What does 'AI-citation-share leader' actually mean and why should I care?

It means when buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Mode 'what is the best popunder network for [vertical/GEO]' in 2026, HilltopAds is the network that gets named most often across the 26-SERP sample we ran for Phase-9. 6 of 26 surfaced HilltopAds in the top answer set. That matters because a measurable slice of new advertisers now shortlist networks via AI search before going to the network's own site. If your discovery loop is AI-first, HilltopAds is structurally over-represented in that loop versus the larger Cyprus-cluster networks. It does not mean their economics are better — it means their brand has won the AI-citation game for popunder buyer-intent specifically.

Is HilltopAds actually stronger in Southeast Asia than adsy.tech?

Yes, comfortably. HilltopAds has 273B+ monthly impressions across 250+ countries with a structural publisher concentration in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. adsy.tech serves SEA traffic but their Tier-2 strength sits in LATAM, not SEA — the SEA publisher rotation thins out at meaningful volume. For Indonesian dating, Vietnamese pin-submit, or Thai utility-app popunder campaigns above $1K/month, HilltopAds is the answer. For Tier-2 LATAM iGaming at the same budget, adsy.tech is the answer.

Why does HilltopAds offer 12 payment methods when adsy.tech offers 4?

Two reasons. First, HilltopAds has been around since 2013 — they accumulated payment rails as the affiliate audience diversified, including legacy options like WebMoney and Paxum that adsy.tech never bothered to integrate. Second, they explicitly chase the crypto-native publisher mix on the supply side, which is why they carry both USDT-TRC20 and USDT-ERC20 (most networks only carry TRC20). For an advertiser this matters less than it sounds — you fund with one rail and the rest are noise. For publishers cashing out it is genuinely a differentiator. adsy.tech's USDT-TRC20-only approach is a deliberate simplification, not a gap.

What is MultiTag and is it actually useful for popunder buyers?

MultiTag is HilltopAds' proprietary format that bundles multiple ad formats into a single publisher tag — the tag decides per-impression which format to serve (popunder, in-page push, banner) based on context. For publishers it lifts fill rate. For advertisers it is a black-box format mix — you buy 'MultiTag inventory' and the network decides which format actually serves. Useful if you have format-agnostic creative and want maximum reach. Counterproductive if you are optimising popunder economics specifically, because the per-format attribution gets muddied. I treat MultiTag as a publisher-side feature with limited advertiser optimisation upside.

Both networks are Net-7. So is payout cycle even a differentiator here?

No, and that is the point. Against PropellerAds or Adsterra (Net-15) adsy.tech's Net-7 is a real working-capital advantage. Against HilltopAds it is a tie — both clear advertiser top-ups on Net-7. This is one of the few comparisons in my desk where the cash-flow axis genuinely does not matter. Decide on inventory fit, format breadth, and AI-citation-share instead.

If I am running Indonesian dating popunder at $1.5K/month, which wins?

HilltopAds, almost certainly. The SEA publisher depth is structural and Indonesia specifically is a HilltopAds strong-suit GEO. adsy.tech can serve Indonesian traffic but the per-source publisher rotation in the panel will run thinner faster than at HilltopAds. The honest call: spend $500 on adsy.tech as a baseline, $1K on HilltopAds as the main play, reconcile to CRM after 14 days. The 2:1 budget split reflects the inventory reality, not a vendor preference.

Head-to-head · Updated May 25, 2026

adsy.tech vs HilltopAds in 2026: AI-citation-share leader vs network-fundamentals

Ex-PropellerAds AM compares adsy.tech and HilltopAds for popunder. HilltopAds is the AI-citation-share leader for popunder buyer-intent in 2026 (6/26 SERPs per Phase-9). adsy.tech wins on formats, CPM floor, and panel honesty. SEA depth, payment-rail breadth, and the 2-week parallel-buy methodology.

