How to buy adult traffic: a guide to your first campaign

How to buy adult traffic, in practice

Buying adult traffic means paying an adult ad network to show your ads on its publishers’ sites and send you their visitors. You are the advertiser. The publisher sells its ad space. The network runs the auction, bills the advertiser and pays the publisher a share.

Google Ads lists exposed intimate body parts among its strongly restricted content, even when blurred or censored. Meta has its own rules on nudity and sexual solicitation in ads. Adult offers therefore buy their traffic from specialist networks that sell the audience of tube sites, cam sites, dating sites and adult classifieds.

The process comes down to eight steps:

1. pick a network and open an advertiser account,
2. fund the account with a prepaid deposit,
3. connect a tracker or the network’s own tracking,
4. test the postback before launch,
5. set the format, targeting, bid and frequency cap,
6. get the creatives and landing page approved,
7. read the results site by site and zone by zone,
8. cut what doesn’t sell and move the budget to what does.

Most buyers are affiliates, who send visitors to a cam, dating or subscription offer and earn a commission, and site owners who want sign-ups. Both follow the same path. Only the conversion changes, the action that counts as a result: a sign-up, a trial, a sale.

Four adult ad networks for a first campaign

There are many ad networks that sell adult traffic. Four of them publish enough advertiser rules to plan a campaign before you even sign up: JuicyAds, ExoClick, TrafficStars and TrafficJunky.

JuicyAds: a marketplace for ad spots

Besides network campaigns, JuicyAds sells named spots as Direct Buys at a flat rate. Its rate sheet by country and campaign type is only visible once you have an account, and one account can both buy and sell ad space.

ExoClick: the most detailed bidding tools

ExoClick’s campaign builder shows, for each segment, the minimum price and the current top bid, with buttons to match it or beat it. EU advertisers without a valid VAT number pay 21% VAT, and Spain always pays 21%.

TrafficStars: a published price grid

TrafficStars publishes its minimum bids by format and country tier, so you can price a test before signing up. Its documentation treats xHamster inventory separately.

TrafficJunky: Aylo’s inventory, CPM only

TrafficJunky sells ad space on Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube and Tube8 through a live CPM auction: no quantity is reserved in advance. Iframe ads are reserved for clients with a strong compliance history, and an API lets you manage campaigns programmatically.

Before you open the account

TrafficJunky gives new advertisers five tips: contact its team for onboarding, read the rules and regulations, explore the platform, join affiliate marketing communities and study the ads already running on its publishers’ sites. The last tip works on every network: the ads you see on a tube site from your country show the formats and offers other buyers are already paying for. JuicyAds, for its part, states that it is impossible to estimate conversions, ROI or CTR in advance.

Run of network, Prime or Direct Buy

Networks sell the same inventory in several ways. On TrafficStars, RON, for run of network, serves across the whole network at minimum bids and is the cheap way to test wide. The Prime audience groups in-demand spots, sold at a premium, that have already proven themselves.

A Direct Buy reserves a named spot at a flat rate. On JuicyAds, you pick the zone in the marketplace, the duration of 7, 14 or 30 days, and auto-renewal if you want to keep the spot. When a zone is sold out, JuicyAds runs an OutBid auction between buyers, open only to accounts with a feedback rating of 100. On TrafficJunky, flat-rate deals go through the business team and are reserved for proven products. For a first campaign, network bidding is the way in: a Direct Buy commits money to one site before you know whether it converts.

What budget do you need to test an adult traffic campaign?

TrafficStars says a $500 budget is generally enough to test and find profitable approaches. For a CPA campaign, its minimum test budget is $50, and the network recommends more than $100 in tier 1 and tier 2 countries, which are more competitive.

Payment methods and account checks

• JuicyAds takes card, PayPal and Paxum from $50, crypto from $100, USDT or BTC only, and wire transfers from $1,000. You must verify your phone number before any deposit.
• TrafficStars takes card, Paxum, Capitalist, CoinGate and INXY from $100, and wire transfers from $500. A wire takes up to five business days to reach your balance. Card, Paxum, CoinGate and INXY are instant. Invoices are generated automatically once the funds arrive.
• ExoClick takes card, with auto-recharge up to 10,000, wire, Paxum and crypto through two gateways. Every method credits the account instantly except wire.
• TrafficJunky requires ID or company verification before the first deposit. VAT applies to individuals in the European Union, the United Kingdom and a few other territories. Ad impressions served in Washington State are subject to local taxes.

