If you’re familiar with Ezoic, and you probably are if you’re reading this, then you know who they are and what they do. Ezoic is a great platform for many people and they offer a lot of great tools for publishers, there’s no denying that. Especially with the roll-out of their LEAP program that really helps non-tech savvy bloggers get their site speed up to snuff.
Aside from tools like LEAP, Ezoic will also monetize your site with display ads. This is what they’re most known for, display ads. Ezoic is trying hard to separate themselves form the pack and to be known as a “full-spectrum publishing platform” rather than an “ad network”.
So much like plain old Adsense, if your site is approved, you can simply use Ezoic to show ads on your site and make some money. You aren’t forced to use the rest of the tools and services they offer, some of which are pay-to-play.
As a publisher, I’m bringing in the traffic. I like to be able to concentrate on that and let the ad company help me to bring in as much money as possible from that traffic.
However, in order to maximize revenue for your traffic, Ezoic requires that you join “Ezoic Premium”. With this paid service, they charge you money to display premium ads to your visitors. Something that other ad companies don’t do.
It’s common practice for ad management companies get your ads earning as much as possible and split the revenue with you. It’s usually something like 75/25 or 80/20 in your favor.
You’re never charged anything extra out of your bank account. This is the part I hate about Ezoic Premium. They’re trying to double dip.
Also, it’s freaking confusing as hell. Almost no one understands all the tiers and the contracts (yes they also try to lock you into a contract), and having to pay someone that should be paying me is a hard pill to swallow.
So, with all that being said… is Ezoic Premium even worth it?
Do you really make more with Ezoic premium?
I’m not going to spend a ton of time on this article digging up graphs and reports to show you my results, I’ll just tell you an estimate of my recent experiences.
To answer the question briefly, yes you do make more with Ezoic Premium than without it.
Here’s an example:
If you pay $44/month for premium, you might make $60/month total from premium ads. Ezoic separates the earnings so you can see regular ads vs premium ads, making it easy to see the difference.
So essentially you paid for your premium plan and made a little extra money. Looking at it like this, it totally makes sense.
Honestly if you’re on Ezoic and aren’t planning on taking your site elsewhere anytime soon, then you should sign up for premium. You will make more money. However just keep in mind that you could be signing a contract that has hefty fees if you cancel early.
I despise long-term contracts like this. It’s such a turn-off as a publisher. The whole premium business model is whack in my opinion. I’ll save that rant for another time.
The real question is, do you make more with Ezoic Premium than you would with another ad network? The answer to that could be much different, it certainly has been for me 2/2 times.
When to switch to another ad company
I always start all of my sites on Ezoic, it’s a great place for new sites. The problems start when your site starts stretching its legs and hits some major growth spurts.
You would be doing yourself a great injustice to not to try other ad companies. This is about you making the most money you can with your hard work. A site that you likely spent hundreds of hours building, maybe more.
Having said that, I’ve switched 2 of my larger sites off of Ezoic once they reached a certain point. Both times it was the best decision I could have made at the time for my business.
That’s right, business. Just like Ezoic’s business is to monetize websites (and take their publisher’s money in new and creative ways), it’s my business to give my websites the best chance of success. It’s my job as a site owner to explore all opportunities presented to me and earn as much money as I can with my sites.
Ezoic should understand this, they should but they don’t seem to.
Mediavine
In late March, early April of 2020, I switched a site from Ezoic to Mediavine. It’s not that I was necessarily unhappy with Ezoic, I just wanted to test the waters to see if I could make more money with another company.
It was one of the best decisions I could have made. Ezoic is not touching this $45 RPM, there’s no way. And guess what? Mediavine doesn’t charge me for “premium ads”.
Adthrive
In May of 2021, I moved another site off of Ezoic. You can read a little more about it here. Anyways, the site had reached 100k pageviews and I wanted to move to Adthrive. It was literally my plan for 18 months. I’ve been blabbering about it the entire time and I’m sure my girlfriend was probably sick of hearing about it. It wasn’t some fly by the seat of my pants move. It was a well thought out and carefully calculated business decision.
So I made the move to Adthrive as soon as I was able to. I applied and went through the 2 week onboarding process until I was finally showing ads on 5/19/21. So It’s been about a week since I’ve had Adthrive on my site.
Here’s the difference a week can make.
Ezoic average EPMV when I left: $19.54
This is a decent EPMV (Ezoic’s version of RPM which is calculated by visitors rather than page views), however I knew that my content demanded much more. I’ve done this dog and pony show before, I know what my content is worth to the right advertisers with the right ad company.
Adthrive RPM after one week: $38.73 (and climbing)
So it’s almost doubled in a week. Yes, there may be a couple dollars lost in the conversion there (from visitors to pageviews), but my bounce rate is pretty high so it’s likely not much.
Regardless, this is after only a week. Ezoic themselves say to wait a full month for your EPMV to level off. I expect my Adthrive RPM to venture well into the $40s like my Mediavine RPM.
The above screenshot is my RPM with Adthrive as of 5/26/2021. Almost double what I was making from Ezoic. Those are just numbers though, let’s see the real dollars. Ok, fine. I’ll dig up one more screenshot for this article. My final full day on Ezoic with Ezoic Premium, and yesterday on Adthrive. One week’s difference in time.
That’s over double the daily earnings, in a week’s time. Basically the flip of a switch. You tell me if the change was worth it.
In summary
In the end you have to do what’s best for your business. Ezoic can tell me all day long how they’ll earn me the most money and Adthrive is for “mommy bloggers and food blogs”. Yes, that’s what they told me. They also told me that people are switching from Adthrive to Ezoic all the time and my account manager sent me links to case studies of people bashing Adthrive and saying how great Ezoic is.
So this also left a bad taste in my mouth with Ezoic. As someone who works with both Mediavine and Adthrive, I can tell you from first hand experience they’ve never even mentioned Ezoic. Because they don’t care about Ezoic, they care about their publishers. Which is what’s most important.
So I felt like my account manager was mad at me and just couldn’t understand why I switched. Sometimes it’s a business decision no one needs to understand but the business owner.
There was also some confusion about premium, as usual. I was told that my premium plan would downgrade automatically to whatever traffic level my account is at. My account manager didn’t go along with this, obviously because he was mad that I moved my site. Which leads me to believe that account managers are incentivized in some way.
For the record, I still recommend Ezoic all the time. By all means use my referral link if you’re considering signing up. Just remember that there are other options once your site reaches a certain traffic level.
With Ezoic’s current premium model though, they don’t have a prayer of competing with the likes of Mediavine or Adthrive. That’s why many of the medium to large niche site publishers known in our industry are also using Adthrive or Mediavine.
It all comes down to this.
You can’t expect to compete with premium ad companies if you’re charging people to show premium ads, and still not earning them as much money.