Everything you need to know about Journey by Mediavine [2026]

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Want to get high paying ads on your site, but don’t have the pageviews for a high paying ad company like Mediavine or Raptive? Journey is your answer! Here’s everything you need to know about Journey by Mediavine.

One of the biggest problems new bloggers and smaller websites face is that it’s hard to get high paying ads when you don’t have sufficient pageviews. The best paying ad management companies, like Mediavine and Raptive have minimum requirements of around 25,000 pageviews per month.

(Raptive have recently dropped their minimum requirement to 25,000 pageviews per month. Mediavine have also recently changed their minimum requirement to ‘sites generating at least $5,000 per year in ad revenue’ – which for an average site will probably work out out at something similar to 25,000 monthly pageviews.)

So if you have less than 25,000 pageviews, what can you do?

Journey by Mediavine could be the solution you’ve been looking for!

But what exactly is Journey by Mediavine? How does it work? And what are the requirements?

Here’s everything you need to know about Journey by Mediavine…

**NOTE: Mediavine have recently made some significant changes that came into effect on 15th January 2026 – most notably that website owners will be able to join Journey with just 1,000 monthly sessions. This article outlines the new situation.**

What is Journey by Mediavine?

Journey is an ad management solution for smaller websites, and those at the start of their blogging journey.

Journey allows bloggers and website owners to begin monetizing their traffic from just 1,000 sessions – much less than Mediavine’s usual requirement of $5,000 in annual ad revenue.

Better still, Journey is powered by Mediavine’s first class ad technology and focuses on delivering high-quality, optimized ads while maintaining good user experience. (Maintaining a good UX is extremely important for traffic growth!)

Bloggers who want to monetize via ads from Journey by Mediavine must first install Grow, a Mediavine plugin that enables bloggers to install ads quickly and start earning from their content as soon as possible.

All of this means Journey makes it possible for smaller websites to start earning ad income sooner, and offers better RPMs than most other ad management solutions for smaller websites.

Who is Journey by Mediavine for?

Journey is for smaller bloggers who get at least 1,000 sessions per month but have not yet reached $5,000 per year in ad revenue or 25,000 pageviews per month.

Once you hit $5,000 per year in ad revenue or 25,000 pageviews per month you will most likely be eligible to join Mediavine ‘Official’ or Raptive.

What are the minimum requirements to join Journey by Mediavine?

To be eligible for Journey, a site must meet the following criteria:

• 1,000 monthly sessions: Typically you will need a minimum of 1,000 sessions per month to get ads with Journey by Mediavine. However it’s not just about minimum traffic requirements. There’s actually quite a bit more to it…
• Sufficient premium traffic: Mediavine says, “Traffic from some countries monetizes at a higher rate than others. We evaluate your site’s traffic for many things to determine eligibility, and one of the metrics we look at are the countries of origin. Traffic from the US monetizes at the highest rate, but we do not require a certain amount of US traffic. We do require enough ‘premium’ traffic to be sure your site is going to offer audiences that advertisers are interested in spending on.”
• Original, quality content. Your content should be original, high quality, and genuinely helpful to the intended reader.
• An engaged audience of human readers. During the onboarding process, Mediavine will verify that your traffic is from real humans and not purchased, artificial, or bot traffic.
• A site that is well-organized and easy to navigate. You should have an About Me page, which you should link to in your main navigation menu or in the footer. The actual content on your site should be well organized and easy to find on your website. And your content should be well structured, with paragraphs, sub-headings and images, to make it easy and enjoyable to read for your intended audience.
• Brand safe content. Advertisers are only looking to spend on brand safe content. (Content that may be flagged for brand safety issues can include: violence, weapons, nudity, hacking and illegal activity. Read more about brand safety at Mediavine.)
• Content which is regularly updated. Websites with lots of poor quality, out of date or stale content will not be eligible to join Mediavine.
• Running Grow on your website: If you are interested in getting Journey by Mediavine ads on your website, you’ll first need to install Grow on your website. Grow is a plugin that Mediavine uses to gather details about your traffic which they will then use to evaluate your site and decide if it is eligible to join Journey. 

How does Journey work?

To apply to Journey, you must first install Grow by Mediavine on your site and run the plugin for 30 days. Then your site will be evaluated in order to join Journey.

Ready to get started with Journey by Mediavine?

Ready to get started with Journey? Here’s how:

1. Create a free Grow account
2. Install the Grow plugin on your website
3. Apply to Journey. 
4. Once Grow is installed and you’ve applied for Journey, Mediavine begin evaluating your site to determine your eligibility for Journey ads.
5. While you wait, you can use Grow’s features to increase your traffic and grow your audience.
6. When your site is ready, Mediavine will reach out with an invitation to join Journey and begin serving Journey ads on your website.

How do you get to 1,000 sessions fast?

If you are still a long way off 1,000 sessions, don’t despair! There is a lot you can do to get there faster:

• Build rock solid SEO foundations (This should be your #1 priority)
• Niche down and build topical authority
• Do keyword research to find Gold Nugget Keywords
• Write lots of high quality content that is truly helpful to your intended audience
• Work hard on your internal linking and overall user experience
• Improve your website’s E-E-A-T

READ MORE >>> How to increase traffic to your blog

How is Journey by Mediavine different to Google Adsense?

