Media.net vs Ezoic vs Snigel: Revenue, Support, Technology

Media.net and Ezoic are both popular header bidding partners, meaning they handle programmatic advertising for you. Our company Snigel also offers a header bidding solution, so we’ve thought a lot about what features or characteristics make a good header bidding partner partner. In our experience, the most important of these are:

• Which publishers they’ll work with (e.g. traffic requirements)

• Payment terms, including the method and pay period

• How much support they provide for site health and ad strategy

• The types of ads available to implement on your site(s)

Media.net, Ezoic, and Snigel are all high-quality header bidding solutions, so there’s considerable overlap in how they address these pain points. Here are the biggest differences among the the three:

Ezoic is a self-serve platform, so publishers shouldn’t expect the level of support available from Media.net or Snigel. The tradeoff, though, is that there are a lot of tools and control for publishers who do want to handle everything themselves. In terms of ad tech, Ezoic is unique in offering SEO and analytics to improve your site rankings.

Media.net offers contextual advertising that doesn’t depend on cookies. Similarly, their Display to Search (D2S) ads take advantage of the Yahoo! Bing network to match users’ intent.

Snigel clients are assigned a dedicated ad operations expert who handles all aspects of ad strategy and implementation, including developing a strategy, testing layouts, and incorporating our ad stack onto your site. Speaking of ad tech, our Smart Refresh and adblock revenue recovery tools are unique ways to maximize revenue from user interactions. Meanwhile, the AdConsent platform ensures you comply with privacy regulations.

The bottom line: Snigel provides more support than Ezoic and more ad technology (and therefore, revenue generation options) than Media.net.

In this article, we do a deep dive into the details of Media.net, Ezoic, and Snigel in the context of the criteria and factors listed above so publishers can get a better understanding of how to decide which one could be right for them. But first, we’ll do a quick review of header bidding and ad networks to make sure we have a basis of understanding.

Snigel is a header bidding partner that connects to the top SSPs and provides dedicated ad operations experts to all our clients. To find out more about how we boost our clients’ profits by 30%+ on average, you can get in touch today.

Ad Networks and Header Bidding: What is Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising refers to the sale of digital advertising space via automated transactions. These auctions, which happen in the span of time it takes for a site to load, are typically hosted by ad exchanges. Publishers who don’t have a header bidding partner must access these auctions via supply side platforms (SSPs), which are typically integrated with the ad exchange.

Note: Ad exchanges aren’t the same as advertising networks, which aggregate inventory from publishers to sell to advertisers. However, often the line between ad exchanges and ad networks gets blurred, because many advertising platforms purchase inventory from each other.

The problem with this model is that publishers are limited to the pool of advertisers using a particular ad exchange, meaning the only advertisers that can bid on your ad space are the ones that a particular network or exchanges happens to partner with. In addition, publishers typically can’t access private marketplaces, in which premium inventory is offered to select buyers. That’s where header bidding comes in.

Header bidding partners connect publishers to multiple SSPs and ad networks, driving up competition and increasing your revenue.

Good header bidding partners can give their publishing partners access to a broad range of ad exchanges and ad networks, including ones that specialize in the same verticals as the publisher. In addition, due to their professional networks, they should be able to access invite-only auctions to allow you to feature premium ads on your site.

Snigel connects publishers to 30+ top SSPs like OpenX, ConnectAd, Sovrn, and more. To learn more about how we can connect you to premium advertisers and the best ad networks, get in touch today.

Ad Strategy Support

To generate the most revenue possible from your site, you need a solid ad strategy, by which we mean optimizing a host of factors, like:

• The number of ads you can feature on your site without overwhelming visitors

• What ad formats will generate the most engagement based on your content type

• Implementing ads across different device types

• Ensuring visitors receive relevant ads without violating privacy settings

• Ensuring ads don’t slow down your site or reduce the user experience

• Adapting your ad strategy to changing conditions

Here at Snigel, we believe that ad experts are best suited to handling ad strategy. There are a lot of factors in the bullet points and their permutations above. It takes a lot of time, diligence, and frankly experience to optimize across all of those factors, and in our experience, publishers rarely have the time, patience, and experience to do this properly. So, in order to let publishers focus on what they’re good at (creating content, growing traffic), we provide dedicated ad operations specialists to handle developing, maintaining, and adapting your ad strategy. Similarly, Media.net partners clients with account advisors.

