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The 2026 ad network shake-up

Two of the biggest networks moved their entry bars in opposite directions this year. The path for a new publisher is not what last year's guides say.

For years the answer for a small publisher was "start with Ezoic, it has no minimum, then graduate to a premium network at 50k or 100k." In 2026 both ends of that sentence broke.

Ezoic went up, a lot

On February 19, 2026, Ezoic raised its minimum for new publishers to 250,000 monthly users and repositioned around enterprise and high-traffic sites. Existing publishers were grandfathered, and an "Incubator" program takes 20 sub-threshold sites a month, but the no-minimum on-ramp that defined Ezoic for a decade is gone. The network that used to be the default first step is now one of the last.

Raptive came down, a lot

At the same time, Raptive (formerly AdThrive), one of the two premium networks, dropped its bar from 100,000 pageviews to 25,000, a 75% cut. Sites between 25,000 and 100,000 pageviews need about half their traffic from tier-one markets. Raptive framed it around the traffic pressure independent publishers face from algorithm changes and AI. Whatever the reason, premium-tier revenue is now reachable at a quarter of the old threshold.

And Mediavine quietly opened the bottom

Mediavine's main tier still sits at 50,000 sessions (or about $5,000 in annual ad revenue), but its Journey program opens at roughly 1,000 sessions. So the smallest real sites, the ones who would have been pointed at Ezoic, now have a managed-network path that did not exist before.

What it means for where you start

The on-ramp inverted. The current path, by traffic:

  • Under 25k pageviews: AdSense for the floor, and Mediavine Journey at about 1,000 sessions. Not Ezoic.
  • 25k and up: Raptive is now open, with tier-one traffic. This is the headline change, premium revenue a quarter of the way up.
  • 50k sessions and up: Mediavine's main tier, or Raptive.
  • 250k users and up: Ezoic re-enters as an option if you want its platform.

The broader lesson is the one this whole site is built on: the rules move, and most of the advice you will find is already stale. Whatever network you land on, the lever that survives every threshold change is the same, viewability and a layout that does not cost you the rankings that feed it.

Check what you qualify for Compare the networks

Sources: Ezoic's February 2026 announcement; Raptive's requirement change, covered by Search Engine Journal and across the trade press. Current as of June 2026.