In this MonetizeMore vs Ezoic comparative study, we are going to look at two of the best ad revenue optimization platforms currently available and help you find out which one is a better fit for you.
Let’s get started.
MonetizeMore vs Ezoic: Ease of setup
Not every publisher is tech-savvy. So platforms must make it as easy as possible for users to get started. Setting up MonetizeMore is much quicker and easier than setting up Ezoic.
During setup, Ezoic requires Name Server Implementation. This means that you have to change the CNAME records in your domain control panel. You will also have to create a domain alias for your primary domain. This process gives Ezoic unrestricted access to your website – members can lose full control of their website (which is never a good idea). The long process it takes to set up does not seem worthwhile either.
On the other hand, MonetizeMore uses a JS integration to set up. With the off-page setup, you only have to paste a few lines of code in one area of your general website like the header or footer. JS integration is very convenient to use. And if you have a WordPress site, you can easily use a WordPress plugin to inject the code into your site.
Even though Ezoic can support JS integration, they recommend that their users use the less secure process which is Name Server Implementation.
Apart from this, some publishers have complained that Ezoic was slowing down their website load speed which can adversely affect SEO rankings and with time, ad revenue.
Comparison of other features
Let’s consider some important features that both tools offer and how they fare against each other.
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Publisher analytics
Ezoic and Ezoic alternatives offer analytics to help publishers drive higher revenue. In Ezoic’s analytics, you can monitor how factors like the infrastructure of your website, audiences, and even SEO affect your bottom line. Ezoic places a lot of emphasis on how search engine optimization and content creation affect the ads on your website.
From my experience, MonetizeMore offers more in-depth analytics for publishers. The reporting dashboard brings all your ad revenue sources together in one place so you can uncover opportunities to help boost your ad revenue. With all your revenue data in one place, it becomes easier to uncover any ad revenue issues that might occur.
Not only that, MonetizeMore allows publishers to monitor their advertising partners for revenue discrepancies. Not only will this help publishers detect potential ad setup issues, but it also ensures that ad networks are honest. MonetizeMore also offers revenue attribution software. The software makes it easy to measure the value of each user session and map your audience development campaigns by UTM parameters. This will help you understand which of your campaigns are profitable.
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Header bidding Implementation
Ezoic allows its publishers to implement header bidding on their websites. With Ezoic’s setup wizard, publishers can add prebuilt and preconfigured server-side header bidding on their websites. There is also a Mediation feature that makes it easy to add ad partners and also track how each of them performs.
MonetizeMore also allows publishers to implement header bidding using a dedicated ad platform called PubGuru. As a user, PubGuru offers a lot more benefits than other header wrapper technology solutions. One of the main benefits of PubGuru is its unified reporting interface. It helps publishers to build an optimized ad inventory and also optimizes your header bidding setup automatically. Other benefits of PubGuru are auto bid scaling, custom adapters for each header bid network, and machine learning to help maximize bid value.
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Security
A report on bad bots from Imperva shows that bad bots accounted for 24.1% of all web traffic. And as a publisher, invalid traffic is a major threat to your website and ad revenue earning potential.
On Ezoic’s website, I couldn’t find any feature or tool for directly combating invalid or bot traffic. Although, they are a Cloudflare partner. In an article, Ezoic recommended using Cloudflare to filter out bots through your CDN or host.
On the other hand, MonetizeMore has a dedicated tool called Traffic Cop to help combat invalid traffic. Traffic Cop uses advanced machine learning with sophisticated fingerprinting algorithms to identify and block ad fraud. Some of the benefits of Traffic Cop include invalid traffic (IVT) detection, IVT prevention (both general and sophisticated SIVT), and access to Traffic Quality Report and Ad Setup Policy Violations Reports (Ad Stacking and Content Policy report).
Publisher-friendly platform
In this section, we will be looking at how user-friendly both platforms are from my point of view.
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User interface
Both MonetizeMore and Ezoic have dashboards to help publishers manage their ads, but MonetizeMore has a more intuitive and publisher-friendly interface. The PubGuru dashboard allows you to effectively understand your ad inventory. It brings all your ad revenue sources together and makes it easy to monitor and diagnose issues that will affect your ad revenue.
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Data and dependability
MonetizeMore provides unified data reporting and allows you to compare the performance of your bidders across 50+ ad networks. You can also get revenue discrepancy data on your advertising partners by measuring your GAM Revenue data against Ad Network Revenue data. I found the reporting on Ezoic for the same issues above to be basic.
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Educational material
MonetizeMore has an in-depth blog that covers a lot of topics on ad optimization and resources for publishers. Ezoic also has a comprehensive blog where that covers a variety of topics. But MonetizeMore takes it a step further with the course platform – PubGuru University. The platform trains publishers on Advanced Ad Optimization, Google AdSense, Google AdX, Google Ad Manager, and more!
Pricing
MonetizeMore follows a performance-based revenue-sharing model. This means that they make money when they deliver value for your publishing business. This shows that they are confident that they will deliver results for publishers. Ezoic, on the other hand, uses a subscription-based model.
I find that Ezoic’s subscription-based model can be unfair to publishers at times. What do I mean?
The base plan is $49 if the publisher gets revenue of up to $1000/mo.
If the publisher revenue grows to $2,500/mo, the amount paid to Ezoic rises to $124/mo. This is a 153.06% increase in price (from $49 to $124). Not only that, if a publisher’s revenue is more than $1000, they will have to pay the $124/mo as they no longer qualify for the first paid tier. So the publisher will be paying a higher cost even though he/she hasn’t significantly increased their publisher revenue earnings.
Rounding up: MonetizeMore Vs Ezoic
So which is better, MonetizeMore or Ezoic? Well, both platforms are great in their own right for yield management. However, MonetizeMore is a more feature-rich platform, offering quite a few things that are suitable for bigger publishers, including a tool for combating ad fraud (Traffic Cop), a dedicated header bidding wrapper technology (PubGuru), and unified reporting.
Note: This blog post is based on the publisher’s personal experience, and the use case may vary for other publishers.
