Adsterra Review –  Is it the Best Ad Network For You?

Over the last several years, I have created many websites and am constantly searching for the best Adsense alternative display ad network. During my digital marketing journey, I discovered Adsterra.

Adsterra is often the easiest way for website publishers to earn money, so I had to check it out. A brief look was promising: 

But still, I had to test it for myself to see if it lived up to its reputation. This platform is precious for both publishers like myself and advertisers. So, I decided to create this Adsterra review to help other publishers like myself. So let’s dive in, shall we?

Adsterra Summary

9.4 out of 10

Ron’s Thoughts

Adsterra is a great ad network that has no minimum traffic requirements. Bloggers, website owners, and other publishers can display ads in all of the most popular formats for both mobile and desktop devices. It also provides three-level anti-fraud and anti-malware protection to keep you and your site visitors safe.

• Biggest Pro:

  No minimum traffic requirements

• Biggest Con:

  No demographic targeting (yet)

• Annual Discount

  None

• Price:

  Free For Publishers

• Promotion:

  Join Adsterra for Free

Join Adsterra For Free

Is Adsterra Worth it?

Founded in 2013, Adsterra now boasts over 35,000 direct publishers and 15,000 brands, affiliates, media agencies, and ad networks.

The Adsterra ads network is a network that has proven to be highly lucrative for both publishers and advertisers in the 786.2 billion dollar digital advertising and marketing industry. 

Known for innovative advertising displays such as Banner ads, Popunders, In-Page-Pushes, the unique Social Bar, Interstitials, landing pages, and more different ad formats.

The platform has no minimum traffic requirements and offers one of the highest cost-per-conversion rates in the industry. 

It’s a great option to consider whether you want to earn more money from your website traffic or look for more effective Amazon or AdSense alternatives. 

It is one of the best Google AdSense alternatives for advertisements.

Adsterra advertising platform and network can reach a wider audience and ultimately boost your profits. Its emphasis on cost-per-action (CPA) marketing campaigns is one of the reasons why so many marketers, website owners, and even media agencies find it so attractive.

Who is Adsterra Good For?

The Adsterra ad network is superb for:

• Bloggers looking for easier ways to make money from their blog traffic quality
• Website owners looking for better AdSense alternatives
• Anyone who wants to use Adsterra’s new revolutionary Social Bar ad format to monetize mainstream and non-mainstream websites, blogs, social networks, binary, and app installs, and gaming software.
• Marketers focused on affiliate offers (VPNs, Utilities, Subscriptions, Sweepstakes, iGaming, niche offers, etc.)
• Publishers who want maximum eCPM
• Publishers who want who want to collaborate with brands, affiliates, or media agencies
• Advertisers seeking cheap ways to get brand/product exposure
• Advertisers who wish to meet KPIs and grow their ROI

The network knows the space well and has years of experience making offers of this type successful. They also release a lot of case studies showing how the top affiliates make money with the platform. 

The intuitive self-serve platform is also straightforward to use and has tons of support available for anyone who needs it. 

Add that to the fact that there are no minimum traffic requirements, and you have a vibrant ad network that is ideally suited for almost everyone who wants to monetize the online business.

Pros and Cons

This Adsterra review has shown that the Adsterra network has quite a lot to offer, especially compared to other ad networks in the same category. 

Below, I’ve listed the best things about the Adsterra platform and a few things that could be improved.

Pros for Publishers:

• No minimum traffic requirements
• Publishers are generally paid by eCPM
• Ad Formats for publishers: Popunder ads, In-Page Push ads, Direct Links, Banner ads, Native ads, unique Social Bar format, and Interstitials
• The platform has a 100% fill rate and global coverage with geo-targeted ad impressions.
• Anti-AdBlock feature increases revenue by 35%
• Ability to monetize popular Facebook Pages (and other social networks)
• Payment options include PayPal, Paxum, Wire, Visa/Mastercard
• Extremely low minimum payouts (from $5)
• It can easily be integrated into WordPress
• Lucrative referral program earns publishers an extra 5%
• 24/7 customer support system and personal manager
• Easy API integration
• Three-level anti-fraud protection
• Fast and easy start with a 1-minute moderation
• No traffic exchanges or manipulation allowed.
• Malware is strictly prohibited.