In contrast, Ezoic, for example, prefers to leave these details to publishers, which is why they’ve said they will always be a self-service platform.

Media.net Support

Media.net bills itself as a fully managed header bidding platform. Publishers who partner with Media.net receive Account Advisors who, along with the company’s Traffic Analysts, implement tailored solutions related to monetization and sustainable advertising. This includes ensuring the continued performance of the company’s signature contextual ad units.

Ezoic Support

As mentioned above, Ezoic’s philosophy is that letting the publisher handle their own ad strategy and tech implementation increases transparency and empowers publishers to prioritize their own interests. To support this, they offer plenty of tools to support their partners via the self-serve dashboard, which allows website owners to track their own metrics.

In addition, the company has an expert support team to offer advice, but the level of customer support varies depending on the size of the publisher. This is one reason clients seek out Ezoic alternatives.

Snigel Support

Snigel provides their publishers with a full-service dedicated ad operations expert for planning, testing (e.g. A/B testing), and adapting your ad strategy, as well as ad optimization. The key part of this is dedicated — meaning each publisher is assigned a single ad ops expert who learns your site’s details, audience, and quirks and is your point person for all questions. (This is as opposed to platforms that use an IT ticketing system where a new rep is assigned to every query.)

Your ad ops expert also handles the implementation of the ad tech we’ll discuss in the next section. Whether you’re a WordPress blogger or the account manager for a large corporation, Snigel can find the right strategy for making you money. As a result, most publishers see a 30–100% increase in ad revenue when switching to Snigel.

Ad Tech

A header bidding partner’s ad tech, in addition to being the vehicle for generating revenue, directly affects site health and appearance. Media.net, Ezoic, and Snigel all offer a range of ad formats that don’t compromise the user experience.

Media.net’s speciality is contextual ads, which are ads related to the content of the site; notably, these ads don’t rely on cookies. Ezoic, meanwhile, offers SEO and analytics in addition to their server-side edge delivery of various ad formats. As for Snigel, Smart Refresh boosts revenue by generating new ads based on user actions, while adblock revenue recovery ensures that even users with adblock enabled can be served ads.

Media.net Ad Stack

As mentioned above, Media.net’s contextual ads are a major selling point, and rather than being based on cookies they’re powered by the Yahoo! Bing network. They’re also the original creators of D2S ads, which leverages search intent and relevant keywords.

Other ad tech and related tools include:

• Display ads, native ads, and video ads

• Sizeless ads which can be customized to your site layout

• Autopilot ad tags to let your account manager know to monitor and tweak performance

• High speed, low latency, good UX via keeping the burden on Media.net’s servers

• A user-friendly reporting dashboard

Ezoic Ad Stack

Ezoic’s ad monetization solution, EzoicAds, includes:

• Ad Tester which gives you access to Google Ad Exchange and header bidding. It also lets you link and mediate ad networks, such as AdSense.

• Layout Tester which provides you with a list of preset layouts and lets you select which ones to test. Then, Ezoic’s AI handles the A/B testing for you. This tool also lets you convert your mobile site to a more mobile-friendly version of the layout.

• Google Ad Manager Extension which lets you connect Ezoic to your Google ad manager account.

• Direct Ad Orders which lets you manage direct ad deals through Ezoic.

While there is no minimum number of ads that have to be displayed with Ezoic, their layout optimization technology tool often pushes lots of ads in order to increase revenue. Many users report that this slows down their site and overwhelms the user.

Snigel Ad Stack

Of the many benefits offered by Snigel’s AdEngine, two notable ones are AI optimized price floors and server-side header bidding.

AI-driven dynamic floor pricing prevents bid shading (a practice used by publishers to predict the lowest CPM they’ll have to pay to win the bid) by switching up the floor price each hour. Without this feature, you or your ad techs would have to manually switch the floor price.

Server-side header bidding, or server-to-server (S2S) header bidding, increases page load times by moving the header bidding auction to an external server. It also increases the demand partners you’re able to connect to. Many ad monetization solutions only over client-side header bidding.

