I’ve been using Ezoic to monetize sites for almost two years now, and I’m embarrassed to say that it took me until around six months ago to discover the AdSense mediation option.
If you’ve used Ezoic before, or are a current user, then you already know that there is a massive amount of settings and options that you can tweak in your dashboard.
And if you’re like me, then you’ve likely just signed up and left things alone unless your Ezoic account rep has offered to make some changes for you.
It’s embarrassing right? Cause I’ve just been leaving money on the table.
Well, the good news is that I’ve been working with Ezoic to optimize my site – and I’m going to share every single thing that I did so that you can also improve your EPMV.
So, grab a cup of coffee, roll up those sleeves, and let’s get to work!
**And as always, I’m an affiliate marketer and this post probably contains affiliate links, meaning I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.
9 Easy Ways To Optimize Your Site For Higher EPMVs With Ezoic
So, if you’re wondering how you can improve the EPMV on your Ezoic sites, then open up your Ezoic account in another tab so we can get to work.
And if you don’t yet have Ezoic running ads for you on your site, then sign up now and then come back here to follow these steps.
1. How Many Ad Placeholders Do You Have? (hint: not enough)
One of the first things that you likely had to do with your Ezoic account was set up those ad placeholders.
I remember when I first got my Ezoic account and I logged in and saw a screen like the screenshot above. Previously I was just using AdSense code and the Ad Inserter plugin, and then here I was having to set up ad testing.
wtf?
Honestly, that was where I was at with it. I’m not ashamed to tell you that it was overwhelming as someone coming into it with a history of only ever using AdSense.
So, if you find the ad placeholders a bit intimidating, then I totally get you.
But the truth is that this is all pretty simple in the end.
I’m not super technical, so let me explain this to you the best way that I can — you need the ad placeholders so that the behind the scenes AI can work it’s magic to determine the best areas of your website to show ads.
But wait, there’s more!
That AI takes things to a whole new level by determining things like which ad locations are best by device AND by user location (IP address). But it’s not just all about ad location – that AI also tests out different ad sizes.
There is a lot more to the Ezoic backend that I ever would have imagined.
So, I told you all that to get you here to the really important information — the more ad placeholders that you have for your site, then the better it is for you. Because this gives the AI more testing options.
Now, I know what you might be thinking…you don’t want to create 15 ad placeholders because you don’t want 15 ads showing up on your site at once and killing the user experience.
Good news – that’s not how it works!
The AI rotates as between those placeholders until it finds the winners and THAT is where the ads show up.
Just for a frame of reference, I just checked one of my sites and it has 19 placeholders currently (and another one has 25 of them!).
So, go crazy with that shit. Seriously. The more placeholders you create, then the better optimized your site ends up being for the ad placement.
2. Make Sure Previous Ads Are Wrapped
This tip might not apply to everyone, but if you had AdSense ads displaying on your site before signing up with Ezoic, then listen up!
If you have ad code on your site (like AdSense code in the Ad Inserter plugin), then you need to wrap those ads. (I was guilty of not wrapping all my ads!)
This is important for two reasons:
- it helps the AI better optimize your site
- it prevents you from getting a Google violation for showing too many ads on the page
I could write out the steps to wrapping those ads, but Ezoic already has a good resource on this. Give it a read here.
3. Make Sure Anchor Ads Are On For All Devices
On the Monetization tab of your Ezoic dashboard, in the Ad Tester section you will find a button labeled “Anchor Ad Settings.”
Click that button and make sure that you have anchor ads on for all devices.
I’m not sure why, but mine were ‘off’ for tablets and yours might be too.
And FYI, the reason you definitely want anchor ads on is that this is that sticky ad that’s at the bottom of the page.
4. Get Yourself An Ads.txt File
If you have an AdSense account, then you already know that Google suggests having one of these for your display ads.
The purpose of the ads.txt file is to help you get more advertisers and prevent counterfeit ad inventory in the supply chain.
Fortunately, Ezoic makes this super easy for you with their Ads.txt Manager site.