Pros for Advertisers:

• Adsterra provides both: mainstream and niche traffic
• Multiple Cost Models, including CPM, CPA, RTB, CPC, CPI, CPL, CPS
• Offers both mobile and desktop ads
• Choose from managed services or self-serve platform
• Easy start: it takes minutes to launch a campaign and less than an hour to get it approved
• Anti-AdBlock feature
• Easy API and tracking integration
• 20+ filters to target user activity
• Recommended offers (the Offers Wishlist is updated regularly) in your account to reach maximum profit
• Traffic Estimator estimates the volumes of traffic and competitors’ bids, while Traffic Chart shows how much traffic you will get with this country and targeting (ad format, traffic type, device type, OS)
• Custom Bid allows for saving money: you increase bids for the best traffic sources and decrease the bid for those with the lowest performance
• Pricing Tokens that allow for granular monitoring of your ad spending
• Smart optimization tools to get the most out of your campaigns: Smart CPM and CPA Goal

Cons

• The platform doesn’t offer demographic targeting yet
• Some payment methods require documentary confirmation
• CPM rates may be different depending on the country (but that’s how it generally works with every network)
• Publishers usually have to go through a manager for significant changes to ad implementation
  

Ad Network Functionality

In this section, we’re going to break down the key features of the Adsterra network so you can find out what makes them different from other ad networks.

1. User-Friendly Publisher SSP

The Adsterra network offers a hassle-free experience for publishers to register and approve your website or blog in the system. It usually takes only a few minutes on Adsterra’s publisher SSP.

Your personal account contains everything you may need to monetize your traffic: ads set up with ad codes to paste on your website, stats, payment options, referral link.

2. Multiple Ad Formats (Banner ads, Pop-under, Social bar, and more)

Adsterra offers many different ad types for publishers, including a wide variety of classic and all-new ad formats.

With the Adsterra network, You can earn money by using the best ad formats quickly and safely. These adapt to all types of website categories and look native:

Popunder: One of the most used ad formats. A full-page ad is shown in a new browser and does not overlap your web content. Best for blogs, streaming websites, file hosting, downloads, entertainment, finance, utilities, and movies.

Publishers can customize popunders, including where the ads appear on the screen, how large the window is, and so on to ensure their website remains user-friendly even with the ads placed.

Popunder is one of the most popular and profitable formats at Adsterra network allows a unique retargeting feature. It helps to reduce too many ads on your site that may drive traffic away.

It is an excellent alternative to traditional pop-up ads and is rivaled only by the Social Bar ad format, rapidly gaining popularity.

Social Bar: Social Bar: A next-gen and revolutionary ad format developed by Adsterra that offers 30x CTR compared to web push ads and does not require subscriptions. Social Bar includes many subformats, including In-Page Pushes, Interstitials, Icon Notifications, and Custom Widgets.

Social Bar is best for file hosting, web and video streaming software, antiviruses and cleaners, e-commerce, subscriptions, and more.

Several factors contribute to Social Bar’s success and high profitability. 

Firstly, the fact that it’s fully customizable – creatives can look precisely the way you want them to, starting from the format (chats, notifications, etc.) to color, transparency, size, and so on.

This allows Social Bar ads to never stick out like a sore thumb, yet at the same time lets them remain exciting and eye-catching. 

Secondly, the highly engaging nature of this format’s ads gives clients protection against the notorious “ad blindness” effect. Finally, Social Bar’s advantage over its competition is the dynamic iFrames technology that doesn’t block web content – non-dynamic iFrames render other page content non-clickable, annoying clients, and causing losses in the long run.

