How Much Do Premium Ad Network Publishers Make? (30,060-Site Study)

How much do niche websites actually earn once they join a premium ad network? Most answers online come from income reports — self-selected, unverified, and skewed toward winners. This study takes a different route: we compiled the publicly published seller lists of Mediavine, Raptive (formerly AdThrive), Ezoic and Journey by Mediavine into a single directory of 30,060 publishers, matched each with traffic and authority data, and produced a model-based revenue estimate for every site.

This is the largest publicly available snapshot of the premium display-ad ecosystem. All figures below are estimates from our model (traffic × network × audience mix) — not actual earnings. Read them as scale and direction, not bookkeeping.

The headline numbers

Across the full pool:

• 30,060 active publishers across the four networks
• 3.85 billion combined monthly visits
• An estimated $190M+/month in display ad revenue across the pool (model estimate)
• 8,795 sites (29%) estimated at $1,000+/month
• 3,148 sites (10.5%) estimated at $5,000+/month
• 1,811 sites (6%) estimated at $10,000+/month — and 485 sites above $50,000/month

Roughly one in ten premium-network publishers clears $5,000/month from display ads alone. Sponsorships, affiliate income and products stack on top of that.

Median economics by network

Each network's published entry requirements create a different quality floor, and the data mirrors it exactly:

| Network | Publishers | Median visits/mo | Median DR | Median est. revenue/mo | | -------------------- | ---------- | ---------------- | --------- | ---------------------- | | Raptive | 6,835 | 39,718 | 38 | $1,796 | | Mediavine | 8,732 | 18,704 | 32 | $676 | | Journey by Mediavine | 7,634 | 4,069 | 8 | $46 | | Ezoic | 6,859 | 3,551 | 12 | $34 |

What to take from this:

• Raptive sites are a different weight class — the median publisher draws ~40,000 monthly visits (consistent with its 100,000-pageview bar) and an estimated $1,796/month.
• Mediavine's median site sits around 18,700 visits and an estimated $676/month, matching its 50,000-session requirement.
• Journey by Mediavine and Ezoic are the proving grounds: medians in the $34–46 range. These are where tomorrow's Mediavine applicants are today.

Browse the pools yourself: Raptive publishers, Mediavine publishers, Ezoic publishers, Journey publishers.

The authority ladder: DR vs revenue

Domain Rating correlates with revenue, but the ladder's shape is instructive:

| DR band | Sites | Median est. revenue/mo | | -------- | ------ | ---------------------- | | DR 0–15 | 11,176 | $37 | | DR 15–30 | 6,515 | $203 | | DR 30–50 | 8,309 | $694 | | DR 50+ | 4,054 | $3,586 |

Median revenue grows roughly 5× from each band to the next. But medians hide the outliers — and the outliers are where the opportunities live. More on those below.

Where the money concentrates: niches

The single most striking fact in the dataset: food and recipe sites dominate. 5,381 publishers — nearly one in five — sit in the food & drink/cooking category, with a median estimated revenue of $1,400/month at a median DR of 35.

Top categories by publisher count:

| Niche | Sites | Median est. revenue/mo | Median DR | | -------------------------------- | ----- | ---------------------- | --------- | | Food & drink / cooking & recipes | 5,381 | $1,400 | 35 | | Travel & tourism | 1,796 | $418 | 29 | | Home & garden | 840 | $475 | 35 | | Games (consoles & accessories) | 721 | $736 | 22 | | Crafts & hobbies | 684 | $890 | 33 | | Education | 610 | $450 | 33 | | Faith & beliefs | 483 | $232 | 26 | | Home improvement | 470 | $436 | 31 | | News & media | 430 | $535 | 38 | | Beauty & cosmetics | 422 | $254 | 28 |

Two standouts for builders:

• Games sites reach $736 median at just DR 22 — a genuinely lower-authority bar than food's DR 35 for comparable money. Tools, calculators and guide content rank on page quality, not backlink mass.
• Crafts ($890 median at DR 33) and education punch above their weight relative to their traffic levels.

Which niches are rising right now

Month-over-month visit trends (September 2026 data month) show where momentum sits:

• Education: 55% of sites growing (+2% MoM or better) — the strongest momentum in the pool
• Romance & relationships: 51% rising
• Faith & beliefs: 46% rising
• Reference/dictionaries & encyclopedias: 46% rising
• Crafts: 45% rising — and already at a healthy $890 median

Entering a niche while 45–55% of incumbents are still growing is a very different bet from entering one where 60% are shrinking.

The outliers: low DR, serious money

Medians say "DR 50+ earns $3,586." The outliers say "not required." From the pool, all estimates:

• jobcountry.io — DR 2, ~3.4M visits, estimated ~$298k/month (Ezoic, jobs & employment)
• firstdown.studio — DR 15, ~1M visits, estimated ~$287k/month (fantasy sports)
• infinite-fusion.net — DR 10, ~437k visits, estimated ~$243k/month (games)
• theweeklyad.com — DR 8, ~780k visits, estimated ~$171k/month (grocery deals)
• gamestegy.com — DR 13, ~2.3M visits, estimated ~$91k/month (games, Mediavine)

The pattern: utility content — tools, calculators, databases, deal trackers — wins on usefulness and search intent, not on link authority. These are exactly the profiles our low-DR screening is built to surface.

Geography: why US traffic matters

69% of the pool's sites draw their largest audience share from the United States. US-first audiences command several times the ad rates of the global average, which is why two sites with identical traffic can land on very different revenue estimates. When you size a niche, the visitor geography matters as much as the visit count.

How to use this study

1. If you're choosing a network: match your traffic level to the ladder above — Journey/Ezoic at a few thousand visits, Mediavine around 50k sessions, Raptive at 100k+ pageviews.
2. If you're choosing a niche: weigh the medians here against your ability to compete — games and crafts offer lower DR bars; food offers the deepest market but the strongest incumbents.
3. If you're hunting for proven models: study the low-DR outliers linked above, then browse the directory filtered to your target niche.

About the data

PublisherAtlas compiles publishers from the four networks' publicly published seller lists, enriches each with third-party traffic intelligence, public RDAP/WHOIS records, and produces model-based revenue estimates. All revenue figures in this study are estimates, not reported earnings. See our methodology for how the model works and its limitations.

Explore the full directory free at PublisherAtlas — every site in this study, with traffic, DR, and revenue estimates.