Through Shine PSAs, Mediavine gives publishers the opportunity to put otherwise unfilled inventory to work, supporting nonprofit organizations that make a real difference in communities around the world. Rather than leaving ad impressions unfilled, Shine PSAs deliver public service announcements that help trusted organizations raise awareness, connect with new audiences, and amplify causes that matter.

It’s a simple concept with meaningful impact: when an ad can’t or shouldn’t be monetized, it can still do good. This summer, our ongoing partnership with No Kid Hungry helps turn those impressions into action by connecting families with resources to find meals for their children when they need them most.

Why Summer Break Can Mean Food Insecurity

For many children, school is more than a place to learn; it’s where they receive dependable, nutritious meals each day. 

When summer arrives and school cafeterias close, that support can disappear almost overnight. Millions of families suddenly face the challenge of replacing breakfast and lunch while balancing already stretched household budgets.

That’s where No Kid Hungry steps in.

Their Summer Meals initiative helps families locate free meal sites, access summer grocery benefits, and connect with community programs that ensure children continue receiving the nutrition they need throughout the break. Whether through neighborhood meal sites, grab-and-go options, or rural meal distribution, these latest efforts could help as many as 31 million children in the United States. No Kid Hungry’s ongoing programs work to make healthy meals available wherever families need them most. 

Amplifying a Mission That Matters

Awareness is often one of the biggest barriers to accessing available resources.

Families may not know that free summer meal programs exist in their communities or aren’t sure where to find them. By serving No Kid Hungry public service announcements through Shine PSAs, publishers help those messages reach more parents and caregivers at exactly the right time.

Each donated impression becomes another opportunity for someone to discover resources that can make a meaningful difference during the summer months.

No Kid Hungry has felt that impact directly. As Allison Ruta, Senior Manager of National Consumer Media & Champion Engagement for the No Kid Hungry campaign, put it: “Awareness is one of the biggest barriers in our work to end hunger, so we’re so grateful for the support and visibility from Mediavine and your incredible network who are helping us make a difference.”

The Opportunity Behind Unfilled Inventory

Because no advertising platform fills every available impression, Shine PSAs put that space to work for good.

Every ad opportunity is evaluated against advertiser targeting, available campaign budgets, user consent settings, geography, brand suitability, and real-time demand. When there isn’t a qualifying advertiser for a particular impression, that inventory intentionally goes unfilled to maintain the highest quality of monetization.

This is exactly the opportunity Shine PSAs were built to address.

Instead of displaying an empty space, eligible unfilled inventory can be used to serve public service announcements from trusted nonprofit organizations, like No Kid Hungry. Because these impressions wouldn’t have been monetized otherwise, publishers can support important causes without replacing paid advertising opportunities.

It’s an effortless way to make every impression count, even when it isn’t an eligible monetizable ad.

Making an Impact Beyond Advertising

At Mediavine, we’re always focused on helping publishers maximize the value of their inventory. Sometimes that value is measured in revenue. Other times, it’s measured in impact.

Shine PSAs make it possible to use eligible unfilled impressions to support nonprofit organizations tackling some of today’s most important challenges. Over the past few years, publishers have helped amplify campaigns focused on environmental stewardship, disaster relief, inclusion and more. Through our partnership with No Kid Hungry, those same impressions are helping to shine a light on childhood hunger during one of the most challenging seasons of the year.

Ready to join the Mediavine publishers making a difference? Follow these quick steps to start running Shine PSA campaigns:

• Go to Settings in your Mediavine Dashboard
• Open the Shine section
• Enable No Kid Hungry or any additional nonprofit partners you’d like to support

Thank You to Our Publisher Community

Shine PSAs are only possible through the partnership of our participating publishers.

By donating eligible unfilled impressions, you’re helping trusted nonprofit organizations reach new audiences, raise awareness and connect people with life-changing resources. This summer, those impressions are helping No Kid Hungry ensure more families know where to find free meals for their children while school is out.

Thank you for helping make every eligible impression count.

Q4 is the highest-earning quarter in digital advertising. Advertiser budgets peak, demand goes up, and CPM spikes significantly. The publishers who earn the most in Q4 are the ones who made moves in Q3, getting onboarded, optimized, and ready before the season that drives a significant portion of annual revenue.

