Today, webmasters have more choices than ever when it comes to crypto advertising networks, but this choice comes at a cost. Obviously, all website owners want to make as much as they can when using crypto advertising networks but calculating that profitability without testing can be tough.
So, to help make the decision on cryptocurrency advertising a little easier, we spoke to dozens of webmasters and conducted an experiment in order to uncover which crypto ad network is the best paying and boasts best tools to optimize your revenue streams.
Our experiment looks at the 3 leading crypto ad networks, which are Cointraffic, Coinzilla and Bitmedia. Each crypto ad network was tested on the same website for a 1 week period. To be precise, the banners were set up on an online crypto mining simulator. It generates quite a healthy volume of traffic per month but is incomparable to the views accumulated by renowned news publications. Therefore, it serves as a great median and gives an understanding of what both smaller and larger traffic websites can and should expect from the crypto ad networks in question.
Cointraffic – $ 14.1 (€ 11.65) earned
Cointraffic pays out in both crypto and fiat, which suits everyone’s needs on the accounting front. There is a €500 minimum deposit for advertisers with a minimum daily budget of €20, which means that as a website owner, you can be sure that the ads are rolling in and the advertisers are serious about their products.
Unfortunately, Cointraffic has poor geo-restrictions in place, meaning that bitcoin advertisements could show up on your site that isn’t related to your readers at all. This can lead to a negative experience for your readers, but as they only offer a CPM plan, you will still get paid. The second disadvantage we came across is the lack of CPM floor setting. In other words, as a webmaster, you cannot set a threshold for the minimum cost per impression. This means that you cannot control whether Cointraffic displays high-paying or low-paying assets on your website, which in the case of our experiment got reflected in a very low payout, further supported by shallow impressions count.
It is not a secret that the webmaster’s payout is greatly dependent on the availability of a CPM floor. Therefore we spoke to Cointrafic’s support, keen to find out if it is something that they can provide over the counter. Surprisingly, it is indeed an additional service that can be made available upon request but according to support, the tested website did not qualify due to its facet nature. In reality, the virtual bitcoin mining resource all three crypto ad networks supplied ads to, is not a facet and still, the answer was negative. We have later tried to resolve this misunderstanding with the support team, but their decision remained unchanged.
Cointraffic is also the most expensive CPM bitcoin advertising network with a minimum bid of €3.50, which is a little surprising given the payouts we’ve seen in our research. There’s also a wide range of banner sizes available, meaning that you can slide in ads from Cointraffic in virtually every spot you can imagine on your site. So, if you’re looking to advertise bitcoin services in a range of sizes, this could be the network for you.
Coinzilla – $ 55.9 (€ 46.27) earned
Coinzilla is fairly similar to Cointraffic in terms of setup, features and costs involved for advertisers, meaning you should expect good payouts if you’re trying to advertise crypto projects. You can get paid in both crypto and fiat, with advertisers being forced to stump up an initial €300 deposit to get going. Minimum CPM bids are set at €0.2 and €3, which is a nice happy medium.
There’s a daily budget required for all active campaigns on the platform at €50. Again, you’d think this would lend itself to higher payouts, and it proves to be true when compared to payouts from Cointraffic. It does also come equipped with nice blacklisting and geo-restriction features, which allows you to take control of the ads that are displayed on your site.
From an ad goal standpoint, Coinzilla only has a CPM program, meaning that you can’t target higher payouts with your high-quality traffic through a CPC deal. This is quite a major setback as websites with very good traffic should be rewarded for their hard work. Similar to Cointraffic, this crypto ad network has also failed to offer a CPM floor feature. Coinzilla has shown much better performance in terms of impressions count but it is the lack of impressions costs management that once again, led to unremarkable payouts.
Bitmedia – $ 1013.81 earned
Bitmedia opts to not doxx their publishers, meaning that you will remain anonymous to advertisers if they don’t ask for the list of end websites to be disclosed. It also has the easiest geo-restriction settings to use out of all the platforms. Blacklisting particular types of ads can be done with the click of a button, which is a sleek and painless process. There’s a deep range of options that you can pick from, as well as sizes for banners that you wish to host on your site, giving you total control over what your readers see.
This crypto ad network for publishers also allows the use of both CPM and CPC campaigns. If you’ve got really high-quality traffic that’s more likely to convert, you can opt to run the CPC ads and bank a larger check than just a plain old CPM ad network.
It’s also the cheapest network around for advertisers, meaning that you’ll see more variants popping up on your site, preventing ad fatigue. Bids start at $0.3 for CPM and $0.25 for CPC, making it a highly attractive platform. You have the power to get paid in a variety of crypto, depending on what you prefer, which further adds to the simplicity of using the platform.
As a final boost, Bitmedia has a price floor option, which is a feature that fails to appear on any of the other networks we’ve covered here. Once turned on, we filtered out the advertisers that are paying below our minimum threshold and ended up with remuneration which greatly prevailed competition. Bitmedia’s support has further informed us that they run their own test campaigns with every website they onboard, letting the latter benefit not only from the size of traffic but also from the number of real conversions brought to the table!
In fact, it’s this price floor mechanism that means Bitmedia will always payout the most money. As a webmaster, you can opt to only show high-paying ads, you can supercharge your earnings, rather than displaying low-paying ads to your audience. This feature is not available at Coinzilla or Cointraffic and doesn’t look like it’s going to be added any time soon.
Which is Best?
If your goal is to show the best ads to your readers and monetize crypto traffic with high impressions count, then Bitmedia takes the crown. The ability to pick between CPM and CPC ads is a great feature to have for website owners and the geo settings make controlling the ads on your site as easy as pie. It is also what led to such a high diversity in earnings, whilst the CPM floor gave the final push to an increased payout on this crypto ad network.
If you want to show a great variety of ads, Cointraffic stands out as a better option because text ads and native ads are integrated in a much sleeker way. Despite more options in this department, Cointraffic still can’t keep up with the payout levels that we’ve seen with Bitmedia.
Coinzilla is a weaker contender out of the three, limping home with average payments and run-of-the-mill features. It’s a blend of the two best crypto display networks but fails to deliver any real value to webmasters.
Finally, selecting which crypto ad network to opt for is your decision. Examine each and every one of them and go for the one that makes more sense to you. All three boast advantages and disadvantages and we believe that our independent experiment offers plenty of initial tools to ease the decision-making process for you. At the end of the day, these networks have one thing in common, and that is access to advertisers, which is an integral part of your website’s future.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
