A few days ago on Reddit, user “vujo91-1” posted the following email he received from Mediavine:
The letter was from the company’s Director of Ad Operations and Market Quality. “This is a huge shock for me,” says vujo91-1.
Is it, though?
Why This Matters:
According to other Reddit posters in the thread and vujo91-1 himself through his own Reddit profile, the soon-to-be-banned blogger relying on Mediavine for monetization is none other than controversial internet entrepreneur Nebojša Vujinović Vujo.
In February, Wired published an investigation that dubbed Vujo the “AI Clickbait Kingpin.” The exposé revealed he operates a sophisticated “AI-content-fueled fiefdom” of over 20,000 sites, “built by acquiring once-popular domains fallen on hard times.” See an alleged example of one of Vujo’s sites here. It appears to be evergreen, textbook made-for-advertising (MFA) content, while also featuring affiliate or SEO links throughout.
Obviously, you will be shocked to learn that this runs counter to Mediavine’s content policies and terms of service. In fact, in March, Mediavine published a treatise outlining how they planned to manage the rise of AI both internally and externally with customers.
“We do not monetize low-quality, mass-produced, unedited, or undisclosed AI content that is scraped from other websites,” reads the article. “We will not tolerate publishers using AI to create untested recipes or any other form of low-quality content that devalues the contributions of legitimate content creators.”
Mediavine, while taking some time to identify Vujo as one of its publishing customers, will now end his prolific MFA operation to the benefit of its advertising partners and customers, and, maybe the internet as a whole.
Experts React:
Reddit posters responding to Vujo seemed largely on Mediavine’s side, praising the company.
One poster said, “More ad providers and affiliate programs should follow Mediavine. AI destroys the internet, and this is just the first step to avoid AI from completely making the internet unusable. In my opinion, generative AI should not be used to create all forms of content on the internet. As a tool to improve human content—yes, that should be its main purpose.”
Another said, “This is great news! All monetization of AI-created content needs to be stopped. I have had countless blogs copy all my travel posts over the last 3 years. Google unfortunately ranks all these copied articles ahead of me even though I have 15+ years of experience traveling. I have lived in over 20 different cities and hiked hundreds of high-altitude trails for my articles—it is so depressing to see someone copy and paste my material (with no photos) and rank ahead of me.”
Our Take:
Look — AI is the ad industry’s gift and curse. This is just another example of that.
MFA content has exploded over the last two years as a result of Gen AI, though studies show that the numbers appear to be falling as the ad industry has wised up to the problem. Better tools and data from companies like DoubleVerify, Jounce, and Sincera are certainly helping to weed out bad actors.
While bad actors will always innovate to maintain their ability to be malicious, it’s encouraging to see companies like Mediavine working to clean up their ecosystem and ensure a higher caliber of publishing partners.
