Ch. 9: Mediavine display vs affiliate, the RPM crossover

Ch. 9: Mediavine display vs affiliate, the RPM crossover

My recipe-adjacent kitchen site hit 55k sessions and got into Mediavine in month 13. Display RPM landed around $22 — roughly $1,200/mo just for ads. Easy money, zero per-post work.

But I noticed my 8 'best blender' style posts made $34 RPM on affiliate alone. Putting Mediavine ads on those buyer pages actually cost me — the ads pulled clicks away from my affiliate buttons. I measured it: display added $9 RPM but cannibalized ~$15 in commissions on those specific pages.

So I split the site. Informational recipe traffic: full display ads. Buyer-intent review posts: affiliate only, ads stripped. Total revenue rose 18% from that one change.

Lesson banked: display and affiliate aren't either/or — they're per-page. On info traffic, ads win. On buyer pages, ads steal from your commissions. Segment by intent.