I won’t bore you with all the details on how to set this up because Ezoic already has a great resource for you to follow here. I followed those exact directions for my sites.
5. Let Ezoic Optimize All The Things!
On the Monetization tab of your Ezoic dashboard, in the Ad Tester section you will find a button labeled “Turn On/Off Settings.”
Click that button and let them optimize more things! Here’s what my settings look like now:
Previously, I think it was only the top four settings that I had turned on. You can choose whichever of those settings that you want on.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of the user experience with vignette ads and in-image ads, but you may want to test it and see what you think.
You can find instructions on doing this here.
And if you haven’t already done so, go to Settings, and then in the ‘Turn On Ezoic’ section you can click on the “Update Settings” button to let Ezoic do more of the heavy lifting on your site.
I’ve got mine set at 100% across the board now. Honestly, I don’t even know why I had it at only 90% to begin with.
6. Confirm Your Optimization Goals
A cool thing that you can do with Ezoic is instruct their AI on how to place ads according to your optimization goals. Goal options are:
- Revenue Focused
- User Experience Focused
- Balanced
- Custom Settings (you define)
Balanced is the default setting for all accounts, but I’ve recently changed over to Revenue Focused to increase the income I’m earning from my sites.
At first, I was afraid that I’d lose traffic or get angry emails from site visitors, but honestly things have been fine with this setting.
So, test it out for yourself and you might also be surprised.
7. Set Up AdSense Mediation
You probably already have an AdSense account, right? You need to link that to your Ezoic account and set up AdSense mediation.
I don’t know all the details behind why this improves your EPMV, but honestly it doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is improving my EPMV.
You can get this set up by going to your Ezoic Dashboard > Monetization > Enable Mediation.
And this is a super easy process. Ezoic has an easy to follow tutorial on this as well. Find it here.
I do remember this pending for a few days after I set it up, so expect that slight delay.
8. Speed Improvement With The Cache Setting
With this setting, you allow Ezoic to reset cache controls to improve speed for users when a host or plugin may be slowing things down. And, that can result in an improvement in the money your site brings in.
Here’s how to get to this setting –
- Go to the Speed tab in your Ezoic dashboard
- Caching app
- Setting
- Click “update cache setting” values
- Set “Override Cache Control Headers” to TRUE
That’s all you have to do for this one.
But if you’re crazy obsessed with site speed (like I was a few months back), then Ezoic has a recent blog post full of speed optimizations you can do to your site.
9. Link With Google Search Console
If you want to be able to better understand which pieces of content are bringing in the money and what type of content performs better with the ads, then linking your Ezoic account with Google Search Console is what you need.
It’s super easy to connect these two.
Just go to the SEO tab in your Ezoic dashboard, click on ‘Authorize’ and then the connection wizard walks you through the process.
Once you do this, Ezoic can show you which queries from search produce the highest EPMV and how ranking fluctuations impact revenue. Pretty nifty, eh?
Honestly, I’m really excited about this part because I think that I’ll be able to use the data to form/modify my content strategy the site.
Think about it, if I can see that a certain type of article brings in 3x the revenue of all the rest, then I can focus on creating that type of article. Yeah, I’m excited to get this data.
The Recap
So, I know that I’ve only got nine steps for you to follow but that they also seem kinda tedious. I’m not gonna lie, this is tedious work.
But the good news is that it actually doesn’t take all that long.
And the end result is possibly more money in your pocket. So, what have you got to lose, eh?
Feel free to circle back here a couple of weeks after you make the changes in your Ezoic account to let me know your results.
Hey, I’m Shawna. I make a living working from my laptop in places like London, Sydney, Dubai, Rome, Oslo, Bangkok, Las Vegas, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. I share how I do some of that on this website.
Hi Shawna!
I am a regular reader of your blog and I love receiving your posts in my inbox and reading them. They really increase my knowledge about blogging.
But as for Ezoic, I have some experiences to tell that differ from yours.
