Founded in 2013 by an experienced team of affiliates and webmasters, Adsterra offers the reach of tens of billions of monthly geo-targeted ad impressions from many thousands of different traffic sources to provide revenue and traffic to a robust roster of active advertisers.
Relying on a team of 150 employees to develop its technology and cater to its clients, Adsterra’s premium advertising network connects product and service companies with new audiences to raise global brand awareness, improve ROI and increase ad revenue.
We cater to both mainstream and adult. Our clients are all pretty much different, so they may choose whether to cut adult traffic or ads.
The company recently spiked its adult industry exposure when it participated in the “Tuning Traffic for Peak Performance: Inside Tips for Advertisers, Publishers” virtual workshop at XBIZ Berlin, teasing the audience with insights about its tech and unique ad formats.
Embracing its mission to transform digital advertising by making it more creative, unique and engaging, Adsterra’s smart ads platform and modern optimization tech work hand-in-hand with the team’s personalized approach to help partners grow their business.
With core values that focus on creativity, innovation, passion, reliability and trust, Adsterra helps take real-time bidding (RTB) and retargeting to the next level, with a wide range of ad formats along with the resources to guide clients to maximizing their revenue — an income stream that can be further expanded through the company’s referral program.
To gain a more fulsome understanding of the company and its offers, XBIZ turned to Adsterra CMO Gala Grigoryeva for her insights.
XBIZ: What led to the launch of Adsterra?
GG: The company was founded in 2013 by professional affiliate marketers and webmasters with (as of now) 20+ years of experience. They were friends in school and the university, brought together by their shared interest in technology and marketing and the desire to find the best way to attain self-realization and success.
As newcomers to the industry, they often encountered the lack of proper technology and high entry barriers for thousands of webmasters and affiliates; soon realizing that they have valuable experience and skills that they want to share. So, they decided to create something new, both for themselves and the market. From 20 people in 2013, Adsterra grew to about 150 in 2020. Today Adsterra is a well-known brand with a good reputation and has been recognized by many bloggers and affiliates as one of the best ad tech platforms in the industry.
XBIZ: What defines your company and distinguishes it as a competitive ad network?
GG: Adsterra provides an advanced advertising and monetization platform and A-class support for private and corporate media buyers and sellers who seek the most profitable and convenient way to trade traffic regularly. Adsterra offers a broad range of ad formats, including its proprietary Social Bar ads and payment options, fast moderation, beginner- and vertical-friendly policies and specific targeting features.
It differs from dozens of ad networks in that it has a three-level security system, flexible ad inventories, and the industry’s best managers and support.
XBIZ: What does your portfolio of publishers and traffic sources look like, and what types of channels/platforms/sites do you serve?
GG: Adsterra has global coverage since we partner with 18K+ direct publishers providing desktop and mobile traffic of any tier and type. Traffic sources are most commonly entertainment platforms such as games, casinos, movies, MP3 and video streaming, adult and dating websites and apps. We also work with news, tech, finance websites and accept traffic from Google, Bing, Facebook, TikTok and other social media monetized via our Smart Direct Link.
As relates to advertisers, among 12K of them, there are brand owners, private media buyers, media agencies and CPA networks. Our top verticals are adult, dating, sweepstakes, utilities and gambling, etc.
XBIZ: Does the company cater to both adult and mainstream clients, or primarily to one over the other?
GG: We cater to both mainstream and adult. Our clients are all pretty much different, so they may choose whether to cut adult traffic or ads. However, they indeed earn much more by allowing adult verticals.
Our recent development, the Social Bar ad format, shows excellent results with cams and adult goods, which means 10x higher CTRs leading to better post-click performance and a significant eCPM lift for publishers.
XBIZ: What types of ad formats does Adsterra specialize in, and which are the most effective for your clients?
GG: Adsterra has always specialized in popunders. Our popunder traffic volume is similar to what others offer today. We also have banners, push ads, native banners, pre-roll ads and, as I’ve already mentioned, our new Social Bar ad format. It’s somewhat of a rich push format that interacts with users, driving unprecedented ROI. It comes with ultra-engaging ad types like dynamic chat windows, survey icons, messenger bubbles, customizable banners of any shape and transparency, plus video teasers and classic in-page push ads.
XBIZ: What types of ad purchase options does Adsterra offer, and which are the most popular today?
GG: There are a decent choice of purchase options in Adsterra, including wire, Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay, Webmoney, PayPal, Paxum, QIWI, Capitalist, Bitcoin and Yandex Money. The most popular are wires, PayPal and Paxum, though it depends on the advertiser type.
XBIZ: How does Adsterra’s optimization technology increase ad engagement?
GG: Adsterra’s smart algorithms select creatives, formats and campaigns that have historically performed better on a particular type of traffic, ensuring users will see content that is sure to grab their attention. In addition, they analyze user portrait and behavior to deliver the best match on an automated basis. It’s all about ad tech magic that also works for RTB and API solutions. Apart from it, Adsterra cares a lot about budget and conversion optimization offering different pricing models to its advertisers, including CPA, CPM, CPC, CPL and CPI.
Adsterra’s traffic estimator is much smarter than many of its competitors. We provide the information about traffic volumes not for the network in general, but how much traffic you will get based on campaign settings and competitors’ activity. Advertisers are used to spending a lot of time on blacklisting and whitelisting to run multiple campaigns. Now they can do everything within one campaign; such as setting lower custom bids for bad-performing placements and higher ones for top-performing zones while keeping up with the necessary traffic volume. You can even play with custom bids for the same placement in different GEOs.
XBIZ: Based on what the company sees in demand for advertising and publisher inventory, what is driving the most business these days?
GG: We have been witnessing an increasing demand for user-friendly, interactive, highly-engaging and more creative ad formats. Web push ads would probably win here, but low reach and potential compared to other formats (no iOS, push subscribers only), as well as the release of Google Chrome v.86, may contribute significantly to their burnout.
Mobile traffic is continually growing, causing an increasing interest in the relevant solutions. Here comes a perfect match in the form of in-page push and Social Bar options Adsterra may offer. What else? Popunders seem to be immortal!
XBIZ: What are the biggest ways adult advertising has changed over the past few years?
GG: What’s obvious is that adult advertisers have become more competent in media buying — they’ve started using more high-quality tools for traffic analysis and are introducing new traffic sources. In terms of products, little has changed in recent years; but the sites themselves, content, availability and usability have become much better and more pleasant for both beginners and professionals.
XBIZ: Tell us what your future goals are for Adsterra amidst the ever-evolving traffic space, and how you plan to stay ahead of the curve.
GG: We regularly run surveys and customer dev sessions to listen to our clients’ needs and ideas. So, I envision that we will focus on enhancing our platform with further advanced targeting, tracking, stats and new ad formats.
More than 80 percent of our clients, who at the same time work with other ad networks, say they love Adsterra for its tons of high-quality traffic and the most responsive and skilled team. With seven years of business expertise, we have developed a unique in-house Partner Care program for personal managers and the support team. That’s what, together with technological guidance, makes us stay ahead of the curve.