Both Journey by Mediavine and Google Adsense offer smaller publishers with lower traffic volumes the opportunity to earn money from ads. However there are some big differences:

1. There is no minimum traffic requirement for AdSense, whereas the minimum traffic requirement for Journey is 1,000 monthly sessions.
2. The RPMs with AdSense are much lower than with Journey by Mediavine. (You can see here quite how low RPMs are for Google AdSense. See below for more details about Journey RPMs.)
3. Google AdSense offers much less sophisticated ad management tools than Journey. Journey’s ad management tools will give you much more control over your ad formats, ad placements and ad optimization.
4. Journey uses Mediavine’s top class ad tech, which means your Journey ads will be optimized for speed, UX and revenue. Google AdSense does not, which means AdSense may significantly slow your site down and give a poor UX. Both of these things can prevent your site from growing.

Although it may be tempting to try and get Google AdSense on your site as soon as possible, I strongly recommend you don’t, and instead wait until you have the 1,000 sessions required to join Journey.

The money you will get from AdSense will not be worth the significant disadvantages in terms of UX and site speed that come from having Google AdSense on your site. And if you wait until you can join Journey before monetizing with ads, you will likely get to the 1,000 session threshold faster.

If you want to monetize before you get to 1,000 sessions, I recommend creating and selling a digital product rather than getting AdSense – you are likely to earn more money from digital products than AdSense and you will not hurt your UX and site speed. In fact, launching a digital product may actually boost your SEO and get you to that 1,000 session threshold faster!

How does Journey differ from Mediavine ‘Official’?

The big difference between Mediavine Journey and Mediavine ‘Official’ is the minimum traffic and income requirements:

• To get into Journey you will need at least 1,000 monthly sessions and there is no requirement for your site to already be earning ad income.
• To get into Mediavine ‘Official’ your site must already be earning at least $5,000 per year in ad income. There is no minimum sessions or pageviews requirement for Mediavine ‘Official’, but to be earning $5,000 per year in ad revenue you’re looking at something in the region of 25,000 pageviews per month.

On the backend, Journey by Mediavine offers smaller websites full access to their top class ad tech, which is optimized for ad income, speed and user experience, as well as Mediavine’s first-party data and identity solutions.

However, bloggers who use Journey will have fewer controls in their ad dashboards and less detailed reporting. For example, Journey publishers won’t have as much flexibility regarding certain ad placements, and they will need to embed video content hosted on another platform, like YouTube or Vimeo. (With Mediavine ‘Official’, you can embed video content directly with Mediavine.)

Journey is also primarily a self-service platform, with automated onboarding and less support, while Mediavine ‘Official’ provides dedicated support and hands on management for larger publishers. 

On the monetization side of things, Journey is kept as an entirely separate offering to advertisers. This is a good thing! By keeping Journey and Mediavine separate in the ad exchanges, brands have more choice about where to spend their money to reach their target audiences – which ultimately means more money for both Journey publishers and Mediavine ‘Official’ publishers!

Essentially, Journey acts as a gateway for newer, smaller bloggers to start earning ad income with fewer features and a more ‘self-service’ feel, while Mediavine ‘Official’ offers a full ad management solution with more advanced features and full support for established websites that have higher pageviews.

If I’m close to Journey’s threshold, should I apply to Journey now or wait?

If you want ads on your site and you are getting close to that 1,000 session mark, you should definitely apply to Mediavine Journey, so you can start monetizing as soon as you meet all of Journey’s requirements.

In fact, even if you are nowhere near that 1,000 session mark, you can still install Grow. Running Grow can help you grow your traffic more quickly, whilst also allowing Mediavine to gather the information they need to evaluate your site – so you can start running ads as soon as your site is ready!

However, you should also consider whether you want to get ads on your site so soon. Having ads on your site – even really good ads from a reputable company like Mediavine – will almost certainly slow your site and make the UX worse for your readers. This could slow your traffic growth and mean it will take longer to reach the threshold needed to get into Mediavine ‘Official’.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that if you are only getting 1,000 sessions per month, your ad revenue from Mediavine Journey is likely to be around $10-$30 per month. (See below for average RPMs from Mediavine Journey.) So you need to ask yourself if getting ads on your site is worth it for an income of $10-$30 per month. It might be better to focus on digital products in the first instance, where you could be earning something close to $300 per month with just 1,000 sessions, and get ads on your site at a later date when you have more traffic.

If I’m close to Mediavine Official’s threshold, should I apply to Journey now or wait?

In a word, yes! If you apply to Journey now, you can start earning ad income straight away. (Assuming you meet all of Journey’s requirements, of course!)

Once you’re running Journey ads, Mediavine will let you know when you’re close to the threshold for Mediavine ‘Official’ and they will get started on the additional site reviews that come with making that move. Then, once you hit you hit that $5,000 per year in ad revenue mark, you should be able to make a smooth transition over to Mediavine ‘Official’.

