Adsterra Review: The Highest Paying Ad Network For Anime Blogs

Hello, fellow anime bloggers! I’ve finally found it!! After two years of anime blogging, I’ve found the best, highest paying ad network for anime related websites.

I honestly believed that earning and making a living with an anime blog was impossible until a few weeks ago. I have tried multiple ad networks in the past and have earned only a measly amount.

It was only natural that I assumed that it was the normal payout rate for the anime niche. I mean, there aren’t much advertisers who’d want to advertise to the anime community, right?

But turns out, there is a better paying ad network called Adsterra, that works great for anime based content. With this I’m finally earning enough to make my effort worthwhile.

BE WARNED: It turns out Adsterra is not as legit as they claim to be. They pay. They pay a lot, actually. But I found out the hard way that the reason for their high CPM is because they redirect your visitors to malicious websites. Getting paid more is great, but it can’t be at the cost of harming the site. Thankfully, I had a kind soul at Crow’s World of Anime report this issue to me. If not for them, I would have never noticed it and the site would’ve died, because whenever I tried to access my site, it was working normally. I learned that the redirect was happening only for visitors from the US, and I don’t live there, so it was fine for me. Regardless, now I know I’m not touching Adsterra with a 10-foot pole. Right now, I’m using Adsense and Ezoic combined. Ezoic is partnered with Google, so they don’t do shady stuff like Tire-2 and Tire-3 networks like Adsterra.

Adsterra – Probably the only Ad Network with ‘Anime’ As a Category

As you know, when you register your website on any ad network it’ll ask for the category/niche of your site. Most of the times, we anime bloggers will have to go with “entertainment/movies/games” as the category. But for the first time in my blogging career, I saw “Anime” as a category in Adsterra.

What this means is that they’ve worked with other anime publishers like you and can serve better converting ads for your site. Which simply means that you’ll be earning more money through their targeted ads.

My Weekly Ad Revenue Increased By Over 1000%

Before changing to Adsterra, I was using Infolinks and Infolinks was a pretty decent ad network and the pay wasn’t all that bad considering how I only had 4 ad units per page. But the problem was the ads were completely unrelated to my content. Hell, it wasn’t even anywhere near what 18-24 years (most of my readers fall into this age category) would be interested in. From what I’ve seen the ads were mostly about banks, loans and water bottles (seriously?)

Propeller Ads on the other hand was full of annoying pop ups and spammy ads. They didn’t have any banner ads option that I could insert between my articles. It’s either pop-ups or pop-unders (the ads which pop up when you click anywhere on the website). It paid higher than Infolinks, but it was at the cost of my website’s bounce rate and User friendliness. I didn’t want my blog to look like a spam website, so I quit Propeller Ads after earning about $100 in 2-3 months.

However, with Adsterra, I’ve earned $123.79 in just a week. It’s too good to be true, right? I thought there’s meant to be a catch. So, I waited another two week to see if I can earn the same amount. Surprisingly, it remained the same. I was expecting it to go down drastically, but no, I still earned over $100 per week!!

You have no idea how much it meant to me. I was going to give up on my blogging dream and become a corporate employee. But now, I feel like I’ve been saved. It’s still not enough to make a living with, but it’s a start. If I grow my audience, I can earn more. I’ve got a new hope now.

Adsterra vs Infolinks vs Propeller Ads

Now keep in mind that the CPM rates are different for different niches, and the following data is only relevant to websites with anime and anime related content. It also depends on where your audience are from and how many ads you allow on a page. Most of my audience are from the US, which is a Tier 1 country, so I have a decent CPM.

Infolinks Monthly Earnings (Decent Ad Network)

I used 3 ad units/formats: in-article, in-fold(sticky banner at the bottom of the screen) and in-tag (ad banner at the end of the article.) In addition to these three they also offer text link ads and in-frame ads. However, I didn’t opt for those as they made my blog look cramped.

Propeller Ads Monthly Earnings (Popup/under Ad Network)

I only used one ad format– the pop under. There were other ad units but as I mentioned before, it negatively affected my blog’s user experience, so I kept the number of ad units to a bare minimum. If I had used all the ad units/formats they offered, it could have been several times this result.

Adsterra Weekly Earnings (Best Gaming/Anime Ad Network)

I used 7 ad units for Adsterra as they were all User Experience friendly. Six of them are banners of different size placed at different locations of my blog. And the other one is a native banner ad which recommends articles from other website at the end of my articles in the recommendation section.

In addition to these 7, there are 4 other ad units. The remaining four ad units are video ads (can only be used if I’ve embedded a video on my blog. This is useful for anime streaming site, but not for a regular blog), direct links (I didn’t opt for it because you’ll have to research where your readers click on your site using heatmaps and place the links there. Too much work lol), pop-ups and pop-under ads (that people hate so much).

If I used all the available formats I might earn more, but I believe it’s not worth it if it hinders the readability/trustability of my site.

General Advice For New Bloggers

This is for the new bloggers who have little to no experience running ads on their blog/website.

• Never click on your own ads. Don’t ever click on the ads served on your site. Doing so is considered a violation of policy and you’ll be banned for life.
• Ad placement is key for high earning. Basically, the higher your ad unit is, the higher the pay since it is more visible to your readers. You can use the plugin called ‘Ad Inserter‘ on WordPress to manually place ads on desired locations.
• User Experience is king. So do not use pop up/popunder ads if you really value your content/audience. There are a dozen reasons not to use them. You can look it up on the internet.
• Adsterra has popups (they call it “social bar ads”) which are mostly shady looking ads that prompt the user to click by saying something like “your phone is being hacked.” Most people associate “pop ups” with “virus” (I know because a couple of my readers mailed me to report it thinking it was due to a malware). So try to avoid this ad format. There are a lots of better alternative ad formats available. 

Adsterra Is The Best Ever Gaming/Anime Ad Network !

From what I’ve seen in the past month, the ads they serve are mostly gaming related. It also has some other general ads like, VPN/anti-virus/stocks/article recommendation ads, but they only show up less frequently. So, even if you have a gaming blog, I think Adsterra is going to pay you as good, or even more.

Maybe there’s an even better anime ad network out there that I haven’t tried yet. But for now, among all the ad companies I’ve worked with in the past, Adsterra pays the highest.

Hope you find success with your anime blog as well. Laterz~