Best Ad Networks for Website Monetization in 2026: Who Takes 1,000 Visits, Who Wants 250K, Who Pays Weekly

For years the advice for a new site was simple: start with AdSense, grow to 10,000 sessions, move to Ezoic, then apply to Mediavine at 50,000. Between October 2025 and February 2026 almost every step of that ladder moved. Ezoic raised its minimum to 250,000 monthly users. Journey by Mediavine dropped its bar to 1,000 premium sessions a month, and Mediavine's main program stopped counting sessions at all. Raptive cut its requirement from 100,000 pageviews to 25,000.

At the same time, search traffic is shrinking: AI summaries in Google take clicks that used to land on content sites, and premium ad managers now say so openly. Below are the ad networks that pay publishers in 2026, grouped by the traffic they actually accept, with their revenue share, payout terms and what they think of adult and grey content.

What changed in 2025-2026: the entry bars moved

Ezoic went up. Since February 19, 2026 Ezoic accepts new sites from 250,000 monthly users, up from about 10,000. Sites that were already running Ezoic keep their access, unless they remove the integration for more than 7 days. Smaller sites can apply to the Ezoic Incubator, which picks 20 sites a month and graduates them automatically at 250,000 users.

Journey and Mediavine went down. Journey by Mediavine now asks for 1,000 premium sessions a month, meaning visits from the US, the UK, Canada and Australia; traffic from other countries isn't penalized, it just doesn't count toward the bar. Third-party guides add that it has no revenue minimum and pays 70% of ad revenue on Net 65. A site moves up to the full Mediavine program at $5,000 of ad revenue over 12 months; the old 50,000-session rule is gone.

Raptive went down too, with a condition. In October 2025 Raptive cut its minimum from 100,000 to 25,000 monthly pageviews, but between 25,000 and 100,000 at least half of the traffic must come from the US, UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. The domain must be at least 6 months old, with long-form, human-made content.

And the native market consolidated. Outbrain bought Teads, closed the deal in February 2025 and renamed itself Teads Holding Co., trading on Nasdaq as TEAD since June 2025. Google retired the AdSense Related Search format on August 6, 2026.

The ad networks at a glance

• Google AdSense. Minimum traffic: None. Publisher share: 80% after the buy-side fee. Payout: Monthly, from $100. Adult content: No.
• Journey by Mediavine. Minimum traffic: 1,000 Tier-1 sessions a month. Publisher share: 70%. Payout: Net 65. Adult content: No.
• Mediavine. Minimum traffic: $5,000 of ad revenue a year. Publisher share: 75%, up to 90%. Payout: Net 65. Adult content: No.
• Raptive. Minimum traffic: 25,000 pageviews a month. Publisher share: 75%. Payout: Net 45. Adult content: No.
• Ezoic. Minimum traffic: 250,000 users a month. Publisher share: Not published. Payout: Monthly. Adult content: No.
• Monumetric. Minimum traffic: 10,000 pageviews a month, $99 setup. Publisher share: Not published. Payout: 30-60 days after launch. Adult content: No.
• MGID. Minimum traffic: 5,000 unique visitors a day. Publisher share: Not published. Payout: n/a. Adult content: No.
• Infolinks. Minimum traffic: None. Publisher share: 70%. Payout: Net 45, from $50. Adult content: n/a.
• Adsterra. Minimum traffic: None, real content required. Publisher share: Not published. Payout: Twice a month, from $5. Adult content: Check the policy.
• Monetag. Minimum traffic: None. Publisher share: Not published. Payout: Weekly, from $5. Adult content: Check the policy.
• HilltopAds. Minimum traffic: None. Publisher share: Not published. Payout: Weekly on Tuesdays, from $20. Adult content: Check the policy.
• PopCash. Minimum traffic: None. Publisher share: Not published. Payout: Daily, from $10. Adult content: Check the policy.
• JuicyAds. Minimum traffic: None. Publisher share: 75%. Payout: Weekly, from $25. Adult content: Yes, adult network.
• A-ADS. Minimum traffic: None. Publisher share: 80%. Payout: From 0.001 BTC. Adult content: NSFW category.

"Not published" means we found no official figure; third-party numbers for those networks disagree. Adsterra's PayPal threshold, for example, is $50 in one 2026 review and $100 in another.

Under 10,000 visits a month: AdSense, Journey, Infolinks, Media.net

Google AdSense is still the default, and still has no traffic minimum. Since 2024 Google pays publishers 80% of revenue after the advertiser-side platform fee, which third parties work out to about 68% of what advertisers pay for display. Earnings are finalized by the 3rd of the next month and paid between the 21st and the 26th once the balance passes the threshold, $100 for US-dollar accounts. Sexually explicit content can't be monetized. Several publishers reported sharp RPM drops in the first half of 2026, but Google hasn't confirmed any change.

Journey by Mediavine is now the main step up for small sites. It takes the self-serve route: you install Mediavine's Grow plugin and keep 70%, but without Google's AdX demand that the main program has, and with payment on Net 65, so the first money arrives about 2 months after the first impressions.

Infolinks and Media.net fit sites that want to keep display ads light. Infolinks sells in-text ads with no traffic minimum, pays 70% on Net 45 and pays out from $50. Media.net runs contextual ads from the Yahoo and Bing network, publishes no traffic minimum but prefers English-language, mostly Tier-1 traffic, and pays from $100 by Payoneer or wire.

A-ADS is the anonymous option. It takes sites with no traffic minimum and no KYC, keeps a 20% fee and pays from 0.001 BTC; it has a separate category for NSFW sites, and its ads contain no JavaScript or popups, which is why crypto sites use it.

