AdSense Alternative for Images¶

Google AdSense earns from the ad slots around your content: banners and display ads that advertisers bid on, paid mostly per impression. Your photos, often the most-viewed part of the page, earn nothing on their own. Mentionlink works like AdSense for images: it uses AI to find the products in your photos, makes them clickable with hotspots, and links the same products wherever your article mentions them. It adds no ad slot, so it runs alongside AdSense and every dollar it earns comes on top.

Category	AdSense	Mentionlink
What readers see	Display ads in slots around the content	Hotspots on the products in your photos, and links where the article mentions them
What gets monetized	Ad slots	Your images and text
Relevance	Whatever advertisers bid on for that reader	The exact product in the photo or the sentence
Where the click goes	An advertiser's website	The store in the reader's own country, in a new tab, while your page stays open
Paid on	Mostly impressions	Commissions on purchases
Layout	Ad slots to reserve and fill	No slot needed; links inherit your existing link styles
Cookies	Used for ad personalization and measurement	None
Revenue Model	Revenue-sharing	Revenue-sharing
Works alongside the other	Yes	Yes

The idea of "AdSense for images" goes back to Pixazza and Luminate, which made the products in publishers' photos shoppable before Yahoo acquired and shut down Luminate in 2014. Mentionlink brings it back with AI instead of human taggers:

Captions. Each photo gets a caption that names what's in it, inside a <figure> that works with your existing markup.
Hotspots. The products in the photo become clickable regions with visible labels. On a small image or a phone, labels that don't fit collapse to a dot, so the photo stays readable.
Text and image together. When a reader hovers over, or focuses, a product mentioned in the article, the hotspots for the same product light up in the photo.
Product cards. A strip of product cards can follow the paragraph or caption that mentions them.

See Mentionlink vs. Luminate and Mentionlink vs. Pixazza for how it compares with them.

Where Higher RPM Comes From¶

Revenue per 1,000 pageviews (RPM) from affiliate links breaks down into five numbers:

RPM = 1,000 × clickthrough rate × conversion rate × average order value × commission rate

AdSense RPM depends on how many ad slots a page has and what advertisers bid for them. Mentionlink adds a second, independent source of revenue that grows with the products your content already features. Plug your own numbers into the Affiliate Revenue Calculator to see what that's worth on your traffic.

Clickthrough: Links Where the Intent Is¶

A reader is most likely to click on a product while they're looking at it or reading about it. Mentionlink puts the link on the product in the photo and on the sentence that recommends it, instead of in a banner next to the content. It uses AI to link only high-intent mentions, so readers see a handful of links that are worth clicking rather than a wall of them.

Conversion: The Right Product, the Right Store¶

A click only pays if the reader buys. Mentionlink links to the product in the photo, from well-rated listings, and sends each reader to the store in their own country. In the US, it even takes into account that prices vary across more than 40,000 ZIP codes. A reader who lands on the item they wanted, in a store that ships to them, at the price they'll see at checkout, is a reader who buys.

Order Value and Commission: Earn on the Whole Basket¶

Mentionlink matches each product to the affiliate program with the best fit, such as Amazon Associates, Fanatics or Lids. Programs like Amazon Associates pay on the qualifying purchases the reader makes after the click, not only on the product that was linked, so one photo can earn on a whole shopping basket.

Session RPM: Keep the Reader on Your Site¶

A display ad click takes the reader to an advertiser's website. Every link Mentionlink adds opens in a new tab, so your page is still there when the reader comes back, and your AdSense units keep earning on the next article they read.

Stacking: Add Revenue Without Taking Any Away¶

Mentionlink adds no ad slot, so it doesn't compete with your AdSense units for space or attention, and you don't have to move or remove any of them. It only links text that is not already linked, and it never interferes with Skimlinks, VigLink or other link converters. Every dollar it earns is added on top of what your page already makes.

A Better Reading Experience¶

No extra ads. Hotspots and links point to the products your content already shows and names.
Works on phones. Hotspot labels sit on the photo, with no hover required, and adapt to the size of the image.
Looks like your site. Links match your fonts and colors, so they read like part of the article.
Fast. The script is about 35 KB compressed, loads with defer, and waits for the page to finish loading. See Performance.
Accessible. Links, hotspots and product cards conform to WCAG 2.2 Level AA.
No cookies. Mentionlink sends no cookies, so it doesn't need to be in your cookie consent banner.
Disclosed for you. A footer on every page discloses that it may contain affiliate links.

High-Quality, Relevant Content¶

Every link Mentionlink adds points to a product your content already features, not to whoever bids the most for that reader. Before Mentionlink captions a photo or links a product seen in it, an image safety classifier reviews it, and photos of political, religious, assistive tech, or violent subjects are left exactly as you published them.

You stay in control:

Links per page: cap how many affiliate links Mentionlink adds to a page.
Sections: enable Mentionlink only on the sections where it fits, by URL pattern. See Configuration and Customization.
Individual links: refine, remove, or add links one by one.
Search engines: every link carries rel="sponsored nofollow", so it has no impact on SEO.

You don't have to switch anything off. Add Mentionlink next to AdSense and measure the difference on your own traffic:

Start a pilot on a few sections of your site, rolled out by URL pattern.
Compare page RPM and session RPM on the pilot sections against similar sections without Mentionlink.
Widen the rollout section by section once you're happy with the results.

Mentionlink is a revenue share with no upfront cost and no locked-in contract, and our team handles the installation for free. Email us at hello@mentionlink.com to set up a pilot.

AdSense is a trademark of Google LLC. Mentionlink is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.

Get Started

Schedule a free demo or email us at hello@mentionlink.com