by So someone in a forum asked me last year if I’d heard of Rakuten Advertising, and honestly I hadn’t. I was running my tech blog with about 99k monthly pageviews at that point, which is decent but nothing crazy. I was already using AdSense and a few other networks, but my earnings were pretty flat. Like, I was making maybe $800-900 a month total across everything, which felt underwhelming for the traffic I was getting. This person mentioned they’d started using Rakuten and were seeing better fill rates, so I figured why not give it a shot. Worst case scenario, I’d waste an hour setting it up and make nothing.
Let me just throw down some quick facts about the network before I dive into my actual experience:
| Founded | 2007 (as Rakuten Marketing, advertising division launched earlier) |
| Ad Formats | Display, Native, Video, In-stream Video |
| Minimum Payout | $10 (super low, which I loved) |
| Payment Methods | Wire transfer, check, PayPal, Wise |
| Approval Time | 48 hours (actually happened for me) |
| Best For | Publishers with 50k+ monthly views in tech, lifestyle, or finance niches |
The Signup Process Was Genuinely Not Terrible
I signed up on January 2nd, 2025. I remember because I was procrastinating on other work. The form took maybe 15 minutes to fill out. They wanted my site URL, monthly pageviews, traffic sources, content categories. Nothing invasive. No essay about my life story or whatever.
What surprised me: they actually approved me in like 48 hours. I’ve dealt with networks where approval takes two weeks, and they’re radio silent the whole time. Rakuten’s support team actually emailed me asking a couple clarifying questions about my traffic sources (I mentioned I had some traffic from Reddit and Pinterest), and then boom—approved.
I got my account activated on January 4th. The dashboard is… fine? It’s not the prettiest interface I’ve ever seen. It’s a little clunky in spots, and some of the reporting features took me a minute to figure out. But it’s not a nightmare either. I’ll give it a solid “not annoying to use” rating.
Choosing Which Ad Formats to Test
I didn’t just throw everything at the wall immediately. That’s how you tank your user experience. Instead, I started with their display ads in my sidebar and footer. Standard 300×250, 728×90, stuff like that. These are the formats I already had from AdSense anyway, so I could A/B test pretty easily.
After about a week of just display ads, I added their native ad units. These are the ones that blend into your content, supposed to feel less intrusive. Honestly? They actually did perform better than I expected. I placed one in my sidebar and one between articles. The click-through rates were noticeably higher than my standard display ads.
I tested video ads for like two weeks in February, but I honestly didn’t see much difference in my earnings, and some users complained in comments that videos were auto-playing. So I killed that pretty quickly. Not worth it.
By March, I settled on a mix of display + native ads, with most of my revenue coming from the native units surprisingly. This is not what I expected, but I’m not complaining.
The Money: Let’s Talk Real Numbers
January was my first partial month since I activated on the 4th. I made $214.15. My pageviews that month were around 75,000 since I’d only had ads for 28 days.
Here’s my month-by-month breakdown since then:
| Month | Pageviews | Earnings (USD) | RPM* |
| January 2025 (partial) | 75,000 | $214.15 | $2.86 |
| February 2025 | 102,340 | $412.80 | $4.03 |
| March 2025 | 98,650 | $518.40 | $5.25 |
| April 2025 | 105,200 | $687.50 | $6.53 |
| May 2025 | 99,876 | $745.30 | $7.46 |
| June 2025 | 108,450 | $821.15 | $7.57 |
| July 2025 | 112,300 | $894.60 | $7.96 |
| August 2025 | 106,780 | $756.40 | $7.08 |
| September 2025 | 101,200 | $682.90 | $6.75 |
| October 2025 | 103,450 | $725.80 | $7.02 |
| November 2025 | 109,600 | $812.45 | $7.41 |
| December 2025 | 114,200 | $920.75 | $8.06 |
*RPM = Revenue Per Mille (per 1000 pageviews). It’s basically what you earn per thousand impressions, and it’s the best way to compare performance across different traffic levels.
So here’s the deal. My RPM started at $2.86 in that partial first month and climbed to like $8 by December. That’s basically a 3x improvement. Over the full year, I made $8,171.20 from Rakuten across all 12 months. That’s not life-changing money, but it’s way better than my old $800-900 a month I was making with other networks combined.
