What the ad network data shows

Ad network market share for September 2026: publisher counts for Mediavine, Ezoic, Raptive and 18 more, with net gains, losses and sites that switched.

Three ways to identify the ad network behind any site — its ads.txt file, the network’s own sellers.json, and the ad scripts in the page source — and how to tell a real relationship from a stale listing.

Ranked by the authority of the publishers each network actually carries, not by the traffic minimums they advertise — with the full ladder from the strictest network to the most open.

Gaming publishers do not use the networks that dominate lifestyle blogging. Here is who actually monetises gaming sites, ranked by live site count.

Both networks are widely understood to be exclusive, yet our index finds live sites carrying evidence of both. Here they are, with the four explanations that fit the data.

Every category we index, its size, the strength of its typical site, and the ad network that actually leads it. The cross-tab that shows how badly generic advice travels between subjects.

Food and drink is the most contested category in display advertising. Here is exactly how the major networks split it, and what the split tells you about where to apply.

The two biggest managed networks in independent publishing are nearly the same size overall. Broken down by category they are running quite different businesses — here is the split.

Travel is the most lopsided major category in display advertising: one network runs three times as many travel sites as its nearest rival. Here are the numbers and what causes the skew.

Ezoic vs Mediavine across 16,000+ live sites: who each accepts, which niches each leads, and how many publishers switch from Ezoic to Mediavine.

The best Ezoic alternatives, from the data: which networks sites joined after leaving Ezoic, which accept small sites, and which lead your niche.

Raptive publishes a traffic minimum. We can show you the other half — the authority, categories and site profile of the publishers they have actually approved.

The honest answer to “am I big enough yet”, measured from every site we index that is already carrying advertising — including how many of them are smaller than you expect.

News and politics is the highest-authority category we index, and none of the networks that dominate blogging lead it. Here is who monetises news sites instead.

An evidence-based look at Monumetric — how many publishers it actually has, what they look like, how much of its published roster the publishers confirm, and who it suits.

Lifestyle is the broadest category in display advertising and the one where a women’s-audience specialist finally shows up in the top four. Here is the full split.

How many publishers Ezoic really has, what they look like, whether it has a minimum requirement in practice, and why reported Ezoic earnings vary more wildly than any other network’s.

Technology is the largest category where the premium lifestyle networks do not lead. Here is who monetises tech sites, and the two properties of tech traffic that explain it.

The share of live sites running more than one ad network, the combinations that actually occur, and why almost nobody stacks.

What these two files are, how to read every field, the mistakes that quietly cost publishers revenue, and how to check your own in ten minutes.

Home and garden is the only large category where two premium networks and the industry’s widest-funnel network all hold comparable share. Here is why, and what it means for where you apply.

Mediavine has the strictest reputation in independent publishing. Measured by the publishers it actually carries, several networks are more selective — and the reason why is more interesting than the ranking.

Crafts and DIY is a mid-sized category with premium-category authority, and the open-funnel networks hold a much smaller share of it than their size elsewhere would predict.

PubGalaxy leads the gaming category by site count, and roughly half of its published publisher list is unconfirmed by the publishers themselves. Here is what that does and does not mean.

Education is the second category where the industry’s widest-funnel network leads outright, and the reason is the same one that makes education traffic hard to price.

Every network advertises impressive publisher names. Here is how to check them yourself in twenty minutes — and the confirmation rate for every network we track.

Parenting is the most consolidated premium category we track: the two big managed networks and one audience specialist take almost all of it, and the industry’s largest network barely appears.

Playwire’s own publisher list shows who the network is really for — how big it is, how strong the sites it carries are, and the niches it concentrates in.

Personal finance has a reputation as the highest-paying content niche, and it is one of the least consolidated categories we index. Here is who runs on these sites and why the split is so flat.

Two publishers on the same network report earnings a factor of ten apart. Here are the variables that actually explain it, with the measurable ones quantified.

Pet owners are one of the most reliably valuable audiences in consumer advertising, yet pet sites are dominated by the industry’s lowest-barrier network. The gap between those two facts is the story.

AdPushup’s publisher base spans a wider range than almost any network we track. Here is the median, the floor and the ceiling — and what that means for your application.

Adding a second display network almost never works. Adding a video partner alongside display is the one combination that demonstrably does — here are the pairs that actually occur.

Setupad’s size, the strength and spread of the publishers it carries, the categories it works in, and how much of its published roster the publishers confirm.

A third of all published ad network relationships are never confirmed by the publisher. Four things cause it, only one of them is a problem, and here is how to tell them apart.

Vidazoo has the worst ratio of confirmed to claimed publishers of any network we track — and, unusually, there is a structural explanation that mostly exonerates it.

Nobody outside a publisher’s dashboard can verify Mediavine’s rates. Here is what the public record does establish — what kind of site earns them, and why the figures you find online disagree.

Newor Media is the smallest network in our index. Its publisher records are among the better-kept, and its size is the most important thing to understand before signing.