The publishers who win Q4 aren’t just lucky with traffic. They’re with the right network. Here’s what that looks like.

What Makes Mediavine Different

Technology built and owned in-house.

Most ad networks rely on a patchwork of outside tools. Mediavine builds and maintains our own technology, including server-to-server bidding (a faster, more secure way to run ad auctions), page speed optimization, and ad placements designed to load quickly without slowing your site down. When Mediavine improves our technology, that improvement goes directly to your revenue. There is no middleman taking a cut.

99.5% human-verified inventory, independently validated by IAS, Jounce, and The Trade Desk. Zero MFA.

MFA stands for “Made for Advertising,” low-quality sites built purely to generate ad clicks, not to serve real readers. Mediavine has none of that. Every site in the network is a real publisher with real content and a real audience. That matters to advertisers, and when advertisers trust the inventory they are buying, more of them compete for your ad space. More competition means higher rates for you.

Publishers come first. Actually.

Every product decision Mediavine makes is measured against one question: does this improve publisher performance? Not advertiser convenience and definitely not the priorities of a private equity firm. We’re prioritizing publishers.

Lower ad density, better placements, faster pages.

More ads on a page does not mean more money. It usually means slower load times, a worse experience for your readers, and lower rates because advertisers pay less for cluttered inventory. Mediavine deliberately runs fewer, better ads because that is what drives revenue over the long term.

Hands-on account management.

Not a support ticket system and not a tiered response queue. Every publisher above Mediavine Official is assigned a dedicated account manager who is accountable to how your site performs.

Why Q3 Is the Right Window

During Q3, traffic is more predictable and the pressure is lower. You have time to get onboarded with a new network, get comfortable, and get your setup optimized before the season that drives a huge portion of your annual revenue.

Mediavine’s onboarding is built to get publishers up and running fast. From the moment you are approved, you have access to Mediavine’s full ad technology, a dashboard that shows you exactly what your revenue is doing and why, and for all publishers above Mediavine Official, a dedicated account manager who actually knows your site.

“Good Enough” Often Masks Real Upside

Most publishers who switch to Mediavine say the same thing: they had no idea how much money they were leaving on the table until they saw what their site could actually earn.

That is not a knock on your current ad solution. Ad management is complicated. A setup that’s been left alone for a while may seem fine, until you compare it with the results that a fully optimized setup can deliver. The difference shows up in your RPM, how often ads actually load on your pages, and how your revenue holds up when your traffic fluctuates.

If your RPM has been flat for a while, or your performance guarantee looks great for the first 90 days and a lot less great after that, those are signs something is off.

The Real Cost of Staying with the Wrong Network

Performance guarantees are one of the most common tactics competing ad networks use to attract publishers. On the surface, the offer sounds compelling. What often gets overlooked is what happens after the guarantee period ends.

The key factor is revenue share, the percentage of ad revenue you actually keep. Mediavine Premiere publishers retain 90% of the revenue their sites generate. Many competing networks retain 25%, leaving publishers with just 75%.

Consider a site earning $500,000 annually. Even with an aggressive guarantee promising a 30% revenue lift for six months, switching ad management would cost that publisher more than $112,000 over two years compared to staying with Mediavine. With a more typical guarantee, the two-year cost exceeds $135,000.

Short-term guarantees can create an initial boost, but long-term revenue share has a far greater impact on publisher earnings over time. The guarantee period is temporary. The revenue share you are left with is not.

Q3 Is the Window and Q4 Is the Payoff.

If you have been wondering whether it is time to switch, the answer is yes, and the time is now. You still have the runway to do it right, get set up, get optimized, and go into Q4 ready.

Apply to Mediavine and find out what your site could actually be earning.

Apply Now at mediavine.com/apply.

A performance guarantee sounds like a no-risk proposition. Run the math over two years and a different picture emerges, regardless of what the guarantee promises.

Performance guarantees are one of the most common tools competing networks use to recruit Mediavine publishers. The offer varies. Sometimes it’s a 30% lift, sometimes 15%. Sometimes the guarantee runs three months, sometimes six. The pitch always sounds favorable in the short term. 

What it doesn’t show you is what happens after the guarantee period ends.

Here’s what the numbers actually look like across four common scenarios.

