New Mediavine Requirements 2025: What Bloggers Need to Know

Last week, Raptive shook things up by dropping their entry requirement from 100,000 pageviews to just 25,000.

Mediavine clapped back with their own update … but their announcement wasn’t nearly as clear. So let’s unpack what’s actually changing, what it means for you, and whether it’s as exciting as it sounds.

Starting January 15, 2026, Mediavine will now accept any site that’s earned $5,000 USD in ad revenue over the past year. Their entry-level program, Journey, will also start allowing sites in with over 1,000 sessions.

This shift is 100% a response to the rise of AI and the chaos from the Helpful Content Update (HCU).

Ad networks are scrambling to keep creators happy, and keep their own bank accounts filled, as pageviews plummet across industries.

While the new tiers could be a good thing, they could become less attainable than the old 50k session requirement.

Mediavine No Longer Requires 50K Sessions to Join 😱

This is a huge and kinda shocking change, tbh.

Instead of focusing on traffic, Mediavine now requires a minimum amount of annual ad revenue.

Here’s how the new system works:

• To join Mediavine, you first need to qualify for their Journey program.
• Once your site earns $5,000 USD in ad revenue within the past 12 months, you’ll automatically be upgraded to Mediavine “Official” tier.
• If you’re already with another ad network, you can skip Journey entirely by submitting proof that you’ve earned $5K+ in the last year.

What You Get as a Mediavine “Official” Publisher

• Mediavine’s ad tech and fast-loading scripts
• A detailed reporting dashboard
• Access to beta tests and new ad units
• 7-day-a-week customer support
• Facebook community
• Help Center with blogging tips and monthly webinars
• Exclusive partner discounts (like with BigScoots)
• 75% revenue share (it used to be 80% when I was with them but apparently they dropped this more recently)

Rather than proving your worth with sessions, you now have to do it with income. Basically, Mediavine wants to know you’ll make them money before they let you in.

Side Note: Putting my skeptic glasses on for a second, I wonder how much this is going to skew all of their reports about how brilliant their publishers are. Hmm…

New Mediavine Tiers

Mediavine has always had tiers for publishers, but you could only see it when you were in your Mediavine dashboard.

Now, they’re being very open about it. And while I appreciate the transparency, it also feels a bit like a “keep climbing if you want the good stuff” kind of move.

Each tier adds more perks, but also higher revenue requirements that most bloggers will never touch.

Here’s how it all breaks down:

Note: Mediavine uses different terms for each tier, which makes it hard to understand how some benefits differ. I’ve done my best to interpret the data but they seem to have intentionally avoided an easy comparison chart that would have helped me out.

Official

• Entry point once you’ve earned $5,000 USD in ad revenue (or proven it from another network)
• Access to Mediavine’s ad tech, fast scripts, dashboard, community, and support
• 75% revenue share

Select

• $100,000 USD minimum ad revenue to join
• Everything from Official, plus:
  • Dedicated account manager, strategy team, and data analysts
  • Custom “Grow” setup from their specialists
  • Travel and networking perks
  • End-of-year business reporting
• 80% revenue share

Signature

• $250,000 USD minimum ad revenue to join
• Everything from Select, plus:
  • Quarterly business reporting
  • $1,500 USD budget annually for partner services (like Pinterest management or hosting)
  • Access to Mediavine sponsorship opportunities for retreats and masterminds
• 85% revenue share

Premiere

• $500,000 USD minimum ad revenue to join
• Everything from Signature, plus:
  • 2x per year engineering support for tech help
  • Small group coaching with Mediavine’s SEO partners
  • $5,000 USD annual budget for partner services
  • Annual Mediavine Premiere retreat
• 90% revenue share

Premiere Plus

• $1 million USD minimum ad revenue to join
• Everything from Premiere, plus:
  • Quarterly engineering support
  • Anonymized cohort analysis + benchmarking (aka competitive performance data)
  • $10,000 USD annual budget for partner services
  • Extra night + stipend for the exclusive Premiere Plus retreat meetup
  • Quarterly meetings with Mediavine’s executive team for feedback
• 90%+ revenue share

Quality Content Requirement

To even qualify, for Mediavine’s base tier you still need to:

• Produce original content that adds value (no AI-scraped junk)
• Be in good standing with AdSense (if you’re banned, you’d know)

These rules have been in place for a really long time, but I think Mediavine is cracking down on it more now. They got flooded with AI spam and low quality content, so they really want to clean up the sites in their database.

Changes to Mediavine’s Journey Requirements

As of January 15, 2026, any site with 1,000 or more sessions a month can apply to Journey. That’s a big drop from the old 10,000 session minimum.

