big high. There's zero CPM floor on this auction."

They could have set a higher CPM floor and not had a 100% fill rate and had a much higher RPM, but that's the point of having someone at the bottom of a waterfall. You let them fill at 100% with zero floor. I used to do this with a stack of like 5 or 6 networks. It sucked. The industry has come a long way with networks dealing with a dozen or more giant exchanges and making them all bid against each other.
 
@Ryuzaki figured I was missing something obvious.

That makes sense. I've mostly been pure affiliate or ecom in the past so bumbling my way around the display space with a new project.
 
Ryuzaki said:
That's because of this:

"We’re using Say Media as a second-tier advertiser on Pinch of Yum (coming in after sovrn). The CPM has been coming in a bit above $1.00 and the fill rate is a low 10%. After that, we’re using Gourmet Ads, which has almost 100% fill with a CPM of $0.43."​
​
They were running their own waterfall instead of making all these companies compete against each other with header bidding.

What this means is Sovrn's advertisers got the first chance to bid, which isn't going to be that great from my experience with Sovrn. Then and only if the ad slot didn't get filled, it went to Say Media. Then, if the ad slot STILL didn't get filled, Gourmet Ads got a chance to fill it (and of course they had a 100% fill rate since they could place any low bid and get the slot. Which is exactly why the CPM was only 43¢. They weren't bidding against anyone else. They were getting it for peanuts.

You'll likely fare much better. I haven't used Gourmet Ads but they aren't existing off of 43¢ RPMs. But their own internal bidding pressure is going to crush it when they aren't seeing "yeah, this is the 3rd shot of the ad not getting filled, no need to big high. There's zero CPM floor on this auction."

They could have set a higher CPM floor and not had a 100% fill rate and had a much higher RPM, but that's the point of having someone at the bottom of a waterfall. You let them fill at 100% with zero floor. I used to do this with a stack of like 5 or 6 networks. It sucked. The industry has come a long way with networks dealing with a dozen or more giant exchanges and making them all bid against each other.
Click to expand...
Can't say I miss those days of setting up my own waterfalls, minimum CPMs, etc. Man that was a pain in the ass and so inefficient!
 
I always thought people waved off the health niche because of the competition.

Nope. Ranking is fairly reasonable and easy enough.

Monetization is a total bitch if some of your content is "alternative".
 
Interestingly, I just received a backlink outreach from a competitor who is in the same exact niche as me...

I browse through their site and see the mediavine logo on the ads... which tells me that it is not impossible to get accepted by them.

The differences:
  • Their domain age/was born on 1998 which is significantly more than my 2018.
  • Their website is not attached to a clinical practice.
  • I guess I'll have to give it to them about overall aesthetics of the site.
  • Their DR is HIGH @68
  • My ahref traffic is higher than his and I've only started publishing content ~4 months ago so I believe I do a better job than him...
Conclusion:
I think I just need to let my site marinade and build up some branding power. Acquire some reputable high powered backlinks along the way. Increase traffic massively.

No reason why I can't get accepted after another 1-2 years. I think I'm just being impatient and want results ASAP.

Side note:
- The healthyads ecpm is pretty bad at the moment but its only been like a day, I'll give it some time...
- Adprime said that they can absolutely make it work but they are pharma heavy. Content which is geared towards consumers rpm = 5-15 but if content is geared towards healthcare professionals then it goes up to 25+ rpm
 
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