How Many Pageviews Do I Need For Mediavine?

Among the most common questions we receive online and in person is the following:

“How many pageviews do I need for Mediavine?”

Short answer: None.

Long answer: You’ll need a fair amount, but pageviews are not among the Mediavine requirements. We use sessions as our metric of choice.

Mediavine requires that its publishers see 50,000 sessions per month — roughly 60,000 pageviews, although this varies wildly, for reasons we’ll get into in a moment — according to Google Analytics. (Editor’s Note: If you’re interested in applying Mediavine Ad Management, please review our updated requirements concerning sessions and Google Analytics 4.)

We believe that sessions, rather than pageviews, are the best means of gauging how audiences interact with websites, as well as the monetization potential of those sites. Ironically, the internet’s collective obsession with pageview counts ironically rendered the pageview useless years ago.

Think of it this way: One pageview could come from a reader carefully scrolling through an engaging, 900-word article on your site, while a visitor rapidly scrolling through a gallery or “listicle” could register 16 pageviews.

Those two users had completely different experiences, engaging very differently with the website’s content and its advertising. Pageviews don’t tell us much about the viewability of our ads, a website’s user experience, or the quality of its content.

Moreover, unlike sessions, manipulating pageviews in your analytics is even easier than manipulating content to inflate them, which is saying something. It’s as simple as telling the Analytics Tracker to count them a different, often misleading way.

Long story short: Pageviews are dead, sessions are where it’s at, and we’ve set a 50,000-session threshold because we — along with our ad partners — have determined this to be an appropriate amount of traffic to monetize websites optimally.

The list of what Mediavine looks for in an application involves much more than traffic numbers, however.

From craft, parenting and travel blogs to food, finance, fitness and entertainment, Mediavine is for big publishers and smaller sites alike in all verticals. Our support team looks at the top-performing and most recent posts of every applicant to ensure that its users are engaged.

Also, content that engages readers needs actual, human readers. Sorry, bots. With a thorough analysis of Google Analytics and other measures, we vet all websites to ensure their traffic is natural and organic.

In addition to combatting fraud, we ensure that all content is brand safe. Advertisers are vigilant about brands running alongside appropriate content and being seen by real people to increase their return on investment, and we are dedicated to delivering in both capacities.

Integrity and reputation mean as much to us as delivering the highest RPMs to our publishers. If advertisers didn’t trust the quality of Mediavine sites, we wouldn’t have built the largest, most trusted, brand-safe portfolio of sites at this scale.