Affiliates have a huge number of important decisions to make before running every campaign. In addition to choosing the right offer and having a dependable tracker in place, marketers also need to find a good traffic source for their ads.

There are dozens of traffic sources available, but Adcash has earned a reputation for being one of the most reliable DSP providers out there. Founded in 2007, AdCash is a well-established company that as more than 10,000 active campaigns running in more than 245 countries and territories.

This DSP it’s used by thousands of media buyers, networks, and marketers, including a large portion of lemonads users. We’ve been monitoring Adcash for a while now and feel like we finally have enough information about this traffic source to write a comprehensive review.

Let’s check out our findings.

What is Adcash?

Adcash is a demand-side platform (DSP) that specializes in providing mainstream traffic on a global scale. With more than 12 years in the industry, the company has invested a huge amount of resources into developing its in-house optimization technology in order to provide the best experience for all of its stakeholders.

The company has put a lot of emphasis on making affiliate marketing easy for everyone. Affiliates have an intuitive platform and world-class support at their disposal, while publishers also enjoy a set of specific benefits that helps monetize their traffic.

It’s worth noting that Adcash has seen many improvements since it was first launched. Before, the platform could only be managed by each user’s account manager, so all changes had to go through your personal expert.

Since then, the Adcash team has crafted a great interface that allows you to manage every aspect of your account manually.

Notable Adcash Features

By keeping publishers and advertisers at the center of each decision, the team at Adcash has been able to develop effective ad formats and a robust infrastructure that supports more than 90 billion ad requests per month. But, these are not the most impressive parts of this platform.

In addition to its many ad formats and bid type options, Adcash is impressive because it brings features like:

An Ultra-Intuitive Interface

Having an easy interface is extremely valuable in the world of marketing. There are dozens of amazing tools, but it can take months if not years to explore complex platforms that are not organized very well.

One of the reasons why Adcash was a managed-only platform was that the interface design back then would have been overwhelming for customers. Now, more than a decade later, its developers have refined the interface and developed one of the most thought-out frontend designs in the industry.

Dedicated Account Managers

Despite the fact that marketers have the ability to manage their entire campaign without any help, every user gets assigned their own account manager.

Account managers can support members by guiding them through the process, explaining the different features, and even providing hands-on help in some cases. For affiliates and other stakeholders managing huge campaigns, this can help relieve a lot of pressure and allow them to focus on other important parts of their operation.

Comprehensive Manual Options

Affiliates who prefer to work alone can also opt to manually toggle all their campaign preferences. This includes tracking, targeting, ad formats, and bid model, all of which need to be calibrated based on your campaign’s goals.  

Needless to say, this usually works out best for experienced affiliates that understand how the different settings affect their campaigns. Up-and-coming marketers should always get input from their account manager if any questions arise.

Easy Campaign Creation

Whether users choose to work with a manager or take on the campaign creation process alone, the entire set up takes just a few minutes. There are two different setup options you can use to create your campaign, but we’ll cover these in-depth later in this article.

The User Interest Feature

Out of all the features available in Adcash, the user interest targeting may just be the most attractive and powerful of them all.

In simple terms, it allows marketers to target their audiences based on their interests.

Adcash tracks users via cookies and similar technology in order to determine what they are interested in at any given time. Your ads are then shown to users based on their recent activity, thus increasing your chances of converting.

The best part is that this feature allows you to decide whether or not to show your ads based on the context of the publishing platforms. In other words, the theme of the publishing site, your content, and the users’ interest have to align in order for your ad to show.

This means that you will only receive ultra-engaged traffic that is more likely to see the value in your ads.

CPATarget

While automatic bidding tools can save marketers a lot of time, many question their efficiency. To address those doubts once and for all, Adcash developed CPATarget. CPATarget is an automated dynamic CPM bidding tool that only requires your CPA goals and tracking information to do its job.

This innovative piece of proprietary technology allows for the optimized distribution of resources. It’s designed to do exactly what you would do - find the areas that perform best, identify areas that are not producing conversions, and allocate your budget properly.

What Affiliates Need to Know About Adcash

We’ve seen thousands of lemonads users run multiple campaigns with Adcash and the results have been impressive. Like any other platform, succeeding with Adcash requires some practice, but the learning curve seems to be much shorter because of its focus on simplicity.

With the above in mind, here are some of the most important things affiliates should keep in mind before deciding if Adcash is the right platform.

Campaign Creation

There are two options you can choose from here, the Express Wizard for quick campaign creation or Advanced Setup to manually adjust all of the settings. Marketers that choose the express option will be directly sent to the ad format page. Those who choose the advanced alternative will be able to toggle the different options based on their preferences.

Before going any further, we wanted to stress the importance of the proper setup from the beginning. Affiliates that choose to manually set up their campaign need to triple check that all the information on the campaign creation page is accurate.

Having the right offer URL or tracking code, setting macros appropriately, and ensuring all ID fields are filled in properly will help guarantee that you get credit for every conversion.

Targeting Settings

Users have to set the targeting setting as part of the express setup. Here, you can choose from options like:

• OS
• Location
• Device
• Connection type
• User interest
• Website category
• Internet service provider and many more

The blacklist and whitelist management options are also found in this section, so you can easily switch between the two and update each database simultaneously.

A Caveat on ISP Targeting

Identifying the right carrier on the ISP targeting options is not always straightforward. In our experience, the best thing to do is to contact Adcash’s customer support team and they will be able to help you choose the right option.

You can also use Google to figure out which option is the right one if you’re confident in your research skills.

Completing the Setup

As far as the rest of the setup goes, the process is relatively simple. You’ll be able to choose from ad formats like:

• Pop
• Native
• Push notifications
• Display
• Interstitials

At this stage, you can start crafting your creatives and review traffic projections based on your choices.

Budget and Payout Specifics

Now, Adcash users have to set up the budget, bids, and ad capping. The three supported bidding models are CPC, CPM, and CPATarget. If you choose CPC or CPM, the platform gives you a suggested bid that many marketers use as a starting point.

In our experience, the suggested bid doesn’t drive a huge amount of traffic, so setting this option higher than the recommended number is a good way to ensure more visitors from the get-go.

Report Creation

Marketers have four different options when it comes to report generation, which are:

• Through a reporting API
• Detailed reports you can request directly from Adcash
• Statistics via the platform’s interface
• Daily spending summary available through the platform

Traffic Quality

Adcash has spent years building exclusive relationships with some of the top real-time bidding partners in the industry. The platform has earned the reputation of a reliable DSP that provides mainstream traffic from all corners of the world.

While we found that the ISPs chosen can greatly impact visitor volumes, marketers that take the time to test every option should be able to find valuable traffic from virtually any region.

Payment and Minimum Deposit Requirements

The costs of starting an account vary depending on the setup you choose. If you want to have a managed campaign that doesn’t require much work, your budget needs to be at least $1000.

Marketers that opt to self-manage only need a $100 investment, which can be deposited through Skrill, PayPal, Bank Transfer, Credit Cards, and other means.

Get More Updates from the Best Platforms for Affiliates

From stellar support to an intuitive interface, the team at Adcash has found a winning combination that works for marketers, publishers, and consumers alike. We hope that the review above gives you an idea of what to expect from Adcash and how partnering with this company can influence your results.

If you want to find out more about the best traffic sources and DSP platforms for affiliates, stay tuned or contact us today, our team will be happy to help!