Last updated: July 31, 2026
Why this site exists
Between October 2025 and February 2026, three of the networks that independent publishers actually apply to rewrote their entry rules within four months of each other, and they did not move in the same direction. Raptive cut its minimum from 100,000 monthly pageviews to 25,000. Mediavine abandoned session counts entirely and now asks for $5,000 in annual ad revenue. Ezoic, which had spent years positioning itself as the platform for growing sites, raised its floor for new publishers to 250,000 monthly users. A publisher researching monetization in the weeks after those changes would have found dozens of comparison articles confidently quoting numbers that no longer existed.
That gap between what is published and what is true is the whole reason for this site. We maintain one comparison, we check it against the documentation of the networks that set the rules, and we put the date of that check on the page so you can judge how stale it has become. When a figure comes from somewhere other than the network itself, we say so in the sentence where it appears rather than hiding the caveat in a footnote.
We are deliberately narrow. This site covers what a network requires before it will accept a site, what it pays out and on what schedule, which advertiser categories it refuses to serve, and the technical conditions attached to joining. You will not find revenue predictions or income reports here, because earnings depend on the specific audience of a specific site and any general number would be a guess dressed up as advice.
How this site is funded
This site is published by AdsCompass, an advertising network that appears in the comparison it publishes. That is a conflict of interest and the honest response to a conflict is to state it plainly rather than to bury it in neutral language. It sits in this section, on the Ad Network itself, and in the terms of use.
Two practical consequences follow. First, every figure attributed to a network other than AdsCompass comes from that network's own help centre, requirements page or policy announcement, and the document it came from is named in the sentence where it is used so you can look it up and verify it without trusting us. Second, figures about AdsCompass are first-party, and where the network publishes no criteria at all the comparison says exactly that instead of filling the gap with something flattering.
We are not paid by any other network named on this site, none of them has reviewed this text before publication, and inclusion in the comparison is not for sale. We do not link out to the networks we compare, so nothing on this page is placed to earn a click elsewhere.
What we will not do
- We do not score or rank networks. A star rating collapses two different things into one number: how good a network is and whether it will accept your site at all. Those are not the same question, and for a publisher below a threshold the second one is the only one that matters. Our table is ordered by how hard each network is to get into, and it says so directly beneath the table.
- We do not publish invented test results. Nobody on this site will tell you they withdrew funds in a particular number of hours or were approved in a particular number of days unless that happened and can be evidenced. Where a claim would require an account we do not hold, the text says so and stops there.
- We do not treat competitor articles as a source. Comparison posts copy each other, which is precisely how a retired 50,000-session threshold stayed in circulation for months after it was withdrawn. A figure that appears only in other comparison articles does not appear here.
- We do not quietly refresh dates. The check date on a page moves when something was actually re-verified, not on a schedule. A page dated this week that contains last year's research misleads the reader about how current it is, and that is a form of dishonesty even when every individual fact is correct.
Who writes it
The research and the writing are done by Smith Jones, a performance media buyer who has bought push, popunder and native inventory since 2016 and has spent the period since Google's 2024 core updates advising site owners on monetization. Buying inventory for years is unusual preparation for writing about the sell side, and it is the reason this site pays close attention to how much of an advertiser's bid actually survives the chain before it reaches the publisher who produced the impression.
There is one named author rather than an anonymous editorial voice, because a page that makes claims about other people's money should carry a person's name. The full method, including how we treat facts that exist only in publisher accounts, is set out in the editorial policy.
Corrections
If a threshold on this site is out of date or wrong, we want to hear about it before your readers do. Send the network's own page as evidence through contact and we will correct the entry in place and move the check date on that page. Corrections take priority over new work, and we do not require you to explain who you are or why you care.
Data handling is covered in the privacy policy, and the conditions attached to using anything you find here are in the terms of use.