Other ad tech and related tools include:

• Interactive ad units (can increase revenue by 3+%)

• Super adhesive ads, which are large ads displayed in smaller ad spaces that scroll along with the user. These ads are especially useful for long-form content creators such as bloggers (and can increase revenue by 20+%).

• Adaptive ads that fill the space with whatever size combination maximizes revenue (can increase revenue by 10–30%).

• Video ads via AdStream (can increase revenue by 23%).

• Automatic optimized in-content ad placement

• Display advertising, banner ads, and more

• AI bidder optimization, which finds you the best bidders for your ad inventory in real-time (can increase revenue by 7+%)

• Smart Refresh, which serves users new ads based on their interactions with the page, e.g. when they scroll or switch tabs (can increase revenue by 6+%)

• AdBlock revenue recovery that serves users compliant ads when ad blockers are in use (can increase revenue by 10+%)

• AdConsent, which ensures compliance with privacy laws like the GDPR and CCPA (can increase revenue by 1–2%)

• And more, all without compromising page load time!

Eligibility

Eligibility is an important detail to check immediately so you don’t waste time evaluating a platform that you may not be qualified for. For example, some header bidding solutions require a certain amount of traffic to be from English-speaking countries such as the US, the UK, and Canada.

Media.net, Ezoic, and Snigel have similar requirements for website owners who want to work with them, so keep the following in mind.

Media.net Requirements

Media.net requires their partners to publish legal, high-quality content that gets legitimate traffic in compliance with the Better Ad Standards. In addition to refraining from excessive advertising and deceptive or illegal ad practices, publishers must agree to a non-compete clause.

Ezoic Requirements

Ezoic has no minimum traffic requirements and makes its monetization features available to all users. However, sites with fewer than 10k page views per month must sign up for a specialized “Access Now” program. All publishers must adhere to Google’s ad policy guidelines; create unique, original content; attract legitimate traffic, and be in good standing with Google if applicable. Ezoic is able to serve all ad verticals.

Snigel Requirements

Like Ezoic and Media.net, Snigel requires its partners to publish original, high-quality content which brings in legitimate traffic. Current monetization efforts should bring in $300/day in revenue via ad platforms such as Google AdSense or AdSense alternatives, though publishers who have considerable growth potential may also apply. We’re also flexible enough to serve any vertical.

Payment Terms

Payment terms are important because they dictate what revenue is based on (e.g. clickthrough rates [CTR] or pageviews), what portion of revenue you’ll get, whether you’ll be locked into contracts, how often you’ll receive payments, minimum payouts, and the payment method (e.g. direct deposit, wire transfer, online payment systems, or checks in the mail).

Note that Media.net, Ezoic, and Snigel all operate on a NET 30 payment schedule.

Monetization with Media.net

Media.net operates via commission, with revenue generated by valid click-throughs.

Monetization with Ezoic

Ezoic has an unusually low $20 payout threshold, and they pay via direct bank transfer (Payoneer), PayPal, or check. Their standard share of the revenue is 10%, but their premium option, which is only available to existing customers, offers extra support.

Monetization with Snigel

Snigel operates via an industry competitive commission of 20%.

Media.net vs Ezoic vs Snigel Summarized

Media.net, Ezoic, and Snigel all have competitive header bidding solutions for publishers. In general:

• Media.net is typically used as an SSP rather than as an all-around ad monetization solution.

• Ezoic is a self-serve platform with built-in tools for ad strategy and site maintenance, and they also offer SEO and analytics features.

• Snigel partners all clients with a dedicated ad operations expert who handles all aspects of ad strategy and tech implementation, including features like Smart Refresh and adblock revenue recovery.

This means that while Media.net and Ezoic are both good options, if you want dedicated ad operations support and a lightweight, comprehensive ad stack, your best option is Snigel.

If you make at least $300/day, publish original content, and bring in whitelisted traffic, Snigel’s machine learning-powered ad stack lets you get the highest possible bids for a wide range of ad formats without compromising your site's health. On average, our publishers experience a 30%+ revenue increase. To get started, contact us today.