Reply from EzoicMar 6, 2024
Thank you for your feedback. In response to your review, I would like to address the points you've raised individually to provide clarity and context around your experience with Ezoic.
Ad Setup and Earnings: It's important to understand that Ezoic gives publishers full control over their ad setup. Our system is designed to be 'self-serve'. In your case, you opted for an extremely 'light' ad setup. Ezoic's placeholders are potential ad locations (not actual ad locations) and you were limiting the system's ability to test by only allowing it to display 1-3 ads per page with many high-earning ad types like anchor ads, side rail ads, and sticky sidebar all deactivated - totally your choice to do that, but this significantly impacts EPMV and earnings. By choosing not to adjust the optimization goals to "Balanced," your earnings were directly affected by these decisions.
Ezoic Premium: With Premium, the objective is to ensure that publishers earn more than the cost of the plan. Having looked at the details in your account myself, I can see that this goal was achieved in your case. So, the criticism seems misguided.
Nameserver Integration and Site Speed: Concerning the site speed and nameserver integration, your core web vitals on desktop were all in the 'green'. The site had a commendable Leap desktop score of 83 while integrated with Ezoic. This contrasts with your current setup, where the core web vitals are NOT being met, indicating a slower site performance outside of Ezoic.
We checked one random landing page on your site after you removed integration with Ezoic - with your current monetization solutions provider, you are not passing the core web vitals on desktop, your site has a LCP of 2.7 seconds for instance (With Ezoic it was at 1.4). FID is worse also. The issue with slow mobile site speed and JavaScript code conflicts might also stem from numerous scripts your site loads, which is independent of Ezoic.
Support and Technical Issues: On the matter of support, despite being a Level 1 publisher, our records show that you received dedicated assistance from three different Ezoic employees on a technical issue through the Ezoic Community, including the assisted opening of a support ticket. This typically isn't accessible for publishers at Level 1. Your setup's uniqueness might have contributed to the time required to resolve the issue, but the effort and resolution provided should not be overlooked.
It's important to point out that Ezoic, especially for smaller sites, operates as a self-serve platform, offering publishers the autonomy to customize their settings extensively. In your situation, the choice to manually adjust almost every setting, including a significantly reduced ad density, was made independently by you. While this autonomy is a core feature of Ezoic, allowing for a tailored approach to each publisher's needs and preferences, it will not always result in the most efficient outcome in terms of ad performance and revenue optimization. My advice is to trust the system and allow it to optimize for you. Don't keep restricting it. It WORKS for >35,000 publishers; you need to give it time and be patient.
Ezoic's system is designed to optimize ad placements, ad densities, and ad types to balance user experience with revenue potential. The opportunity cost of using non-Ezoic ad providers is that you're often showing too many ads for that kind of user (eg 3G, old handset). Ezoic fixes these mistakes. Just go back and look at your ad density by page before you manually restricted the system.
If you had allowed Ezoic's AI system to operate with fewer restrictions, it would have lead to improved earnings and a better overall site performance over time.
This is not to undermine the value of customization, but rather to suggest that a more balanced approach to Ezoic's optimization capabilities would have lead to better results for you.
