Very low earnings after 26 days on Journey – mostly seeing Grow ads. Is this normal?

Hi everyone,

I joined the Mediavine Journey program recently and my site has been live with Journey ads for about 26 days now. I wanted to ask if my experience is normal during the ramp-up period.

Before switching, I was using Google AdSense and was earning around $2/day on average with roughly 5.8k pageviews per month and a Page RPM around $7–$8.

Since enabling Journey, my total earnings in the last 26 days have been around $1, and most of the ads I see are Grow promotional ads rather than regular advertiser ads.

Some details about my site:

• Traffic: ~80% United States
• Niche: Tech / WordPress / AI tutorials
• Articles are long-form with good scroll depth
• ads.txt is properly installed
• Mediavine script is loading correctly

I understand there is a ramp-up and learning phase, but I wanted to check with others in the community:

1. Is it normal to see mostly Grow ads during the first few weeks?
2. How long does it typically take before real advertiser ads start filling consistently?
3. Did others experience very low revenue in the first month before it improved?

I’m trying to decide how long I should wait before evaluating performance compared to AdSense.

Thanks in advance for any insights!