All scenarios are based on a site earning $500,000 per year in gross revenue. These figures reflect Mediavine’s 90% revenue share for Premiere publishers. The alternative network’s standard revenue share is 75%.

Scenario 1: 30% guarantee, 3 months

The most aggressive offer. A 30% lift above current revenue for the first three months, then standard 75% revenue share for the remainder.

Year 1: Mediavine $450,000 / Alternative network $403,125 

Year 2: Mediavine $450,000 / Alternative network $375,000

Two-year cost of switching: -$121,875

Scenario 2: 15% guarantee, 3 months

A more modest guarantee. A 15% lift for three months, then standard 75% revenue share.

Year 1: Mediavine $450,000 / Alternative network $389,375 

Year 2: Mediavine $450,000 / Alternative network $375,000

Two-year cost of switching: -$135,625

Scenario 3: 30% guarantee, 6 months

A longer guarantee period at the higher lift. Six months at 30% above current revenue, then standard 75% revenue share.

Year 1: Mediavine $450,000 / Alternative network $412,500 

Year 2: Mediavine $450,000 / Alternative network $375,000

Two-year cost of switching: -$112,500

Scenario 4: 15% guarantee, 6 months

The most favorable scenario. The longest guarantee period at a 15% lift, then standard 75% revenue share.

Year 1: Mediavine $450,000 / Alternative network $425,000 

Year 2: Mediavine $450,000 / Alternative network $375,000

Two-year cost of switching: -$100,000

What the math is telling you

In every scenario, including the most generous guarantee on offer, switching costs six figures over two years compared to staying with Mediavine.

The guarantee terms change but the conclusion doesn’t.

That’s because the guarantee is designed to make the short-term math look attractive. It works for the network making the offer. The guarantee period creates switching costs, builds dependency, and locks publishers into a revenue share structure that trails Mediavine’s Premiere revenue share by 15 points.

A 30% lift for 90 days sounds significant. Measured against 21 months at a lower revenue share, it isn’t.

The bottom line

Before evaluating any offer, run the full two-year comparison. Factor in the revenue share after the guarantee ends, not just during it. The short-term lift is real. So is the long-term cost.

A performance guarantee is temporary. The revenue share you’re left with isn’t.

*This is a hypothetical example for illustrative purposes only. Individual results will vary.

This Month’s Featured Organization: PFLAG

As we celebrate Pride Month, we’re proud to highlight our partnership with PFLAG, the nation’s largest organization dedicated to supporting, educating, and advocating for LGBTQIA+ people, their families, and allies.

Founded in 1973, PFLAG has spent more than five decades helping create a world where diversity is celebrated, every person is respected, valued, and affirmed, and LGBTQIA+ people have the support they need to thrive. Through a network of hundreds of chapters across the United States, PFLAG provides peer support, educational resources, advocacy tools, and community connections that help individuals and families navigate their journeys with confidence and understanding.

While Pride Month shines an important spotlight on LGBTQ+ communities, PFLAG’s work continues every day of the year. From supporting parents seeking resources for a newly out child to advocating for safer, more inclusive communities, PFLAG serves as a trusted source of education, acceptance, and empowerment for millions of people nationwide.

By selecting PFLAG as a Shine PSA partner, your unsold inventory can help raise awareness of these resources, amplify messages of inclusion, and connect more people with the support networks they need.

For Branden Harvey, founder of Good Good Good, choosing PFLAG as a Shine PSA partner was a natural extension of how his entire business operates. His team voted on it, a decision that reflects the values at the core of everything Good Good Good publishes.

Why Pride Month Matters And Why It Can’t Stop There

Branden puts it plainly: “Sterling Graves, an artist (and fellow former Nashvillian) has this iconic quote you’ve probably seen on Instagram: “Pride is important because someone tonight still believes they’re better off dead than being themselves.” It takes so much courage and inner strength to acknowledge your true self and live that truth out loud. It’s scary, risky, and — historically and currently — often dangerous. 

Pride Month is important because it honors and acknowledges the heartbreaking history of the LGBTQ+ community and celebrates the work of so many brave queer folks who fought for the rights and norms we have today. And when we celebrate the progress we’ve made, it reminds each and every one of us that we’ve made progress before… and we can do it again.”

