Ezoic Ads Review

Ezoic Ads review (2021)

Ezoic Ads review *Please note this post may contain affiliate links, The opinions in this post are all my own and based on my blogging experiences *.

There are many ad networks to choose from for blog monetization. Some of the popular ones are Google Ad-sense, Media.net, Infolinks, and many others. I had heard of good reviews about Ezoic from many publishers. So I definitely wanted to give it a try when I was contacted by their account manager. At the time, I was running no ads on my website. It has been four months since my site first went live with Ezoic, and am happy to see good progress. I was able to generate ad revenue and even improve metrics like page views, sessions and have a better organic search with my keywords.

What is Ezoic?

Ezoic is a Google-certified publisher that provides a platform for publishers to monetize and improve the usability of their website. Ezoic is not just an ad network company, but also a platform with multiple products for publishers. You get ad income and in addition, you also get access to many applications, tools, and a suite of data analytics tools. Their tools and apps can provide your website with many benefits including a better user experience and improved website speed. The detailed data analytics using metrics like the landing page, device, and so on helps you get specific ad revenue. Ezoic uses machine learning and a powerful data-driven AI system that helps publishers maximize their earnings and improve user experience.

Their popular Ad Tester Tool finds the best layouts that will help publishers obtain maximum earnings, along with keeping users engaged on the site. It does this by testing different combinations of ads based on sizes, location, and number. Using metrics like traffic source, device type, or location, Ezoic's AI testing learns how visitors react to each ad placed on a site. It then makes smart decisions about which location and sizes to show for each session with automatic intelligent optimizations. This significantly helps in increased ad revenue and improved user experience of the site.

How do you apply and setup Ezoic?

Click here to apply and start testing Ezoic. They have an initial requirement of 10K monthly pageviews and visits of website traffic to qualify. However, there are sites that have been approved with lower numbers close to 10K as well. Ezoic looks for websites that publish high-quality content that is useful to the reader and with consistent traffic. Your site needs to be compliant with Google’s policies as Ezoic is a Google-certified publisher. It is free and there is no starting fee, but they collect ad revenue from a small ad placed on the page below the fold. This can be removed for a monthly fee if you do not want it as well. They also do not have any contracts or agreements that you need to sign up for.

A Google Certified Publishing Partner. Learn more about Ezoic here.

Most of the initial setup is done by their account manager assigned for each publisher. They are extremely knowledgeable, guide you through all the steps with detailed documents, and are available to answer any queries that you may have. Joshua, my account manager made the process very simplified and was always prompt to answer any questions or clarifications I had. (Thanks Josh!). There are three ways to set up Ezoic, using name server integration, Cloudflare CDN, and WordPress plugin. The first two are preferred as they give you full Ezoic functionality. I used the name server integration method.

Some of the things that was involved in the setup for my site:

• Disable the antibot security captcha if you are using a host like Siteground which is easily done by filing a ticket with your host.
• Point existing name servers on your host to Ezoic name servers which allows Ezoic to sit between your host and your users. This helps to optimize the ad layout per user basis.
• Apply for Google’s Ad exchange. This is where the ad demand comes from. It is like a premium version of what Ad-sense does and with Ezoic you get free access to it.
• Setup an ad.txt file using the Adtxtmanager.com tool which is a free Ezoic tool.
• The ad placeholders for your site will then be set up by the account manager at various locations. These locations are possible places where your ad can potentially show but not necessarily.

Each placeholder will have different ad sizes or numbers that the system is testing in that location. As the system learns more about your site and users, it will show users the ideal ad layout over time. They do not want to overwhelm users with ads . Instead, they improve user experience and revenue along with it.

Once you finish the initial setup with Ezoic, you are all done The Ad tester will automatically do its job of what layout to show for each user. The publishers can thus focus on content and other aspects of the website and not worry about setting up ads or maximizing ad income. As more information is fed into the Ai system, with time your site will only get better with the ad configuration.

Ezoic Ad reviews - Why is Ezoic popular and loved by publishers?

• It is free for publishers and there are no contracts bound to it. You can quit anytime you want.
• Ezoic can be turned on and off with a few clicks.
• Increased revenue in comparison to many ad networks.
•  The minimum payment threshold is $20 but you can set this to a value that suits you. This ensures you get paid something every month.
• You can run ads from other networks along with Ezoic. You can also run tests to compare how they perform alongside each other.
• You are in control of what, where, and how many ads you want to display on your site.
• You can decide what percentage of traffic you want to send to your device like mobile or desktop. The same with how many users to send to the original site vs Ezoics layout
• With access to Ezoic’s CDN, you automatically update your site to run per Google’s SEO site speed recommendations. The contents are loaded first to improve your site’s time to interact and then everything else is loaded. This helps with better SEO rankings and better UX for each user. The page-load is expected to go up deliberately to improve site health and user satisfaction.
• With big data analytics, you can see optimization progress. It has powerful insights about UX improvements, revenue per landing pages, EPMV per category, article length with all the data reports that are available. You may not be able to see such in-depth information using the free version of Google Analytics.
• You don’t need to be approved for Google Ad-sense to use Ezoic. But if you have an existing account, you can always connect your Ezoic account to your Google Ad-sense account and pull up historical data. There is a high chance of getting approved for Google Ad exchange if you are already approved for Ezoic. 
• Ezoic ensures you will never be in violation of any advertiser's terms of service and so you have peace of mind.
• Very knowledgeable customer support and all publishers are assigned with an initial account manager to help with initial set up.

Increase ad revenue 50-250% with Ezoic

There are many more benefits to using the Ezoic platform. Here are a few that I am yet to try out.

• Ezoic’s site speed and caching tool Site speed Accelerator. I have not started using that yet as I am okay for now with my WP site speed caching plugins, I may give it a try soon. It is said to improve website speed phenomenally.
• Google Amp Converter is a free tool that converts your website pages into Google AMP compliant mobile site. This maintains your desktop site’s functionality and compatible with ad setup.
• Ezoic has a layout tester as well which tests your page layout rather than ad layout. Performing AI tests Ezoic’s testing system will determine which layout is suited for which user segment and display the best layout based on the data.

Site speed is something that is affected by adding any ads from any ad network. However, it has been of negligible impact for now and I am satisfied with the caching plugins that I am currently using. I may need to work on improving site speed in the future and am yet to explore Ezoic's available tools mentioned above for that.

Overall, I am extremely happy using Ezoic for my site and would highly recommend it. I think it is a great option for small to mid-level website publishers and websites with 10K monthly pageviews who are looking for monetization. It is very beneficial for small sites like mine that are growing. Hope this compiled review of my experiences setting up and using Ezoic is helpful. If you have any questions, you can also directly write to me at nishainspiresn@gmail.com or shadesofnr@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

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