How old does my site have to be to apply for Journey by Mediavine?

Your site need to be at least four months old before you can start running Journey ads. This is because Mediavine’s ad partners require at least four months of domain history before they will bid on a new site.

However, even if your site is brand new, you can still run Grow. And Mediavine recommends that you do. Running Grow from the start will help you grow your traffic, while also enabling Mediavine to start gathering the information they need to evaluate your site.

As soon as your site is meets the requirements of Journey, Mediavine will contact you with an invitation to join Journey and start running ads on your site.

What is the revenue share for Journey?

Publishers with websites on Journey receive a 70% revenue share. This means for every $100 dollars your site earns in ad income, you will get $70 and Mediavine will get $30.

As your site grows, and becomes eligible for Mediavine ‘Official’, you will be able to get a higher revenue share – all the way up to 90% for the largest sites!

When will I get paid on Journey?

Just like with Mediavine ‘Official’, you will be paid on a Net 65 schedule. This means that you will be paid 65 days after the end of the month in which you earned that income from your ads.

So for example, if you earned $500 in ad income in January, you would be paid that income 65 days after the end of January. Or in other words, you would be paid that $500 on April 5th. If you earned $625 in February, you would be paid that $625 on May 5th and so on.

What kind of RPMs can you get with Mediavine Journey?

Mediavine has not released figures for average RPMs, however anecdotally Journey publishers are reporting that they are getting much higher RPMs than they were getting from the other ad management companies that available to smaller publishers. (Monumetric, She Media, Google Adsense etc.)

According to recent research the average RPM for Mediavine Journey is $11.15. However, the same research also showed that some bloggers were getting RPMs of $30+ from Journey.

As with any ad company, RPMs will depend on your niche and where your readers are located. For example, one blogger reported that she gets RPMs of $40-$49 on her drinks blog, whereas she only gets RPMs of $8-$33 on her software review blog.

Your earnings also depend on a variety of factors that are directly under your control…

How can you maximize your earnings from Journey?

There are lots of things you can do to maximize your Journey by Mediavine income. For example:

• Increase traffic: The #1 factor influencing earnings is traffic, so growing your blog traffic should be your #1 priority. And the best way to grow your traffic is Search Engine Optimization. Focus on implementing good SEO practices to grow your traffic and earn more from your ads.
• Ad optimization: Journey’s dashboard provides insights on ad performance and allows you to test different ad formats and ad placements, then analyze how they affect your revenue. By optimizing your ads you can increase your RPMs and grow your ad income.
• Use Journey’s tools: Journey also includes several special features and tools that help boost revenue without compromising user experience. For example, ‘Ad Refresh’, which ensures your ads refresh at the optimal rate to maximize clicks and views.

See this article for lots more ways to increase your ad income >>> 12 easy ways to grow your Mediavine ad income [2026]

Conclusion: Why choose Journey by Mediavine?

So, to recap, here are 5 strong reasons to choose Journey by Mediavine…

1. Early monetization: Journey only requires you to have 1,000 sessions per month. This is a much more achievable goal for new bloggers, and allows you to monetize your blog with ads long before you reach the threshold for Mediavine ‘Official’ or Raptive.
2. Better RPMs: According to recent research publishers on Journey get better RPMs than publishers on all the other ad management companies that serve smaller blogs.
3. Better UX: In the past, one of the problems with monetizing at 1,000 sessions was that you had to use ad management companies that were not optimized for speed and a positive UX. This meant putting ads on your site would usually slow your site down and deliver a poor UX… which would have a knock on effect on your traffic… meaning it would take even longer to get into Mediavine ‘Official’. Now you don’t have to choose! Journey offers superior ad technology, optimized for speed, UX and maximum earnings.
4. Scalability: As your traffic grows, publishers on Journey can smoothly transition into Mediavine Official. At which point, you can earn even more through additional ad formats, placements and optimizations.
5. Access to a top class ad management company: Mediavine is a highly trusted ad management with years of experience providing industry-leading ad solutions to some of the biggest websites on the internet, all designed with site speed, privacy and user experience in mind. With journey, you can get access to all of Mediavine’s experience and expertise, from just 1,000 pageviews!

Ready to get started with Journey by Mediavine?

Getting started with Journey is easy!

Simply create a Grow account, install the Grow plugin on your website, and follow the prompts to apply for Journey.

You’ll need to run Grow on your site for a minimum of 30 days, so the sooner you get started, the better!

(If you already have Grow installed on your site, simply log in to your Grow account and apply for Journey today.)

Over to you…

Are you already on Journey? We’d love to hear about your experiences! Let us know in the comment section below.

Or perhaps you have questions? Feel free to ask any questions you have about Mediavine Journey in the comments section.

More on this topic…

• How to make money with Mediavine ads [2026]
• 12 easy ways to grow your Mediavine income [2026]
• How long does it take to make money blogging in 2026? (Statistics from the Blogging Income Survey)
• How much do bloggers REALLY earn in 2026? (Statistics from the Blogging Income Survey)
• How to increase traffic to your blog in 2026: My 11 big secrets to going from 0 to over 1,000,000 monthly pageviews

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