How native ad networks are assessed on this site
Networks on this site are judged on what a buyer can verify before spending money, not on what a sales page says they can expect afterwards. This page sets out what gets measured, which evidence is allowed to count, and how the comparison table in the native ads reference is ordered.
What gets measured
Five things, in this order of weight.
- Cost of entry. The published minimum deposit or minimum spend, and whether that figure holds across every payment method or rises for cards, wire or crypto. A network with one flat threshold is treated as more honest than one advertising a low figure that applies to a single funding route.
- What a buyer can see before funding. Whether bid levels, geo availability and inventory volume are readable after a free registration, or only after money has cleared. This is the single most useful thing a network can offer someone testing the channel, and it is rare enough to be worth ranking on.
- Optimisation depth. Whether bidding is exposed at the level of the individual traffic source, whether black and white lists exist, whether frequency and dayparting are controllable. Native inventory is a long tail of placements; a network that only lets a buyer pause a source rather than reprice it is throwing away volume.
- Format and geo range. How many ad formats the buy side can actually run, and across how many territories. Counted from platform documentation, not from marketing copy.
- Documentation and integration. Whether tracker postbacks, an API and macro references are documented publicly enough that a buyer can plan an integration before signing up.
The evidence hierarchy
Not every fact is worth the same. Four tiers are used, and the tier is stated in the text wherever it matters.
- Primary documents. Technical specifications, regulator guidance, statutory text, peer-reviewed research. Treated as fact.
- Platform documentation. A network's own advertiser docs, payment pages and help centre. Treated as fact for things the network controls, such as its own deposit minimum, and marked as a claim for anything it merely asserts about itself.
- Dated secondary sources. Trade press and industry research, cited by name and date so a reader can judge staleness.
- Competitor reviews. Read for orientation, never cited. Affiliate reviews of ad networks recycle each other's numbers, and a figure with no traceable origin does not exist for the purposes of this site.
Vendor claims that cannot be independently checked — GEO counts, publisher counts, daily bid request volume — are published only when they are labelled as the network's own figure. That labelling convention is part of the editorial policy.
How the comparison table is ordered
By cost of entry combined with how much a buyer can verify before funding an account. A network whose bid calculator is readable after a free registration therefore sits above one that shows nothing until a deposit clears, even where the deposit figures are close. The ordering is a judgment and it is stated on the page so a reader can disagree with it knowingly.
What plays no part in the ordering
Commission rates. Affiliate programme terms. Whether a network has an affiliate programme at all. Several networks in the current table pay this site nothing, and one pays through a partner link that is disclosed in full on the affiliate disclosure page. Nobody has ever been offered a position, and nobody would get one.
Review cadence and corrections
Every network figure carries the date it was checked. Minimums and payment terms move, so a figure more than six months old should be treated as an estimate until it is re-verified. Anyone — including a network that thinks its own entry is wrong — can submit a correction through the contact page, and the correction process is the same regardless of who sends it. Reviews are written and signed by Christoph Trappe.