AdSense is the default, and defaults are worth auditing. The alternatives fall into three tiers — premium mediation platforms, affiliate programs, and direct sales — each trading more revenue for more responsibility. Here's the honest map.
Tier one: premium display (the managed step up)
Platforms in the AdSense-successor category (Ad Manager with mediation, header bidding services, the big managed networks) typically raise display RPM 30-100% for sites with meaningful traffic — usually 50k+ monthly sessions to qualify. The trade: stricter contracts, technical setup, and less control per unit. For a site that has outgrown AdSense's auction, this tier is usually correct. Below that traffic, AdSense remains the pragmatic answer: highest ceiling per unit of effort, zero minimum audience, instant policy-trusted payments.
Tier two: affiliate
Affiliate pays per action rather than per view — meaning it scales with trust and intent, not traffic volume. A review site sending 200 hot leads to a software vendor can out-earn its display revenue by multiples; a news site with cold traffic will earn almost nothing per thousand visitors. The trade: payouts shift (programs die, terms change, tracking breaks), and content must be genuinely recommendation-shaped. Best practice is both: display as the floor, affiliate as the upside on commercial pages.
Tier three: direct and products
Selling placements directly, sponsorships, or your own digital products is the highest ceiling and the highest everything else — sales effort, service obligations, invoicing. It's what display sites eventually grow into, not what they start with.
The honest default
Under 50k sessions: AdSense plus affiliate on review-adjacent content, full stop. Over it: test a premium platform for one quarter and compare RPM like an accountant — net of effort. The mistake isn't choosing wrong once; it's never re-auditing the default after the site's economics changed.