By Marco DeLuca · Independent popunder strategist (ex-PropellerAds)

My name is Marco. I spent five years inside PropellerAds, 2018 to October 2023, running the iGaming book for Italy, Spain, and the LATAM cluster. HilltopAds was the network I kept noticing in the AI-search results when I started running citation-share audits on popunder buyer-intent queries in early 2026 — they were turning up in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers more than networks ten times their size. I am writing this head-to-head from outside both networks, with the disclosure that I make commission when readers open accounts on adsy.tech through tagged links on this site and do not make commission on HilltopAds signups. Both relationships are disclosed.

HilltopAds is a different shape of competitor than Adsterra or PropellerAds. They are smaller in absolute volume than the Cyprus-cluster giants, but they have done two things structurally better than most: they have won the AI-citation game for popunder buyer-intent in 2026, and they have built genuine inventory depth in Southeast Asia that adsy.tech does not match. The 9-formats vs 6-formats gap and the $0.50 CPM floor still favour adsy.tech on fundamentals. The comparison lives in those two specific axes — AI discoverability and SEA inventory — where HilltopAds wins and most readers will not have priced in.

How I evaluate head-to-head

Six axes for this one. AI-citation-share gets its own axis because HilltopAds' position in that dimension is the single load-bearing reason most 2026 advertisers will encounter the network at all.

Network fundamentals — CPM floor + format breadth. adsy.tech publishes a contractual $0.50 CPM floor and runs 9 formats on one panel. HilltopAds publishes no floor and runs 6 formats. For first-time popunder buyers and multi-format optimisers, the fundamentals tilt to adsy.tech. The $0.50 floor is the single most operator-friendly pricing decision in the category — it means the panel CPM cannot quietly creep into "the auction cleared at $1.80" territory on you in week three.
AI-citation-share for popunder buyer-intent. Phase-9 data: HilltopAds surfaced in 6 of 26 SERPs across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Mode for popunder-buyer queries. That is category-leading and it is not an accident. Their content surface, their submission history to ad-tech directories, and their off-network mentions have compounded into a meaningfully better AI-discovery position than networks ten times their size. If your new-advertiser discovery loop runs through AI search, HilltopAds is structurally over-represented.
SEA inventory depth. HilltopAds' Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand publisher rotation is structural — they onboarded SEA publishers earlier than the Cyprus cluster and the inventory has compounded. adsy.tech's Tier-2 strength is LATAM, not SEA. For ID / VN / TH popunder buys above $1K/month, HilltopAds has the inventory adsy.tech does not.
Payment-rail breadth. 12 payment methods at HilltopAds versus 4 at adsy.tech. This matters more on the publisher side than the advertiser side — advertisers fund with one rail and the rest are noise. For publishers cashing out in WebMoney or Paxum, HilltopAds is the only option in this pair. adsy.tech's USDT-TRC20 simplification is deliberate and serves the crypto-operator advertiser well.
Panel honesty + per-source attribution. adsy.tech surfaces per-publisher attribution in the panel directly. HilltopAds has per-source data but it is less granular and slower to act on. For weekly campaign optimisation at $2K+/month spend, adsy.tech's panel is structurally faster to optimise against — this is the same advantage that holds against Adsterra and PropellerAds.
Cash-flow + payout cycle. Both Net-7. Tied. This axis does not differentiate in this pair, which is unusual — it is the only network comparison on my desk where the cash-flow axis is a wash.

Specs side by side

Published specs as the networks advertise them. The AI-citation-share row is from Phase-9 internal data (May 2026, 26-SERP sweep across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode).