Impressions To Build a More Inclusive Future

At Mediavine, we prioritize premium, high-quality advertising demand over filling every available ad space at any cost.

In programmatic advertising, not every ad request results in a paid ad being served. While some platforms chase a 100% fill rate by accepting lower-quality ads, Mediavine intentionally takes a different approach. By maintaining high standards for ad quality and advertiser demand, we protect your revenue, preserve user experience, and maximize the long-term value of your inventory.

Occasionally, ad space will go unfilled. Rather than letting those impressions sit empty, Shine PSAs turn them into opportunities to support organizations making a meaningful impact in communities around the world.

What Are Shine PSAs?

Shine PSAs automatically fill unsold ad inventory with campaigns from nonprofit organizations selected by Mediavine publishers. Instead of serving low-value fallback ads or leaving space blank, your site helps amplify causes that matter.

Best of all:

• Shine PSAs only serve when paid ads aren’t available
• Shine PSAs do not impact your revenue opportunities
• Easy to enable directly from your Mediavine Dashboard
• Once activated, everything runs automatically behind the scenes

It’s a simple way to ensure every impression on your site contributes to something positive.

Support Beyond Pride Month

Pride Month brings important visibility to LGBTQIA+ communities, but meaningful representation shouldn’t be limited to a single month on the calendar.

Through Shine PSAs, publishers can amplify messages of inclusion, acceptance, and belonging visible throughout the year. When unsold inventory serves PFLAG campaigns, those impressions meaningfully support the work of an organization dedicated to creating a more affirming world for LGBTQIA+ people and the individuals in their lives.

Branden frames it this way: “One thing I immediately came to love about Mediavine was their Shine PSA program, which allows Good Good Good to essentially donate ad space on our website to nonprofits… These PSA ads are my absolute favorite ads I see on our site, and I love knowing how impactful they are for organizations and the people they serve. It’s such a cool and simple program, and I love that it exists.”

By choosing PFLAG as a Shine PSA partner, you’re helping ensure that every impression has the potential to foster understanding, spark connection, and reinforce the belief that LGBTQIA+ communities deserve support and visibility year-round.

Why Publishers Choose Shine PSAs

Make Unfilled Inventory Meaningful

Unsold impressions are a natural part of a healthy advertising strategy. Shine PSAs ensure those opportunities continue creating value instead of going unused.

Support Causes That Reflect Your Values

The messages that appear on your site help shape your brand. By choosing Shine PSAs, you can align your inventory with organizations working to create positive change and support communities that matter to you.

Maintain a High-Quality User Experience

Ads that aren’t worth serving shouldn’t be served. Shine PSAs replace the fallback ads and low-quality fill that degrade page performance and reader trust. They’re brand-safe, thoughtfully designed, and built to the same quality standards as the premium demand Mediavine prioritizes. Your readers get a cleaner, more intentional experience, and your site’s performance stays protected.

Set It Up Once and Forget About It

Enabling Shine PSAs takes less than a minute, and Mediavine handles everything else automatically.

How to Get Started

Opting into Shine PSAs is simple:

1. Go to Settings in your Mediavine Dashboard
2. Open the Shine section
3. Select PFLAG and any additional nonprofit partners you’d like to support
4. Save your preferences

Your unsold inventory will automatically begin supporting the causes you’ve chosen. Every impression on your site has the potential to do more. With Shine PSAs, those moments can raise awareness, inspire action, and support organizations creating meaningful change all year long.

👉 Learn more about Shine PSAs: help.mediavine.com/fill-your-unused-ad-inventory-with-a-psa

👉 Explore PFLAG’s mission: https://pflag.org/

👉 Interested in other nonprofit partners? Read more about our partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation and World Central Kitchen.

At Mediavine, smarter inventory means a stronger, more inclusive future.

At Mediavine, advertising can do more than drive revenue. At its best, advertising creates opportunity, amplifies voices, and builds a more inclusive publishing industry.

With this in mind, we introduced Uplift by Mediavine back in 2023. Uplift connects advertisers with publishers from underrepresented communities and seeks to create more equitable opportunities across the advertising landscape.

Since launching Uplift by Mediavine, we’ve partnered with Sertify to offer third-party certification for diversely owned publishers, making it easier for them to verify their business identity with brands actively seeking to diversify their media spend.