What a $100 deposit buys

On CPM, the math is direct: budget divided by the price of a thousand impressions, times a thousand. On TrafficStars, the run-of-network minimum bid for a popunder in tier 1 countries is $0.50 CPM. At that floor, $100 buys at most 200,000 popunders. A banner at the tier 1 minimum, $0.01 CPM, would buy ten million. A floor bid still loses every impression another buyer pays more for.

Tier 1 covers the wealthiest and most competitive countries: Northern and Western Europe, North America, Australia. Tier 2 covers less competitive markets such as Central and Eastern Europe or Central Asia. Tier 3 covers South and East Asia, Latin America and Africa. On TrafficStars partner networks, tier 1 minimums are half as high: $0.25 for a popunder.

Daily budget and total budget

A daily budget stops a badly set campaign from draining the account in an hour. On ExoClick, it starts at 20 in your account currency and resets at midnight New York time. The “distribute throughout the day” mode spreads the spend, and ExoClick recommends it when you worry about overspending. TrafficJunky sets no default spending limit: you cap each campaign yourself, or leave it unlimited.

ExoClick’s documentation gives an example of unrealistic settings: a campaign targeting more than 80 million impressions with a $0.05 CPM bid costs $40 even if it wins only 1% of that volume, twice its $20 daily budget. ExoClick also warns that the traffic you can actually get is usually 2 to 5% of the total shown in the traffic estimates.

A first test, with numbers

The payout sets the length of the test

A test is judged on conversions. Take the commission you earn per conversion, then decide how many times that amount you will spend on a source before judging it. With an offer paying $30 per sign-up and a rule of twice the payout, a site that has cost $60 without a single sign-up leaves the campaign. That threshold is a management rule you set yourself. No network imposes it.

Set up conversion tracking before you pay

A campaign without tracking shows impressions, clicks and spend. It does not show which site produced the sale. Tracking goes in before the first impression, because a conversion that was never recorded cannot be recovered.

The tracker and the postback

A tracker is software that records every click with its source, site, zone, country and cost, then ties it to the conversion when it arrives. A postback, or server-to-server (S2S) tracking, is the call the offer’s server sends when a conversion happens, to report the sale back to the platform the visitor came from.

The chain relies on a click ID. The network generates it and inserts it into your page URL through a macro. The tracker stores it and passes its own ID to the affiliate program. On conversion, the program sends that second ID back to the tracker, which sends the first one back to the network. At CrakRevenue, for instance, the ID the affiliate passes comes back through the {aff_click_id} and {aff_sub} macros. All adult affiliate programs document some form of postback.

Your affiliate program’s rules

If you buy traffic for an affiliate offer, the program has rules too. CrakRevenue’s terms ban bidding on its brands in search engines, spam by email, in forums and comments or by instant messaging, and direct-to-form promotion. They also rule out using its ad tools offline and in email marketing. Ask your affiliate manager which paid traffic sources they accept before launch, and keep the answer in writing.

Each network’s click ID macro

Also add the site and zone macros to your page URL: they are what lets you cut a specific source when you read the results. On ExoClick, those are {site_id} and {zone_id}. On JuicyAds, {dynamicSITE} and {dynamicZNE}, the latter on banners only, with {dynamicGEO} for the country and {dynamicBID} for the price paid. On JuicyAds popunders, {dynamicCON}, {dynamicDTY} and {dynamicDOS} pass the connection type, device type and operating system.

Test the postback before launch

TrafficStars has an S2S test page, reachable from its tracking tools or from step 3 of the campaign builder. The test button only appears when the offer link contains the {click_id} macro. ExoClick describes a similar method: a test variation gives you a real {conversions_tracking} value that you send by hand to the postback URL. An “OK” response confirms the setup, and “ERROR: Tag is invalid!” means the ID was not passed correctly.

Reading the postback response

On ExoClick, the postback answers with a short message. “OK” means the conversion was recorded. “ERROR: This conversion has already been notified and saved.” flags a duplicate, “ERROR: Goal ID is invalid.” a wrong goal ID, which is always 32 hexadecimal characters, and “ERROR: Conversion window is not respected.” a conversion that arrived after the window set in the goal. ExoClick also offers a pixel for the thank-you page when the offer cannot call a server-to-server URL.

On TrafficStars, two postback parameters handle duplicates. lead_code adds a unique lead ID, which allows several conversions for the same click, and allow_duplicates=1 reports every duplicate conversion. On Voluum, the affiliate network sends the conversion back to a URL of the form /postback?cid=, followed by its own macro carrying the ID it received from the tracker.