To qualify, those sessions have to be tracked through the Grow plugin, since that’s how Mediavine verifies your traffic and engagement.

I’m personally not a fan of the plugin as I find the code really slow on many sites I’ve tested (not all!).

But I get why they require it. Grow collects emails and can allow users to consent to cookies across all partner sites. That lets them get more details for ad reporting, and hopefully will make you more money from those ads.

… but I still don’t love the plugin.

What If You’re Already With Mediavine?

It looks like existing publishers will get the option to keep their original revenue share, and potentially their annual revenue share increase for older accounts (back when you got 1% extra for each year you stayed with Mediavine). You just can’t leave Mediavine, or you’ll lose it.

The company hasn’t been super forthcoming about this yet, though. This information was shared briefly on a livestream the company did for existing publishers. I got the information from This Week in Blogging, since I’m not a Mediavine publisher anymore (I use Raptive).

It’s entirely unclear what happens if you have multiple sites.

Previously, Mediavine would let people bring in new sites at lower traffic levels. But their new revenue based model specifically says that an individual site has to hit the revenue level to be upgraded to other tiers.

What I Really Think About Mediavine’s New Direction

Look, I get why Mediavine’s doing this.

AI content, click farms, and viral “flash in the pan” posts have made it harder than ever to know if a site’s traffic is real or sustainable. You can buy ads or hit the right keyword combo and suddenly rack up 100,000 pageviews in 2 days… but if people bounce in 3 seconds, that’s not quality.

So Mediavine, and the creator, wouldn’t make a ton of money in the long run. And it’d likely hurt Mediavine’s reputation to have a bunch of those sites in their database.

They’re trying, like Raptive, to reward creators with real audiences and strong engagement, even if they don’t have a viral post or 200k pageviews.

…but I think they’re doing it the wrong way.

Basing eligibility on income instead of traffic might sound more flexible, but it’s also a little backwards. It basically tells publishers: you can join us when you make us money.

That’s a weird message for a company that’s built its reputation on supporting smaller bloggers…

And let’s be real, this is gonna mean people add way more ads to their site to hit the $417-ish they need to get into Mediavine “Official”. That’s gonna hurt user experience, mess up content, and likely hurt a lot of small publishers desperate for some ad income to prove their blog isn’t a hobby.

I do like that they’re finally moving away from the sessions obsession.

I’ve never understood why they care about sessions instead of pageviews, especially when they pay based on pageviews.

This new setup might finally give some love to creators who have lower traffic but high engagement or time on page that makes heaps of ad money.

… so largely food bloggers with really detailed recipes (jk jk!).

So… I think it’s a mixed bag.

I think Mediavine wants to do the right thing by emphasizing quality, but this rollout feels more like a PR play to stay competitive with Raptive than a true “creator-first” move.

And I hope they hire someone new to help them communicate this better, cause it needs a much clearer roll out.

Mediavine vs. Raptive: Which should you choose?

I didn’t want to add this section tbh, but the first question I kept getting was about which I’d choose.

To be clear, this is my personal opinion on what I’d do. I’m not telling y’all what to do.

I’m personally not a fan of the Grow plugin and how they handled the roll out of it. I’ve had a better experience with Raptive than I ever had with Mediavine, although I haven’t been with Mediavine since 2023.

While Raptive requires you to wait until you hit 25k pageviews, I’d wait to join it over Mediavine’s Journey. Especially because for many sites, it’ll take about that many pageviews to hit the $5k annual revenue to get into the Official tier.

Monetize in different ways before that to make far more than $5k annually without causing poor user experience on your site.

… but yeah I expect a lot of people will leave for Raptive in the meantime.

✅ Join Raptive via my affiliate link here.

What the New Mediavine Tiers Mean for Bloggers

I’ve been saying this for ages now but I’ll say it again:

Bloggers should NOT rely on ad income as their primary income source.

Ad income fluctuates wildly and it’s something we have almost no control over. And the best way to increase your income from it is to flood your users with ads you aren’t even sure about.

Yes, it’s nice to get some money passively rolling in each month. But there are other ways to do it!

You can make way more from affiliates, your own offers, or even selling ad space directly to brands who actually fit your niche.

And you won’t have to fill your blog with 47 ad units to do it.

Listen to what these ad companies are saying: small creators with an engaged community are the most valuable. They’re literally telling us that pageviews matter less than community. That there is more money to be made by telling real stories and connecting with humans.

Listen to them and start monetizing that community!

Like this post? Share it with others!