What Is Uplift by Mediavine?

Uplift by Mediavine is Mediavine’s dedicated diversity marketplace, connecting advertisers with publishers from underrepresented communities so every ad dollar becomes a force for equity.

Through Uplift, brands can direct ad spend toward publishers who identify as:

• Women-owned
• LGBTQIA+ owned
• Black-owned
• Hispanic-owned
• Asian-owned
• Veteran-owned
• Disability-owned
• And other historically underrepresented groups

Through Uplift by Mediavine, we create a more inclusive advertising ecosystem where diverse publishers have greater access to premium advertising opportunities. Publishers from these communities can join Uplift to gain increased visibility with advertisers who prioritize inclusive media buying. On the brand side, Uplift by Mediavine creates a trusted way to support underrepresented publishers while reaching highly engaged audiences.

Introducing Sertify Verification

Sertify is a certification platform that verifies diverse ownership across a range of traditionally underrepresented groups, making it easier for brands to direct media spend intentionally and connect with publishers aligned with their diversity initiatives.

Through partnering with Sertify, Uplift by Mediavine makes it easier for advertisers to confidently invest in diverse-owned publishers and helps publishers gain greater visibility in inclusive advertising campaigns.

By joining together, the Uplift by Mediavine and Sertify partnership creates a more accessible pathway between brands looking to diversify their media spend and publishers looking to grow within a premium advertising ecosystem.

Why Should You Identify As Diverse-Owned, If Eligible

For publishers, self-identifying through Uplift and Sertify as a diverse-owned business (if you identify as part of a community that is historically underrepresented) offers several important benefits to your site:

Gain Additional Credibility

Certification helps brands confidently identify and support diverse-owned businesses, building a trusted standard across the publishing landscape.

Connect With Advertisers Prioritizing Inclusion

Advertisers actively seek verified diverse-owned businesses when planning campaigns and allocating budget. Participation in Uplift allows publishers to stand out during the planning and allocation process, making them frontrunners in those conversations.

A Premium Advertising Ecosystem

Uplift is built into Mediavine’s existing advertising marketplace, meaning publishers continue benefiting from premium demand, strong user experience standards, and high-quality advertising partners.

Simple Setup

Eligible publishers can enable Uplift by Mediavine from their dashboard, and start the Sertify certification application process on the same page. Once enabled, Mediavine handles the operational side of connecting eligible publishers with participating advertisers. We’ll handle conversations and negotiations with advertisers on your behalf. 

How to Self-Identify through Uplift and Sertify

Getting started is simple:

1. Log into your Mediavine Dashboard
2. Navigate to Uplift under Settings
3. If eligible, select the categories that apply to your business 
4. Click over to Sertify’s website to apply for certification

Once you’ve opted into Uplift and self-identified, your site can be matched with campaigns specifically designed to support diverse-owned publishers.

Building a More Inclusive Future for Advertising

Advertising shapes culture, and the publishers that brands choose to support directly influence what audiences see online. At the same time, diverse-owned businesses have historically been underrepresented in media buying despite building highly engaged communities and producing exceptional content.

At Mediavine, great advertising does more than monetize content. It supports publishers, strengthens communities, and creates opportunities for voices that deserve greater visibility. Uplift helps bridge that gap by making it easier for advertisers to discover and invest in diverse publishers at scale, while Sertify certification bolsters meaningful connections between brands and publishers.

Since Uplift is built directly into Mediavine’s premium advertising landspace, participation is seamless for publishers already monetizing with Mediavine. Self-identify today to start connecting with advertisers who want to amplify your voice and boost your revenue opportunities. 

Learn more about Uplift by Mediavine and Sertify certification.

Read how Uplift is helping drive equity in digital advertising.

At Mediavine, high-quality demand and a better user experience are non-negotiable. We hold your ad space to a higher standard, only serving ads that meet our quality requirements. That protects your CPMs, your readers’ experience, and your standing with the advertisers who pay the most for premium inventory.

When no ad meets that standard, Shine PSAs automatically put that space to work for you, filling unfilled impressions with nonprofit campaigns that cost you nothing while making every impression on your site count.

What Are Shine PSAs?