Choosing a tracker that accepts adult offers

Networks document the most common trackers. TrafficJunky publishes integration guides for AdsBridge, Binom, RedTrack, Voluum, CPV Lab Pro, ThriveTracker and Keitaro. TrafficStars publishes them for Voluum, BeMob, Binom, RedTrack, Keitaro, Peerclick, ThriveTracker, AdsBridge and CPV Lab Pro.

Adult networks still list Voluum and BeMob in their guides. If your offer is adult, get written confirmation from support that tracking your campaigns is accepted. For a very first campaign, the network’s built-in tracking is enough to measure conversions on a single offer.

Build the campaign: format, targeting and bid

TrafficJunky splits campaign creation into five steps: basic settings, audience, tracking and sources, scheduling and budget, ads. Other networks follow a similar order.

The format

A popunder opens your page in a window behind the site, on the visitor’s first click. It only needs a landing page and is billed on CPM. A banner sits in a fixed spot and is billed on CPM or CPC. A native ad mimics a site thumbnail: on JuicyAds, the image must carry no text and no ad elements at all. An interstitial covers the page between two page views, and video plays before or during the player.

TrafficJunky publishes the size of every placement. Native static and native rollover ads are 640 × 360 pixels on desktop and mobile. In-stream video runs 5 to 30 seconds, weighs 500 MB at most, is best supplied in 1080p and shows in 16:9 on desktop. In the vertical Shorties feed on Pornhub mobile, an in-stream ad plays after every ninth video.

For a first test, one format per campaign keeps the results readable. ExoClick also advises separate desktop and mobile campaigns for video.

Targeting

Every network targets country, device, operating system, browser and carrier. TrafficJunky combines up to 30 countries, regions and cities per campaign, targets up to five languages and schedules in Eastern Time. TrafficStars adds device brand, release date and price, categories, IP ranges and proxy traffic type. ExoClick filters proxies by type, VPN included, and separates age-verified visitors from the others. The {ex_av} macro passes that status to your page: 0 when unknown, 1 when verified, 2 when not verified. ExoClick also targets virtual reality and separates three traffic types: free content, members areas and email clicks. TrafficStars schedules campaigns by date range, day and hour, in the UTC time zone you choose.

Advanced targeting varies. TrafficJunky targets keywords in broad or exact match, gender, zip codes in the US, Canada and Japan, and income or neighborhood in the US. JuicyAds targets IP addresses, days, hours and a delivery throttle. ExoClick targets up to 500 sub IDs per zone, on ten zones at most per campaign.

Start narrow: one country, one device, one offer. Broad targeting mixes audiences that don’t convert at the same price, and the test can no longer tell you which one works.

The bid

On CPM, you pay per thousand impressions. On CPC, per click. On CPA, per agreed conversion. TrafficStars says its auction compares everything on effective CPM and recommends CPM as the most stable model. A CPC campaign there first gets traffic billed at effective CPM during a test period, then only clicks are charged.

ExoClick’s Smart CPM and TrafficStars’ dCPM work the same way: you set a maximum price and the network charges only what it takes to win the impression. In ExoClick’s example, a maximum bid of 0.7 against a top offer of 0.4 pays only what keeps the first position. ExoClick’s Smart Bid optimizes toward a target cost per conversion, but only works with conversion tracking and needs around 30 conversions to optimize efficiently.

ExoClick also sets hard limits: 3 per click on every format, 400 CPM for video, push and popunder, 50 CPM for other formats. A daily limit there is at least 20 in budget, or 1,000 impressions.

On TrafficJunky, a winning bid is binding: the terms forbid retracting it, and bots that modify bids are banned.

Frequency capping

A frequency cap limits how many times one visitor sees your ad. TrafficStars defaults to three impressions per 24 hours. ExoClick recommends one impression or click per 24 hours when testing new sources. On JuicyAds, popunders are fixed at one per 12 hours per unique IP and per site, with no setting, and banner capping exists only on CPM.

Whole network or a site list

A network campaign serves on every site that matches your targeting. A whitelist limits it to chosen sites, a blacklist excludes the ones that disappoint. On JuicyAds, blacklist mode is the default, and one campaign cannot combine both. ExoClick targets or blocks a whole site or a single zone, and separates free content from members areas. TrafficStars suggests a three-campaign method: one on xHamster, one on the rest of its Prime list, one on the rest of the network as a blacklist.

Prepare the creatives and the landing page

A rejected creative blocks the campaign until it is fixed. Prepare the format rules before you submit, network by network.

The nudity level of the site you buy

On JuicyAds, every site carries a content rating: non-nude, softcore or hardcore. It decides which images and links are allowed on its zones. JuicyAds no longer offers a general non-adult rating and no longer guarantees that only safe-for-work ads show in a zone. Prepare two sets of images, a non-nude one for safe-for-work spots and one for explicit sites.

