Smith Jones

Last updated: 31 July 2026

I research and write everything published on this site. My work is narrow by design: On Adult Web Traffic I compare the networks that sell adult traffic on their published terms, and I check those terms against the platforms' own documentation rather than against each other's marketing. Below is where that focus came from, what I actually know well, how I verify a figure before it goes into a table, and where my knowledge runs out.

How I got here

I have spent nine years buying and analysing performance traffic, most of it in verticals that mainstream platforms refuse: dating, subscription products and 18+ offers. That constraint shapes everything about how the work is done. When Google and Meta are closed to you, you are buying from a set of a dozen or so specialist networks, and the difference between a profitable campaign and a stranded budget usually comes down to details buried in a help centre rather than anything on a landing page.

The first few years were spent on the buy side, running campaigns and losing money in the ordinary ways: bidding blind because no benchmark existed, scaling a source that looked good on 400 impressions, funding an account before finding out the creative would never clear moderation. Most of what I now write about is a formalised version of mistakes I made with my own budget.

The analysis focus came later, out of frustration with the available research. Every time I needed a figure — a deposit minimum, a payout schedule, a format list — the search results agreed with each other and disagreed with the platform. That gap is where this site lives.

What I know well

Entry terms and how they mislead. A stated minimum deposit is rarely the working requirement, and there are three separate reasons why: tiering by payment method, balance reservation on delivery-lagged formats like push, and the statistical minimum needed before a result means anything. I can usually tell from a network's documentation which of the three will bite before a buyer funds anything. At a $3 popunder CPM, a $50 deposit buys roughly 16,000 impressions — enough to confirm your tracking fires, nowhere near enough to judge an offer, and that arithmetic is missing from almost every comparison online.

Supply structure. First-party inventory and exchange supply behave differently in ways that matter operationally, not theoretically. Buying from the owner of a tube property gives predictable placement and a hard volume ceiling. Buying through an OpenRTB exchange gives reach and uncertainty about which site served the impression, which is why source-level controls — source ID bidding, blacklists, IPv6 and proxy exclusion — matter far more on one than the other.

Optimisation mechanics. Per-source bidding, kill rules expressed as a multiple of target payout, the difference between raising a campaign bid and raising it only where conversion holds. Push and popunder deliver on different clocks, and treating them the same is a common and expensive error: push subscribers fire in waves tied to when the list was collected, so a campaign that looks dead at hour six often fills overnight.

Tracking and attribution. Server-to-server postback setup, macro coverage, and why passing source ID from the first impression determines whether any optimisation is possible later. A campaign that cannot attribute conversions to individual sources cannot be optimised, only paused.

The compliance layer. Creative moderation rules and how they differ between adult-first networks and mainstream networks that tolerate 18+ under restriction — the distinction between an offer being permitted and its imagery being permitted is where most rejected budgets die. I also track US state age-verification law closely, because since Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton it determines delivery footprint more than any targeting setting does.

How I verify a figure

Primary documentation first, always. For a deposit minimum that means the network's own advertiser payments page or help-centre article, read in full, with the date recorded. Every figure in the Adult Web Traffic comparison was checked that way. If the platform states a figure, it goes in the table with that provenance. If the platform states no figure, the table says so — I do not estimate, and I do not import a number from a listing site to fill the cell.

Where sources conflict, I publish the conflict. Reported TrafficJunky minimums range from $25 to $1,000 across secondary sources because different writers used different payment rails; the honest presentation is the range plus the reason, not a single confident number. Where a company's founding year appears as both 2016 and 2017 in business databases, the table says both and notes that sources differ.

For user experience I use documented reports on independent platforms, attributed as reports rather than restated as fact, and I look for repetition rather than intensity. One furious review is noise. The same complaint arriving independently from several people over months is a pattern a buyer should plan around.

My verification method is set out formally in the editorial policy, including the source hierarchy and what happens when a reader reports an error.

What I have not done, and where I would defer

I want to be exact about this, because the category is full of people implying more than they did. I have not personally funded and run a full campaign cycle on all seven networks compared on this site. The figures in the comparison tables come from documentation, not from my own account statements, and where a live test would produce stronger evidence than a document, I say so on the page rather than implying I ran one.

I am not a lawyer. The age-verification material on this site describes primary sources — the Supreme Court opinion, state effective dates, regulator measurements — and does not constitute legal advice. Anyone making a compliance decision on a specific offer in a specific state needs counsel, not a comparison page.

My knowledge is also geographically uneven. It is strongest in US and UK supply, adequate across Western Europe, and thin in Asian and Latin American markets where I have bought far less. Where a page touches those markets, it leans on published measurements rather than on anything I could claim to know first-hand.

Corrections and contact

If a figure on this site is wrong, out of date, or contradicts a platform's current documentation, I would rather hear it from you than leave it standing. Send the link to the source that shows the correct information and I will verify it and update the page along with its verification date. Substantive corrections are noted in the text rather than quietly overwritten.

Editorial contact: [email protected]. Professional background and history: LinkedIn. For partnership or general enquiries the routes are listed on the contact page, reader data is covered in the privacy policy, and the broader mission of the site is set out in about.