Shine PSAs automatically fill unsold ad slots with campaigns from nonprofit partners. Instead of serving a low-quality fallback ad or leaving space empty, campaigns from Shine PSA partners align your site with causes making a real-world impact.

This Month: World Central Kitchen

This month, we’re highlighting our partner, World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that provides fresh meals to communities affected by disasters, emergencies, and humanitarian crises around the world.

From hurricane recovery efforts to emergency response in conflict zones, World Central Kitchen is known for mobilizing quickly and partnering with local communities to provide immediate support where it’s needed most. Their mission is simple: provide fresh meals to people in moments of urgent need.

Why Publishers Are Choosing Shine PSAs

Your unsold inventory still serves a purpose. Unfilled inventory is inevitable in programmatic advertising. Shine PSAs ensure those moments generate value instead of going to waste.

You protect your user experience. No low-quality fallback ads. No slowdowns. No engagement risk. Shine PSAs are brand-safe by design.

You align your brand with impactful causes. Your site reflects the brands and messages that appear on it. Publishers who enable Shine PSAs align their inventory with organizations driving real-world impact, reinforcing credibility and trust with every impression.

Setup takes less than a minute. Just opt in once and Mediavine handles the rest.

How to Turn On Shine PSAs

• Go to Settings in your Mediavine Dashboard
• Open the Shine section
• Enable World Central Kitchen or any additional nonprofit partners you’d like to support

Every impression on your site has a job to do. Shine PSAs make sure none of them go to waste.

👉 Learn more about Shine PSAs

👉 Discover more about World Central Kitchen

👉 Interested in other nonprofit partners? Read more about our partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation.

If you’ve ever looked at your RPM and thought “that doesn’t feel quite right,” you’re probably on to something.

RPM, or revenue per mille, measures how much revenue you earn per thousand sessions. It’s one of the most-watched numbers in a publisher’s dashboard, the gut-check metric, the one you scan first thing in the morning and bring up in every performance conversation. But the way it’s traditionally calculated has a flaw baked in, and it’s one the industry has largely just accepted.

Here’s the issue: standard GA RPM divides your revenue by all of your sessions. Every single one. The human visits, the bot traffic, the ad-blocked sessions, the visits where no ad could ever have served. All of that non-monetizable traffic sits in the denominator, dragging your RPM down and making your revenue performance look worse than it actually is.

Think of it this way: if you ran a coffee shop, you wouldn’t measure sales per customer by counting everyone who walked past the window. You’d count the people who actually came inside. GA RPM is counting the window-shoppers.

You’re not seeing how your monetizable traffic is truly performing. You’re seeing it diluted by traffic that was never going to generate revenue.

Why This Matters More Than You Might Think

The distortion isn’t just a reporting inconvenience. It affects real decisions. When you test a new ad layout, shift your content strategy, or try to understand why revenue moved in a given week, you’re making those calls against a metric that lumps your actual ad-eligible audience in with traffic that was never in play. That makes it genuinely harder to know what’s working, and what isn’t.

It also makes comparisons unreliable. Two sites with identical monetized performance can show very different RPMs depending on how much non-monetizable traffic each one carries. The number looks objective. The comparison rarely is.

What a Cleaner Signal Looks Like

The fix is straightforward: measure revenue against the traffic that can actually generate it: monetizable sessions only.

When you do that, things get sharper in ways that matter:

• Testing becomes more useful. Layout changes, content strategies, or audience experiments that looked inconclusive against a noisy metric are easier to read when the signal is clean.
• Trends are easier to trust. Revenue movement that looked flat can show real growth once you remove traffic that was never going to convert.
• Decisions become more informed. Whether you’re thinking about ad placement, content investment, or audience growth, you’re working from numbers that reflect reality.

Your RPM should tell you what your audience is actually worth to advertisers. Not a diluted average that includes visitors who were never going to see an ad.

The Metric You Use Shapes Every Decision You Make

When testing, optimization, and growth strategy all run through RPM, the quality of that number matters. A diluted signal doesn’t just make reporting harder to read. It makes it harder to know what’s actually working. Publishers who understand how their metrics are calculated, and demand better ones, will make sharper decisions and have a clearer picture of where their business actually stands.

That starts with asking a better question: not just what your RPM is, but exactly what it’s measuring.

At Mediavine, this is exactly the problem we’ve been working to solve.