Mediavine blocks publisher due to AI content

Mediavine, one of the advertising providers often used by larger content sites, has banned a publisher from its platform for using AI content. This is a sign that AI-only content on your website should be treated with care and not used indiscriminately. This may not have any consequences in the short term, but it can have serious consequences in the long term. In this blog post, we want to discuss exactly what the situation looks like and what you should bear in mind for your websites.

We no longer need to tell you that AI is on the rise. Since the introduction of ChatGPT, Gemin and even Copilot, it has been used by digital marketers, website managers, IT staff and ordinary students.

However, this is not without its problems, and we are not yet at the point where we can all put on our coats and leave the work to AI. Original content that is researched, written from personal experience and with personal flair is still preferred not only by Google, but also by ad publishers such as Mediavine.

What exactly happened?

According to information posted online on Reddit by users, ad management company Mediavine has terminated publishers' accounts for excessive use of AI.Mediavine is a leading ad management company that offers products and services that help website publishers generate revenue from their content, just as many publishers in the Netherlands do with Google AdSense, for example.

Mediavine is known for being able to generate more revenue for the same amount of traffic to a website. The company has an elite status as a Google Certified Publishing Partner, which means that it meets Google's highest standards and requirements for advertising networks and exchanges. The company also has high requirements for its publishers or website owners, for example, you must reach 100,000 page views per month to meet the requirements and the traffic to your website should mainly come from certain countries.





To accommodate start-up websites, they recently launched the Journey program, where you can access their services for as little as 10,000 sessions per month. Trista Jensen, Director of Ad Operations & Market Quality at Mediavine, shared the following: "Our top partners will no longer spend on your sites, which will negatively impact future monetization efforts." The block was immediately active on the website in question, and it was therefore shut down immediately. With fatal consequences.

The guidelines from Google and Mediavine

AI is not a flash in the pan, it is here to stay and will continue to evolve over the years. However, original content written in its own style and with its own expertise will continue to have its place on the Internet. And Google and Mediavine's guidelines clearly state that this is preferred by websites.

Mediavine even goes so far as to mention the following in one of their blog posts: "Without publishers, there is no open web. There is no content to train the models that power AI.



They are also developing faster and automated tools to actively search for low-quality AI content. One case mentioned in the Search Engine Journal article involves an individual who owns 2,000 domains and has filled them with AI content in order to rank in Google and generate advertising revenue from it. Such strategies are mainly targeted by Mediavine to fish them out and stop them with these tools.

But what can AI be used for in the content sector?

AI is great for playing your own digital assistant, and with AI you can come up with ideas for new content, ask it to review your content and use it as an initial source of inspiration. So as long as you're not cutting and pasting, this can soon be used with some confidence.

You can also use it for lengthy tasks or tasks that require a lot of repetition. So as part of your website hosting , you can often use it in your daily tasks as a website administrator. So the future is uncertain for many, and industries such as translation services and transcribers are the most affected by AI, while content creators are best placed to use AI to evolve and work faster and more productively. Ignoring AI altogether is not the way to go in this context.