About

I'm Marco. I spent five years at PropellerAds.

Senior AM 2018-2023, iGaming and finance books, tier-1 and LATAM clusters. I left in October 2023 with no plan more elaborate than "stop being on the side of the network for a while." This site is what I would have told my clients if I had been allowed to. The reason I'm telling you this is that the third thing that changes once you're outside the network is the one that matters most: you can refuse the sale.

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I'm Marco. I spent five years at PropellerAds.
Illustrated portrait of Marco DeLuca

Author

Marco DeLuca

Independent popunder strategist (ex-PropellerAds)

Milan, Malta, and the iGaming book that grew under me

I joined PropellerAds in early 2018 as a junior account manager. The job was meant to be writing campaign briefs and following up when conversions dropped. Within six months I was running the iGaming book for Italy, Spain, and the LATAM cluster, because the senior AMs kept rotating out to client-side and someone had to know what was actually happening with the traffic. I moved to Malta in 2019 — half for the iGaming licensing scene, half because the rent in Milan stopped making sense for what AM work paid. The book grew. The questions got harder. The answers I was allowed to give in client calls stayed roughly the same.

What you learn inside doesn't appear in the marketing copy

It appears in the gap between what the panel shows you and what the campaign actually does. The GEO where the CPMs look amazing because the conversion tracking is broken. The vertical that converts at 8% in week one and 0.4% by week four because the audience is burned. The publisher that quietly serves bot traffic that passes every fraud filter on the network's side because the fraud filters were written before that bot existed. In Q1 2021 I ran a cross-advertiser audit on three Italian iGaming brands all sourcing from the same publisher pool — three publishers accounted for 73% of "lost" deposits. The fraud wasn't in any single advertiser's data. It was in the comparison.

Why I left in October 2023

A client said it plainly on a late-evening call after a campaign post-mortem: "You're telling me the truth, which is rare. The reason it's rare is that you're paid by the network. So I have to assume you'd lie if it mattered enough." I couldn't disagree. Position determines what you're allowed to say. Side determines whose interests you're optimizing. Three things change once you're outside: you can name competitors, you can name failures, and you can refuse the sale. The third is the one that matters most. The reason this site exists is that the third one wasn't possible while I was inside.

What I do here on popunder-network.com

Independent reviews of popunder networks for affiliates and publishers who reconcile their tracker to a CRM. No affiliate links dressed up as a ranking. Adsy.tech ranks #1 on this site because of the $0.50 CPM floor and the panel showing auction-clearing price rather than the bid ceiling — not because anyone paid for the placement. When Adsterra is the right call for a tier-2 GEO, I say so. When PropellerAds is stronger on tier-1 self-serve push than adsy is, I say so. When popunder is the wrong format for an offer — anything that needs five seconds of consideration — I say it's the wrong format and point at native instead. Anti-hype is the editorial line, not a slogan.

Professional track record

  1. 2018-2023 Senior account manager — iGaming, dating, finance PropellerAds, Malta
  2. 2016-2018 Contributor — ad-tech trade publications Various trade outlets
  3. Oct 2023 - present Independent consultant + lead author popunder-network.com + direct affiliate clients

How I actually evaluate a popunder network

A network is not "good" or "bad." It's fit or unfit for a vertical, in a GEO, in a payout window. These are the four checks I run before I'd put a friend's offer on it, and they're the same four I'd run if I were still on the inside writing the brief.

  1. 1. Auction-clearing price disclosed in the panel?

    The CPM in the panel should be the price the auction cleared at — second-highest bid plus an increment — not your bid ceiling. The gap is typically 15-40% on popunder, depending on GEO. Networks that show the ceiling without labeling it as such are optimizing for a sales conversation, not an operator workflow.

  2. 2. GEO + vertical + window + sample-size disclosed on every claim?

    "$5-12 CPM tier-1 iGaming" is a useful number. "Competitive rates" is not. Any case study without GEO, vertical, quarter, and offer category gets thrown out — that's the kind of social proof I had to publish at PropellerAds and never wanted to.

  3. 3. 14-day panel-vs-actual reconciliation possible?

    The first three days of any popunder campaign are unreliable on every network — sample size is too small, the publisher rotation hasn't stabilized, fraud filters haven't trained on your offer. I make decisions on week-two numbers, and the network has to let me reconcile panel CPM to CRM revenue inside two weeks for that to be honest.

  4. 4. Server-side conversion validation actually documented?

    Less than 40% of affiliates run server-side validation in 2024. The other 60% are optimizing to fake conversions and don't know it. A network's S2S documentation needs to ship token mapping for the trackers affiliates actually run — Voluum, Bemob, RedTrack, Keitaro — not just a generic postback URL.

Editorial line

Names networks, names numbers

Adsterra, PropellerAds, RichAds, HilltopAds, ExoClick. Never [Network A]. "$0.50 CPM floor" not "competitive rates." "15-40% panel-to-actual gap" not "some variance." If I can't put a number on it, I won't put a claim on it.

Anti-hype when the format is wrong

If your offer needs five seconds of consideration, popunder is the wrong format. Push is the wrong format. Native and search are the answer. Saying that costs me an affiliate-link commission and is the entire reason this site is worth reading.

Cross-advertiser audits over single-advertiser dashboards

The 2021 Italian iGaming audit found 73% of lost deposits in three publishers — invisible to any single advertiser's data. Fraud isn't in your dashboard, it's in the comparison between your dashboard and someone else's.

Refuses the sale when it's the wrong sale

Three things change once you're outside the network. You can name competitors. You can name failures. You can refuse the sale. The third one is the one that matters.

Start today

Got a question I'd have answered as your AM? Email me.

I still consult independently for affiliate clients running popunder and push on iGaming, dating, and finance. If you've got a campaign that isn't reconciling to CRM, or a network that's not showing the clearing price, write to me directly.

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