File size, animation and tech

• TrafficJunky caps JPG, GIF and PNG files at 300 KB and video in display spots at 1 MB, and requires each animated text or image to stay on screen for at least two seconds.
• ExoClick rejects rapidly flashing banners, allows slow labeled blinking, and requires HTML campaigns to be SSL compliant.
• On ExoClick, a banner that shows a phone number must be sold on CPM.
• JuicyAds forbids editing its ad code. Third-party codes are reserved for trusted direct advertisers or require a $1,000 damage deposit and a full list of links in advance.

The landing page

On TrafficJunky, every landing page opens in a new tab. On ExoClick, a page that doesn’t load, carries malware or doesn’t match the creative gets the campaign rejected. Test the page on mobile and desktop, from the target country, before you submit.

Getting ads and landing pages approved

Every network reviews the campaign before the first impression.

The most common rejection reasons

Networks reject misleading creatives: fake system or antivirus alerts, fake play or close buttons, countdowns, auto-redirects. TrafficJunky also bans back-button hijacking, auto-playing sound on mobile pops and use of the Pornhub brand without authorization. TrafficJunky and TrafficStars reject any content showing a minor, and ExoClick rejects creatives where models look too young and no compliance statement is visible.

The US record-keeping law for performers, known as 2257, comes up at several networks. TrafficJunky requires ads and landing pages to comply and model IDs to be available on request.

Landing pages and age verification

On safe-for-work placements and in jurisdictions that require age checks, TrafficJunky requires an ad with no adult content and a landing page that limits access to age-verified adults. You can plug one of the age verification providers in before the offer page. This article is not legal advice.

The pre-launch checklist

• The postback answered “OK” to a test.
• The page URL carries the click, site and zone macros.
• The campaign targets one format, one country and one device type.
• A frequency cap is set.
• A daily budget caps the spend.
• Your images exist in a non-nude version for safe-for-work spots.
• The landing page opens on mobile and desktop, from the target country.
• The spend threshold without a conversion is set before the first impression.

Read the first results and cut sources

The first numbers arrive within the hour. Read them by site and by zone: a campaign-wide average mixes the sources that win with the ones that lose.

The four metrics

• CTR: the share of impressions that produce a click. It judges the creative.
• Conversion rate: the share of clicks that produce a conversion. It judges the landing page and the offer.
• Cost per conversion, or eCPA: spend divided by conversions. You compare it to the payout.
• ROI: revenue minus spend, divided by spend. It tells you whether the source makes money.

A campaign that doesn’t spend

An approved campaign can still get nothing. On JuicyAds, it stays disabled after approval until you set its status to active. On ExoClick, a campaign with no traffic available for its targeting is rejected automatically after 30 days. The two usual causes are a bid too close to the segment minimum and targeting too narrow for the chosen format. Raise the bid in small steps, or widen one criterion at a time. TrafficJunky’s support answers Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 6 pm Eastern Time.

Cut, keep or reinvest

Sort the report by site or zone, then apply the same rule to every line.

On ExoClick, the automatic “Maximize CPA” optimization only unlocks after at least 30 conversions in the campaign.

Change one setting at a time and write down the date. A campaign where bid, creative and targeting all change at once can no longer tell you what made the difference.

Retargeting

Retargeting shows a new ad to visitors who already reached your page. ExoClick asks you to run the campaign with pixel tracking for at least three days before turning it on, so the audience has time to build. The setting works goal by goal: target visitors who reached it, exclude them, or ignore the goal. Excluding them stops you paying for visitors who already converted.

Fake traffic, bots and refunds

Fake traffic exists on both sides. Some publishers inflate impressions with bots, and traffic sellers deliver a fixed number of visits without saying where they come from. JuicyAds states zero tolerance for all forms of fraud, on the publisher and the advertiser side. ExoClick closes, without notice, any publisher account that artificially generates impressions or clicks, and scans every campaign with AdSecure to detect malvertising.

None of the four networks describes, on its public pages, a refund for traffic found invalid after the fact. TrafficJunky states that it does not refund purchased traffic. Protection comes from your own settings: proxy and VPN filtering on ExoClick and TrafficStars, blacklisting sites that don’t convert, and frequency capping.

Getting unspent balance back

A campaign that distributes malicious JavaScript loses any right to a refund on TrafficJunky, and the advertiser is banned. On TrafficStars, an account suspended for breaching the terms also loses its balance.

Frequently asked questions about buying adult traffic

This article contains affiliate links: owlwebmasters may earn a commission if you open an account through them.