10,000 to 250,000 visits: Monumetric, Raptive, Mediavine, MGID

Monumetric's Propel tier starts at 10,000 pageviews. It costs $99 one time, ads go live 14 to 45 days after approval, and payments arrive on the 5th and 25th of the month, with the first one 30 to 60 days after launch because advertisers pay on Net 30-60. Most of the traffic should come from the US, Canada, the UK, Europe or Australia.

Raptive from 25,000 pageviews, Mediavine from $5,000 of revenue. Both are full-service managers that run the whole ad setup, pay 75% (Mediavine up to 90% for its Premiere tier) and expect clean, original, human-written content and Tier-1 traffic; Raptive pays on Net 45 and Mediavine on Net 65. Raptive claims an average 20% RPM lift for sites that switch to it, which is its own figure.

MGID is the native-widget option. It needs 5,000 unique visitors a day (about 150,000 a month), HTTPS, at least 30 articles of 500+ words with the latest posted within 7 days of applying, a privacy policy and cookie consent in the EU. Ads may take no more than 30% of the page, and adult and shocking content, popups and popunders are not allowed. We covered the approval process in MGID for publishers.

250,000 visits and up: Ezoic, Freestar, Taboola, Teads

Ezoic now sits here. Its own site claims 5,000+ sites and 768 million monthly pageviews and Google Premier Partner status. It excludes adult and gambling content, alcohol and tobacco promotion.

Freestar starts at about 1 million pageviews a month. Its quality page says "typically at least a million" monthly pageviews with half of the traffic from the US, UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, organic traffic and good standing with current ad providers; sexually explicit material is prohibited.

Taboola and Teads are native at scale. Taboola works with large publishers, and third parties cite 500,000 to 1 million monthly pageviews as the threshold with a $100 minimum payout. Teads, which now owns Outbrain, says it works with publishers of all sizes that meet its guidelines. On the advertiser side both are in our catalog as Taboola and Outbrain.

Global, mixed or adult traffic: networks that take almost any site

Premium managers want clean content and Tier-1 visitors. If your traffic comes from Tier-2 and Tier-3 GEOs, social, Telegram or adult sites, or you monetize landing pages and redirects, these networks take it with no traffic minimum, mostly with popunder and push formats that pay per impression:

• Adsterra. Popunder, Social Bar (its in-page push), native, banners, interstitials and VAST video. It needs real content and bans more than 15 banners or 5 popups per page. Payouts twice a month, from $5 by Paxum or WebMoney and $1,000 by wire.
• Monetag. The former publisher side of PropellerAds: popunder, push, vignette, in-page push, SmartLink and Telegram Mini App traffic, weekly payouts from $5.
• HilltopAds. Popunder, in-page, VAST, video slider, banners and MultiTag on CPM, weekly payouts every Tuesday on Net 7 from $20, by BTC, USDT, PayPal, Paxum, Wise, wire, Capitalist or WebMoney.
• Clickadu. Popunder, push, in-page push and video, on a weekly, twice-monthly or monthly schedule, from $50 by PayPal, WebMoney or Paxum.
• PopCash. Popunders only, payouts from $10 processed daily, hourly stats.
• Partners.House. The publisher side of Push.House: web push, in-page, on-click and 2-click push on RevShare or CPL, weekly payouts from $50 according to reviews. Its Trustpilot reviews include blocked accounts before payout.
• JuicyAds, EroAdvertising and ExoClick for adult sites. JuicyAds keeps 75% for publishers and pays weekly from $25; EroAdvertising pays weekly or monthly, though 2026 reviews report unpaid publisher balances; ExoClick is covered in our ExoClick review.

The trade-off is your site. Popunders and in-page push pay on any traffic but annoy readers, and a page full of them won't pass review at AdSense, MGID or the premium managers. Keep them for traffic you can't monetize otherwise, such as landing pages, redirects, file-sharing or adult sites. If you're buying this traffic rather than selling it, see our guides to in-page push ads and popunder ad networks.

What RPM to expect in 2026

No network publishes RPM, and third-party tables disagree. Some 2026 comparisons still quote Mediavine and Raptive requirements that changed months ago, which says a lot about their RPM figures too. Treat any RPM range you read, including on network review sites, as a marketing number.

The direction is down, for traffic and for prices. In September 2025 Mediavine's CEO said CPMs were "down 10-20% year-over-year across the industry" and that relying on Google Search alone "is no longer viable". Raptive's July 2026 launch materials cite small publishers losing 60% of their search traffic over 2 years. Pew Research found that when Google showed an AI summary, users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits against 15% without one, and clicked a link inside the summary only 1% of the time. Ahrefs measured a 58% drop in position-1 click-through for queries with AI Overviews between December 2023 and December 2025.

What still moves RPM is under your control: the share of Tier-1 visitors, the niche (finance, tech and B2B topics pay more than lifestyle), page speed and the number of pages per session. Traffic from sources other than Google, such as email, social and returning visitors, now matters for revenue as much as for rankings.

Can you combine ad networks?

Usually yes, with limits. Full-service managers such as Mediavine and Raptive run your whole display setup and add their own demand, so you don't stack another display network on the same pages. AdSense, Infolinks and A-ADS are often combined because they use different formats. MGID allows no popups or popunders on pages with its widgets, and Adsterra caps the number of ads per page. Read each network's ad-placement policy before adding a second code: the penalty is usually a rejected or suspended account, and with it the balance waiting for payout.