My Experience with Ezoic: Traffic Drop After Switching from AdSense

In February 2025, I switched from Google AdSense to Ezoic to display ads on one of my websites that regularly receives over 22,000 daily visitors and around 70,000 pageviews from Google searches.

As recommended by Ezoic, I integrated the site with the Ezoic CDN, which they claim is the best approach to fully benefit from their AI-powered ad optimization. Ezoic started showing ads on the website on February 26, 2025. However, shortly after that, I began to notice a gradual decline in traffic.

Within just 7 days, my daily visitor count dropped from 22,000 to under 15,000. Over the past year, I don’t recall seeing traffic dip below 17,000, so this was definitely unusual.

Here's the Google Search Console report that shows the decline in visitors since I got Ezoic activated:

Even when checking Ezoic’s own analytics report, it showed that daily visitors were around 25,000, with over 60,000 daily pageviews before the ad activation. These numbers started dropping soon after the ads went live.

Performance Issues Detected via Lighthouse Audit

To understand what was going on, I performed a Lighthouse audit using Google Chrome in incognito mode. The results clearly showed that Ezoic significantly affected performance, particularly for mobile users.

In contrast, running the same Lighthouse audit on the same page without Ezoic ads revealed a performance score of over 90%. So it's not surprising that visitor numbers dropped when performance dropped from 91 to 49.

Metrics Breakdown

Here's the Lighthouse performance breakdown, showing how badly metrics like Total Blocking Time and Speed Index were affected by Ezoic:

The diagnostics panel indicated that Ezoic loads a large number of JavaScript files, which collectively take up to 12 seconds to execute:

Optimization Attempts

Following Ezoic’s suggestions, I integrated the site with Ezoic CDN to help boost performance:

I also enabled Leap optimization using the recommended settings:

However, I had to disable the Script Execution option, as turning it on caused some interactive elements on my pages to stop working properly.

Despite applying all optimizations available through Ezoic, the website’s performance took a major hit. When I brought up the issue with Ezoic’s chatbot, it suggested giving the AI around 6 weeks to collect data and improve optimization.

From what I understand, this optimization mainly involves adjusting ad placement and quantity to maximize revenue—but it doesn’t do much to improve performance scores like those measured in Lighthouse.

Revenue Increase

While traffic and performance dropped, there was a significant increase in ad revenue. In fact, after switching to Ezoic, I started earning almost 3 times more than I was earning with AdSense. Their system clearly does a good job of optimizing for earnings per visitor. However, the downside is the impact on traffic and user experience. This raises an important question—is the increased revenue worth the long-term loss of audience and performance quality?

What’s Next?

The only remaining option I haven’t tried yet is manual integration of Ezoic using JavaScript, instead of going through their CDN. I have another website that recently switched to Ezoic and is showing similar issues.

I’ll try the manual setup there and see how it affects performance. I’ll write a follow-up review after testing that configuration to share my findings.

Follow-Up: Comparing Ezoic Integration Methods

Since publishing this post, I explored different Ezoic integration methods to understand their impact on performance and monetization. I tested both Ezoic CDN and JavaScript integration to see which worked best for my dynamic site.

I’ve documented the full comparison in a new article:

Ezoic CDN vs JavaScript Integration: Performance, Ads & Pageviews

If you're deciding between integration types, this breakdown may help you choose the best approach for your own site.

After running on JS integration for a while, I ultimately switched back to Ezoic CDN. Although it hasn't yet been the full 6 weeks Ezoic recommends for its AI to fully adjust, I'm already seeing improvements in both traffic and revenue. That said, Core Web Vitals are still poor, so there’s room for further optimization.