The earnings ramped up pretty steadily through the middle of the year, then settled into a nice groove around $700-900 per month from August onward. I think the ramp was partly me optimizing placement, partly the network getting better at serving relevant ads to my audience.
How CPMs Vary By Geography
One thing I learned pretty quickly: not all traffic pays the same. My blog gets readers from all over, and I noticed the dashboard let me see performance by country. The US and UK traffic crushed it. India and Pakistan? Not so much. Here’s what I actually saw:
| Country | Average CPM (USD) | % of My Traffic |
| United States | $12.40 | 52% |
| United Kingdom | $9.80 | 14% |
| Germany | $6.50 | 8% |
| India | $1.20 | 18% |
| Pakistan | $0.45 | 3% |
Yeah. That India-to-US difference is wild. A thousand Indian pageviews might earn me $1.20, but a thousand US pageviews earn $12.40. It’s just how digital advertising works—the US has way more advertisers willing to pay for impressions, so the competition drives prices up.
This is good to know if you’re thinking about signing up. If your traffic is mostly from Pakistan or Bangladesh or similar, your earnings will be way different than what I’m showing here.
Getting Paid: Zero Complaints Here
Rakuten’s payment options are solid:
| Payment Method | Processing Time | Fees | My Experience |
| Wire Transfer | 3-5 business days | $0 | Used once, worked fine |
| Check (US only) | 10-14 days | $0 | Didn’t use this |
| PayPal | 1-3 business days | $0 | Fastest option, used most |
| Wise | 2-5 business days | $0 | Added this late, good for international |
I used PayPal for most of my payouts because I like getting money instantly. I’ve never had a single payout fail or be delayed unexpectedly. The minimum payout threshold is only $10, which is honestly amazing. Some networks won’t let you cash out until you hit $100 or $250. With Rakuten, I could theoretically request a payout every few days if I wanted to.
I requested a payout on March 15th and had the money in my PayPal account by March 17th. February payouts took like 2 days. Never once did I wonder if they were going to actually pay me. The money showed up. Every time.
Is It Actually Legit?
Yes. A thousand percent yes. Rakuten is a massive, publicly traded company. They’ve been around since the 1990s doing e-commerce and cashback stuff. Their advertising division is one of the legitimate players in the space. They’re not some sketchy network that’s going to disappear overnight and keep your earnings.
They’ve also got actual brand-name advertisers. I can see in my dashboard that ads are coming from companies like Amazon, Best Buy, Target, financial services companies, SaaS platforms. Not just random crypto schemes and weird VPN offers. The ad quality is legit.
I’ve heard exactly zero stories of Rakuten screwing publishers over on payouts or anything like that. That’s my biggest sanity check. If they were robbing people, I’d have seen it mentioned somewhere in forums or Reddit.
The Good Stuff About Rakuten
RPM growth. I went from $2.86 to $8+ per thousand pageviews. That’s a massive improvement over what AdSense was giving me.
The native ad format actually works without destroying user experience. I was skeptical, but they’re not intrusive. They look like they belong on the page.
Customer support responded to my questions. When I had weird spikes or questions about reporting, I got actual answers within a few hours. Not some automated reply template. Real support.
Low minimum payout. $10 means you can actually withdraw money frequently if you want. No waiting for months to hit a threshold.
Reliable payments. Every single time. No delays, no “oops we’ll pay you next month,” nothing like that.
Multiple payment methods. PayPal, wire, check, Wise. They let you choose what works for you.
Good reporting dashboard. Once I figured it out, I could drill down by country, device type, day of week, all kinds of stuff. Helpful for optimization.
The Things That Annoyed Me
The dashboard interface is kinda clunky. It’s not terrible, but it’s not intuitive. It took me like a week to figure out where everything was. Compare that to AdSense where everything is pretty straightforward.
They don’t let you filter by device type in real-time. I had to request a custom report to see mobile vs. desktop breakdown, and it took two days. That felt unnecessarily complicated for something that’s pretty basic analytics.
My earnings dipped in August and September. I’m not 100% sure why. Traffic was consistent, so it might’ve been a change in their advertiser pool or something on their end. It was weird and I never got a clear explanation.
There’s no API access. Some networks let you pull data programmatically, but Rakuten doesn’t offer that. If I wanted to build something custom with my earnings data, I couldn’t.