I initially connected Ezoic to a blog that I have on Blogspot (and that I will keep on that platform). Things worked out great: my income increased a lot, I got a lot of help from Ezoic agents to set up the ads, I took advantage of Ezoic’s cache and CDN … I was so happy with Ezoic that I decided to connect another blog, this one running on WordPress. Then things started going… not so well.
I think the main problem with Ezoic is that it takes control of your site, starting with the recommendation to redirect your DNS records directly to their servers. You lose the freedom to use plugins and tools of your choice, such as AMP, cache, or CDN. The technique of placing as many ad-placeholders as possible did not work for me, as Ezoic’s AI filled my pages with ads, up to the point of making them difficult to read comfortably (I even opted for the option to optimize the user experience, but it really wasn’t an improvement).
I decided to go back to AdSense when my site started showing “Origin error” messages periodically, and on several occasions, I had problems with my hosting provider due to excessive use of resources. All of that ended when I disconnected my site from Ezoic.
My humble opinion is that Ezoic is useful if you don’t care too much about making your site really shine. Go with Ezoic if you are satisfied that it generates a reasonable income. But if you take care of your site like it were a child of yours, and you like it to be perfect and beautiful, then it’s preferable to leave Ezoic aside and settle for the income that can be obtained with AdSense.
Hey Gustavo,
Thanks for letting me know about your experience. I only use Ezoic on WordPress sites and have noticed some differences in site speed depending on which integration method that you use. And when I added the site speed accelerator to a site, I had to disable WP Rocket and Imagify. So, I think the caching plugins only matter if you’re using Ezoic’s caching/SSA but I’m not 100% certain on that. I did recently learn that Ezoic has a page listing all the plugins, etc that they have compatibility issues with https://www.ezoic.com/compatibility/ I learned about this after trying to get Ezoic setup on a site hosted with Siteground.
I can’t say that I’ve had any issue with resource usage on my hosting account while using Ezoic. I even had site (on WPX) getting a few hundred thousand monthly views last year running Ezoic ads with zero issues. I’m sorry that I can’t really offer any help on fixing things, but I do thank you for sharing your experience.
Thanks for your answer! I guess it might also be a matter of scale because my site barely exceeds 10,000 monthly views. Perhaps Ezoic starts doing its magic when the site’s volume reaches higher levels.
yeah, I don’t have any other knowledge than you but what you’ve said makes sense. I guess the AI has to test all the ad placeholders and the higher your traffic, then the sooner it can pick the winners. I actually just added a new site to Ezoic with low traffic (like you mentioned), so I’ll have to pay close attention and see if I notice any differences compared to my higher traffic sites.
Thank you very nice topic, but I have a question what are the Ezoic policies that must be followed in order for me to be accepted.
Thank you.
I think it’s just 10,000 monthly visits. They don’t care which countries the traffic comes from.
hi.. belive me..
I did whatever you said.. still the epmv is 3 to 4 usd.
I was struck by your experience, Gustavo, especially the bit about “…Ezoic’s AI filled my pages with ads, up to the point of making them difficult to read comfortably.” This is exactly my experience with Ezoic, and as my site is aimed at education, this is not ideal. I have also opted for optimizing the user experience, and as far as I can see it has made no difference at all. My site has about a hundred thousand sessions a month, and several hundred thousand views, so I’m not sure quantity of users helps tune the AI properly.
I am seriously thinking of going back to AdSense. This would be a blow so far as income is concerned, as Ezoic has certainly made a difference on this score – and my site is expensive to run. However, I’m really concerned that it is well respected, so I’m beginning to think I have no choice.
You can limit the number of ads on ezoic. In your dashboard, under monetization, there is a feature to limit the total number of ads that will display on a page based on word count.
You may have to enable it under “Hidden Apps” first if you don’t see it in the list of things.
For example, I have four levels set up:
Pages under 400 words (Max 2 ads)
Pages between 400 and 800 words (Max 4 ads)
Pages between 800-1600 words (Max 6 ads)
Pages with more than 1600 words (Max 8 ads)