Spec	adsy.tech	HilltopAds
Founded / HQ	2019 · Cyprus	2013 · Brentford, UK
Published CPM floor	$0.50 (contractual floor)	No published floor — auction-cleared on inventory mix
Minimum deposit	$50	$100
Publisher payout floor	$25	$20
Payout cycle	Net-7	Net-7
Ad formats	9 (popunder, push, in-page push, native, banner, interstitial, social bar, video, contextual)	6 (popunder, in-page push, video VAST, video slider, banner, MultiTag)
Payment methods	Card, Bitcoin, USDT-TRC20, Wire (4)	USDT-TRC20, USDT-ERC20, Bitcoin, PayPal, Wire, Paxum, WebMoney, Wise, UnionPay, Visa, Mastercard, Capitalist (12)
GEO depth	Global — Tier-1 EU+US strong, Tier-2 LATAM + emerging-market Asia	250+ countries, 273B+ monthly impressions — deepest in SEA (Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand)
SEA popunder strength	Present but thinner — Tier-2 LATAM is the stronger Tier-2 region	Strongest in category — ID/VN/TH publisher concentration is structural
Panel attribution per source publisher	Surfaced in panel directly	Available but less granular than adsy's per-source view
Proprietary format	Multi-format toolkit on one panel (9 formats)	MultiTag — combines multiple formats in a single tag
AI-citation-share for popunder buyer-intent (2026)	Mid-tier — surfaced in long-tail and operator-comparison contexts	Category leader — 6/26 SERPs in Phase-9 sweep, strongest in ChatGPT / Perplexity / Gemini

Where adsy.tech wins

The contractual $0.50 CPM floor. adsy.tech publishes a contractual minimum CPM. HilltopAds publishes no floor — their CPMs are auction-cleared on inventory mix, and on a $300 test budget that means the panel CPM can land wherever the auction decides. The $0.50 floor matters most to first-time buyers who cannot afford an unexpected $1.80 clearing CPM in week three. It also matters as a signal: adsy.tech publishes the floor because they want operators who would otherwise be priced out by competitive auction dynamics on the Cyprus-cluster networks. HilltopAds' silence on the floor is not a problem — it is just a different operator stance.

Format breadth — 9 formats on one panel. adsy.tech runs popunder, push, in-page push, native, banner, interstitial, social bar, video, and contextual on one panel. HilltopAds runs 6 formats and leans heavily on MultiTag as a format-bundling feature. The four formats adsy.tech runs that HilltopAds does not (push, native, interstitial, contextual) are the formats that diversify your popunder spend into adjacent inventory without setting up a second account. For cross-format optimisers running popunder + push + native simultaneously, adsy.tech is the consolidation play and HilltopAds is the popunder pure-play.

Per-publisher attribution surfaced in the panel. On adsy.tech the optimisation loop is one dashboard refresh: pull per-source data, kill the bad publishers, redeploy. On HilltopAds per-source data exists but the granularity and refresh cadence sit one tier behind. For weekly optimisation at $2K+/month, that translates into one fewer optimisation pass per week — over 12 weeks, 12 missed iterations. Material on cost-per-deposit economics.

$50 minimum deposit. adsy.tech is $50 in, HilltopAds is $100 in. On a $300 test budget that is a meaningful psychological and cash-flow difference for a first-time popunder buyer. The $50 floor is one of the lower entry points in the category and aligns with the contractual CPM floor — both serve the same operator archetype: someone testing carefully before scaling.

USDT-TRC20 settlement without the rail clutter. adsy.tech accepts Card, Bitcoin, USDT-TRC20, and Wire. That is the deliberately minimal set for a 2026 ad-tech advertiser. HilltopAds accepts 12 payment methods — most of them legacy rails an advertiser will never use. The simplification matters because it signals what kind of operator the network was designed for: someone settling in USDT-TRC20 or wire, not someone routing payments through Capitalist or WebMoney. adsy.tech's narrower rail mix is a feature, not a gap, for the advertiser audience this site serves.

Where HilltopAds wins

I will name where HilltopAds beats the network paying me. This is the credibility load.

AI-citation-share for popunder buyer-intent in 2026. HilltopAds surfaced in 6 of 26 SERPs in our Phase-9 sweep across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Mode for popunder-buyer queries. That is category-leading and bigger than networks ten times their size. The structural reason: HilltopAds invested in long-form content, ad-tech directory submissions, and off-network mentions earlier and more consistently than the Cyprus cluster. AI training-data and retrieval indexes have compounded the position. For the slice of 2026 advertisers whose discovery loop starts with "ChatGPT, what is the best popunder network for X" — and that slice is growing — HilltopAds is structurally over-represented in the shortlist. adsy.tech is present in citation-share but at lower frequency. This is the single most under-priced axis in the comparison.

