Perfect Alternative for Google Adsense Optimization: Ezoic
Anyone who has ever dealt with Google Adsense optimization knows how time-consuming and unsatisfying it can be
The provider Ezoic is the perfect alternative to Google Adsense optimization. Actually, it’s not an alternative but Adsense on steroids.
What is Ezoic and how does it help with Adsense optimization?
Ezoic is a service for A/B testing of Google Adsense setups. Through “artificial intelligence” Ezoic helps to find the best ad setups with Google Adsense. Moreover, Ezoic is a kind of middleman for other web networks. So you don’t just get banners from the Google Adsense network, but from dozens of other ad networks, to which you would otherwise have to subscribe separately. This, in combination with the real-time auction for click prices, allows you to achieve much better click prices than with Google Adsense alone.
To do this, you simply log in to Ezoic, start the integration and let your account manager determine the individual ad positions
From this point on, the optimization runs on autopilot and you can watch the earnings increase almost daily
What are the requirements to join Ezoic?
The only requirements are:
- The website must already be approved for Google Adsense (however, in the Ezoic forum you can always read about publishers who have integrated Adsense only later)
- The website must have more than 10,000 pageviews per month (according to the Google Analytics report)
What results can I expect?
The normal returns on Google Adsense are already very sad to see
If you are not in high price CPC niches, the RPM is around 2-4 Euros (2-8 Euros per thousand pageviews)
In my specific case, the average ePMV with Adsense was 17.77 euros. More about the conversion from RPM to ePMV below.
After a few weeks of testing with Ezoic, the ePMV was already around 26 dollars – depending on the dollar exchange rate, an increase of around 30-35%.
The ePMV is a different metric than the RPM. The RPM is a key figure for advertisers and indicates the costs per 1000 impressions (pageviews). The ePMV is a metric for publishers and reflects the revenue per 1000 visitors (!).
What other benefits does Ezoic bring that you can’t achieve with just Adsense optimization?
Ezoic brings other privileges that you can forget about with just Adsense optimization
Number of ads
Google Adsense has strict guidelines regarding the number of ads per subpage. You can’t place more than 3 ads per subpage, otherwise you risk account suspension. With Ezoic, you can place as many ads as you want. At first glance, this sounds frivolous to impossible. However, if you look at how Ezoic works, it makes perfect sense
Ezoic not only places Google Adsense ads but also uses other display networks. Google Adsense, or Google’s Publisher Network, is only one of many providers whose ads are displayed via Ezoic.
Sticky Ads – also on desktop
Sticky ads, which stop when scrolling down and thus achieve better click-through rates, are actually forbidden with Adsense. But Ezoic can do that too. This is based on the same principle as above. Ezoic is more or less the middleman for the ads and therefore different guidelines apply than with pure Adsense.
What is the best way to integrate Ezoic to optimize Adsense?
Ezoic offers 3 ways to integrate.
Integration via a plugin
Ezoic offers a WordPress plugin, but this is only recommended for the first test of Ezoic. The plugin increases the loading time of the website significantly and especially the time to first byte shoots up from the otherwise usual 0.3 seconds to up to 2 seconds. This significantly clouds the user experience and bounce rates increase.
However, for a short test over 1-2 weeks, the integration via the plugin is a fast and convenient solution.
Integration via the name servers of Ezoic
The integration via the nameservers of Ezoic is officially recommended by Ezoic. However, it is not that easy, especially if you have a .DE domain. Denic performs a so-called predelegation check for each .DE domain before assigning new nameservers. This simply tests whether the domain is already registered as valid with the new name servers or not
From Ezoic you get only two nameservers. If you run the predelegation check with these, it always fails. If you simply deposit the new nameservers with your provider anyway, the provider will only change the nameservers for 1-2 minutes until their predelegation check also fails.
The solution: ask Ezoic Support for all 4 nameservers and store them completely with the provider in the nameserver settings:
- hyena.ezoicns.com
- tetra.ezoicns.com
- zorse.ezoicns.com
- dingo.ezoicns.com
If you deposit all 4 nameservers at once, the predelegation check will not fail anymore.
The change of the nameservers can take up to 48 hours. You can test the changeover here, for example, by entering your domain and then checking the A-record. Only when the same IP is displayed all over the world, the changeover is complete
During these 48 hours the website may be unavailable. So one should schedule important changes before or after that.
Integration via Cloudflare (my favorite)
Ezoic offers an app for Cloudflare in the dashboard. If you already run your website with Cloudflare anyway, the fastest and most convenient way is to integrate Ezoic through the Cloudflare app. With this variant I have also achieved the best pagespeed scores so far. The time to first byte is on average 0.8 seconds – quite bad, but overall a minor evil.
In the above table, publishers may be startled by the “Fully Loaded” column. This indicates just under 10 seconds. However, JavaScript requests are also included here, which inevitably occur due to Ezoic, since the advertising banners are subsequently loaded via “Lazy Load” when scrolling down. The point “Fully Loaded” is only reached when the browser does not send any new requests for at least 2 seconds
Common tools like Google’s Test Pagespeed Insights do not consider this value.
The above page scores 94 points in Pagespeed Insights without Ezoic and still 84 points with Ezoic. Personally, I can cope with the loss and have not noticed any increase in bounce rates so far
Back to Cloudflare: you just install the Cloudflare app in the Ezoic dashboard and wait a few hours. In Cloudflare you will then see some additional entries in the DNS records.
What does Ezoic cost?
To start with, Ezoic always collects the full revenue of the last banner on a website. As you can see from the statistics above, this doesn’t break the overall model. Based on this model, you can theoretically go on forever.
If you have a lot of visitors on your website, after some time you will be offered the Ezoic premium program. Here one pays a monthly flat rate to Ezoic. In return, Ezoic delivers ads that result in an even higher ePMV than the standard ads. Some publishers report an additional ROI of almost 60% just by participating in the premium program.
Is that it?
Ezoic offers another big plus in addition to various apps
“Big Data Analytics” – the big dream of every publisher. Google Analytics and the Google Adsense dashboard look like two rusty Trabants next to it. With Big Data Analytics, you get insight into the most important metrics for publishers, broken down to each individual page. I.e. revenue per subpage, alongside bounce rate, dwell time etc.
Ezoic and the Search Console – Optimize keywords specifically for Adsense
In addition, Big Data Analytics can be connected to the Google Search Console. This gives you an overview of the sales data PER KEYWORD. It can be used to find out the most valuable keywords and optimize them specifically.
Further report features:
- Subpages without sales
- Sales per WordPress author
- Sales by content length
- Sales by content age
… and dozens of other metrics.
So I’m visibly excited, as you might guess from my euphoric writing style. Ezoic is an integral part of my monetization strategy and I highly recommend it to any publisher who meets the entry criteria above
There are some links to Ezoic placed in this article that are affiliate links. I receive a commission when someone clicks on them and subsequently signs up with Ezoic.