Here are a few examples of social bar ads:

(Source)

Native Ads: These are simple but highly effective ads displayed like editorial content. They’re best for personal blogs, books, news, sports, education, games, and finance blogs.

Direct Link Ads: This is a simple URL that you can add to any element of the webpage, including text, images, buttons, etc. Adsterra smart direct link is the easiest way to make money online and is ideal for one-page websites, landing pages, downloads, books, file hosting, webinars, referral link, and catalogs. You can monetize whatever you want with the help of the direct link, including social networks and apps. 

Display or Banner Ads: These are classic Banner ads formats that run on desktop and mobile websites. They are ideal for eshops, news, blogs, webinars, file converters, software, MP3, etc.

3. Payment Models

Adsterra usually pays its publishers by eCPM model, however, for trusted partners other models can be arranged.

Publishers can monetize all types of traffic – desktop/mobile traffic, social/mobile app, and web page traffic.

This is great for you if you want to have complete control over the type of ads used on your website to ensure they match your audience’s traffic and typical use patterns. 

4. Enhanced Security

In this Adsterra review, I wanted to show how they strive to provide publishers with a safe experience by using in-house security software and reliable third-party solutions on fraud detection systems, together with manual services to weed out fraud, malware, unsolicited downloads, and scams. 

The company also developed a proprietary Anti-Adblock solution that helps increase publisher revenue by up to 35%, and you can use ad-type filters to match the perfect ads for your site.

5. Smart Optimization Algorithm

Yet another fantastic feature of this ad network is the intelligent AI-based algorithm that analyzes your website traffic and selects the most profitable offers suited to your audience.

You get the best-matching ad feed with the highest current bids for your traffic.

You are still in complete control of your ad feed, which means you can adjust the feed settings to choose the verticals you want to exclude.

6. Referral Program

I wanted this Adsterra review to show that they also offer an easy and transparent referral program that allows publishers to earn an extra 5% of the revenue generated by anyone they refer to the platform.

When you sign up as a publisher on the ad network, you’re given a unique adsterra.com referral link. You can use it to bring references by blogging about Adsterra, directly sharing the link with others, or inserting the reference link on various social media platforms.

Adsterra vs. Competitors

Adsterra is one of the leading global advertising platforms that provide value to publishers and advertisers. However, it’s far from the only ad network available to help you meet your website monetization goals. 

Below, I’ve listed 3 of the top Adsterra alternatives and competitors.

AdMaven

AdMaven is yet another robust ad network that offers advertisers and publishers great-performing ads and high ROI. It’s a possible alternative to Adsterra, and the platform supports a wide range of ad formats and cost models for global coverage.

Why Choose AdMaven?

• You have a dedicated, round-the-clock support team to help you reach your performance goals.
• Flexible pricing models to increase ROI, including CPA, CPM, CPC, etc.
• Quickly integrate various ad formats into your site for immediate monetization.
• Proprietary optimization tools offer high eCPM and revenues.
• Full-screen ads, push ads, and various other ad formats for monetizing your site.
• Platform filters out unwanted creatives and malware to keep your site safe and secure.

Traffic Nomads

Traffic Nomads is an ad network that offers an exclusive push ads inventory to run campaigns with the highest conversion rate. In addition, the platform provides cutting-edge ad technology for publishers and advertisers to boost ROI.

Why choose Traffic Nomads?

• There are multiple ad formats, including pops, native, calendars, banners, and in-page push.
• Select the hottest geographies with the most vital daily impressions.
• Alert-style push ads for attracting more visitors and increasing CTR.
• High-performing verticals, including sweepstakes, gaming, dating, crypto, and casino.
• Intuitive analytics dashboard for optimizing and analyzing campaigns.
• Fraud prevention technology is for 100% exclusive push traffic-free from bots.

Datspush

Datspush is an ad network that specializes in push ads in multiple formats, including in-page, popunder, and native. The platform has over 17 billion push impressions from across 250 different countries. 