Sometimes ads take a while to load. Not always, but I noticed on slower connections that the Rakuten ad units would occasionally take a second longer to render than AdSense ads. Probably not a huge deal, but it’s there.
Who Should Actually Sign Up for This
If you’ve got 50k+ monthly pageviews and your traffic is mostly from developed countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Western Europe), you should absolutely test this. Your RPM will likely be better than what you’re making elsewhere.
Tech blogs, finance blogs, lifestyle blogs—these niches seem to get better rates. Makes sense because there are way more advertisers targeting these audiences.
If you’re already using AdSense or another network, don’t think you have to choose. I’m using Rakuten alongside AdSense and they’re not cannibalizing each other’s traffic. You can run both.
People who want reliable payouts and zero drama should definitely try it. I’ve never stressed about whether I’d actually get paid.
Who Should Probably Skip It
If your traffic is primarily from low-CPM countries (India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, etc.), your earnings will be pretty low. Still worth testing, but don’t expect it to be life-changing.
If you’re under 20k monthly pageviews, you might not get approved. I had 99k when I signed up, so I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess they have a minimum.
If you want the absolute simplest setup with minimal configuration, AdSense might still be better for you. Rakuten requires a bit more hands-on work to optimize.
Questions People Keep Asking Me
Q: Will Rakuten replace my AdSense earnings?
Not quite, but it can supplement them really well. I went from making $850 total per month from all networks to around $900 from Rakuten alone. I still run AdSense too, but Rakuten became my primary earner. So I’d say it complements AdSense rather than replaces it, unless you’re willing to tune things really carefully.
Q: Do I need to change my site design a lot to use Rakuten?
Nope. I literally just added their ad code to the spots where I was already running other ads. Took like 30 minutes. If you already have an ad setup, you can add Rakuten to it.
Q: How long did it take before you made real money?
Month one (partial): $214. Month two: $412. By month three I was consistently making $500+. So not super fast, but it ramped up pretty steadily in the first three months.
Q: Can I use Rakuten on multiple sites?
Yes, you can have multiple properties in one account. I only tested on my tech blog, but they let you manage different domains from one dashboard if you want.
Q: What happens if I have a slow month with lower traffic?
Your earnings will obviously be lower too, but they don’t penalize you or anything. A month where I got 101k pageviews earned less than a month with 114k pageviews, but that’s just math. No hidden gotchas.
Q: Is the approval process actually 48 hours or does it take longer sometimes?
It was genuinely 48 hours for me. But I had a straightforward, legitimate site with good traffic. If your site is brand new or looks sketchy, it might take longer. Some people in forums mentioned taking up to a week. I’d budget a week to be safe.
Q: Do I need to disclose that I’m using Rakuten ads to my readers?
Legally yeah, you should probably disclose that you use ads and that you earn money from them. I added a line to my About page mentioning that I run ads from various partners including Rakuten. It’s just the right thing to do and also probably required by FTC rules if you’re in the US.
Q: How does Rakuten compare to other premium ad networks?
I haven’t tested every network out there, but compared to AdSense it was better. I had a friend test Mediavine and they made slightly more, but Mediavine requires way more traffic (500k+ monthly). Rakuten hit a sweet spot for me—better than AdSense, easier to get approved for than premium networks, solid payouts.
My Actual Rating
I’m giving Rakuten Advertising a 7.8 out of 10.
Here’s my breakdown: It delivered exactly what I needed (better RPMs), it paid reliably, and it didn’t break my site. The dashboard could be more intuitive, and I wish I had better real-time filters for analytics. But these aren’t deal-breakers.
It improved my earnings by roughly 8x in the first year, which is kind of insane. Like, I expected maybe 1.5-2x improvement. Getting to $8 RPM felt genuinely unexpected.
My only hesitation in rating it higher is that I don’t have long-term data yet. It’s been a year. What happens year two? Will it maintain? Will it grow? I don’t know. If it holds steady, this is an 8.5. If it somehow gets better, 9. If it drops off hard, well… that’ll be a different review.
But as it stands today, at the end of 2025, I’m genuinely happy with Rakuten. I’d recommend it to anyone with moderate traffic in the right countries.
Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which means I might earn a commission if you sign up through them. That said, everything in this review is based on my actual experience using the service. I don’t recommend things I don’t genuinely use and believe in. All numbers and timelines are accurate to my best recollection.