As a publisher, you can easily set up push notifications on this multi-format ad network by simply choosing a design and integrating the scripts into your website. You can then start monetizing your visitors immediately.

Why Choose Datspush?

• Reliable, 24/7 support team and dedicated account manager
• Low bids, starting at $0.001 with a $50 minimum deposit.
• High-performing verticals, including new track, finance, gaming, dating, etc.
• Advanced targeting to help you reach broader audiences and boost ROI.
• Real-time statistics for analyzing your campaign performance.
• Quick and easy account set-ups and daily payouts.

There are many other networks in the running for the top spot in the industry including:

• Newor Media (No minimum traffic threshold)
• Mediavine
• Adthrive
• Media.net
• Ezoic

You can also check out how Adsterra compares with Adsense in my Adsterra vs Adsense comparison article.

Payment Policy

Adsterra’s payouts to its partners are pretty straightforward: you can use a handful of options from Wire Transfer to PayPal.

There are multiple payment options, and publishers can choose from the following:

• Webmoney: $5 (minimum payment threshold)
• Paxum: $5
• PayPal: $100
• Bank Wire Transfer: $1,000

Adsterra offers 15NET regular automated payouts.

Adsterra Pricing

Adsterra provides you with instant income and high CPM rates. This is the number one reason many publishers choose this platform to monetize their blogs, websites, and Facebook pages.

CPM rates depend on many different factors: traffic quality, the amount of advertising on the website, ad placement, seasonality, users’ location, audience characteristics (OS of users, their browser, etc.).

The best news?  

Adsterra doesn’t cost publishers anything.  

You read that right. Adsterra doesn’t charge anything to their publishers because they pass all costs off to advertisers. This alone is a good enough reason to try out their network.

Product Support

If you get anything from this Adsterra review, know that Adsterra prides itself on providing top-tier support.

According to custdevs of 2023, the company has a 95% customer satisfaction score: partners say Adsterra’s managers are most approachable and helpful and always respond promptly.

Adsterra’s clients who worked with other ad networks before say that they’ve never seen managers that are as approachable and helpful as Adsterra’s – and none that respond as quickly.

All this and more is due to Adsterra’s in-house training program, Partner Care, that fosters a unique approach to client support.

If you happen to get stuck during any stage, from set-up to tracking ads and anything in between, the platform has a reliable and knowledgeable customer support team that provides personalized and quick support in a variety of ways:

• Personal Account Manager: Every new account is assigned the contact details of a personal manager, including a business email to contact them whenever you need help on the platform.
• Tickets: Alternatively, you can raise a ticket to get solutions related to any of your account queries and problems.
• 24/7 Live chat: If you need immediate help, there’s always someone available to assist you through the website’s live chat feature.
• Skype: You can also chat with support on Skype to get help tweaking your ads or campaigns so you can make them profitable from the very start.
• Email: You can always get your questions answered via email, although this may have a considerable delay in response time compared to tickets and live chat.
• Documentation: The website also has extensive help files, resources, and guides to help everyone from total beginners to more experienced users who want to know how to get the most from the platform.

As you can see, regardless of the type of help you may need, the Adsterra team is always at your disposal, and you can contact them in any way that is convenient to you.

Adsterra Review Q&A

Is Adsterra Legit?

Adsterra is legit, and I hope this Adsterra review helps better explain the platform. It’s a great company that offers tons of value to publishers and advertisers. 

This ad network is also a great place to start for new marketers and blog owners with very little traffic. 

It has advanced API and tracking integration and 24/7 service from the Adsterra support team.

It is known for its intuitive self-serve platform in the industry of many other ad serving solutions with easy API integration, IP targeting, and multiple level anti-fraud protection.

Although there are a few things that could be improved on the platform, all in all, the ad network does a superb job of maintaining high-quality publishers and advertisers. 

Whether you want to use Adsterra as an AdSense alternative or if you’re going to use it in conjunction with another network, this is a great ad network to consider for monetizing your traffic.

Try Adsterra for Advertisers and explore what this ad network offers.