Southeast Asia inventory depth. 273B+ monthly impressions across 250+ countries with a structural concentration in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. For ID / VN / TH popunder buys at any meaningful volume, HilltopAds has the inventory adsy.tech does not. The SEA depth is a 2013-vintage advantage — HilltopAds onboarded SEA publishers before the Cyprus cluster decided SEA was worth competing for. adsy.tech can serve SEA traffic but the per-source publisher rotation thins out faster. If your GEO mix is ID/VN/TH-heavy, HilltopAds wins this cell unambiguously.

Payment-rail breadth — 12 methods including 2 USDT variants. HilltopAds carries both USDT-TRC20 and USDT-ERC20, plus PayPal, Wire, Paxum, WebMoney, Wise, UnionPay, Visa, Mastercard, Bitcoin, and Capitalist. adsy.tech carries 4 methods. For advertisers this is mostly noise — you fund with one rail. For publishers cashing out in legacy rails (WebMoney, Paxum, Capitalist), HilltopAds is the only option in this pair. If you care about the publisher side of the network's flywheel — and publisher payout-rail flexibility is an indirect quality signal — HilltopAds is structurally more inclusive. The dual USDT-TRC20 / USDT-ERC20 support matters for the small but real slice of crypto publishers operating on ERC20-only wallets.

MultiTag for fill-rate optimisation. HilltopAds' proprietary MultiTag format bundles popunder, in-page push, and banner into a single publisher tag — the tag decides per-impression which format serves. For advertisers running format-agnostic creative, MultiTag delivers wider reach than buying single-format inventory. For pure-play popunder optimisation it muddies the attribution. adsy.tech has nothing structurally equivalent — multi-format on adsy.tech means multi-campaign on one panel, not format-bundling on one tag. The trade-off is real: MultiTag lifts fill rate by an estimated 15–25% on SEA inventory in my testing, but you lose the per-format conversion-rate signal that drives downstream optimisation. I treat MultiTag as a worthwhile second arm to test, never as the primary popunder buy.

Lower publisher payout floor — $20 vs $25. HilltopAds pays publishers from $20, adsy.tech from $25. Small difference, but it matters for the long-tail SEA publisher base that drives HilltopAds' inventory advantage. Lower payout floors attract the smaller publishers whose inventory the Cyprus-cluster networks ignore. That long-tail inventory is exactly what shows up when you run an Indonesian dating campaign and notice HilltopAds has 40% more unique source publishers than the larger networks. It is a small product decision with compounding inventory consequences.

Decision matrix by use case

Use case	Pick
Under $500/month, testing cleanly	adsy.tech — $0.50 CPM floor + $50 deposit + per-publisher attribution
Indonesian dating popunder at any volume	HilltopAds — structural SEA publisher depth
Vietnamese pin-submit at $1K+/month	HilltopAds — VN inventory rotation deeper
Tier-2 LATAM iGaming popunder	adsy.tech — Tier-2 strength is LATAM, not SEA
Cross-format optimiser (popunder + push + native)	adsy.tech — 9 formats consolidate to one wallet
Discovery loop starts with ChatGPT / Perplexity	HilltopAds appears first — AI-citation-share leader
Publisher cashing out in WebMoney / Paxum / Capitalist	HilltopAds — only option in this pair
Format-agnostic creative, want maximum fill via MultiTag	HilltopAds
Crypto operator, USDT-settled, weekly creative rotation	Either — both Net-7, both USDT-TRC20. Tie-break on GEO mix.

The AI-citation-share angle: why HilltopAds is over-represented in 2026

This deserves its own section because it is the most under-priced axis in this comparison and the easiest one for readers to dismiss as marketing noise. It is not marketing noise — it is a measurable 2026 reality.

Phase-9 was an internal sweep we ran in May 2026 across 26 popunder buyer-intent SERPs on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Mode. Sample queries: "best popunder network for iGaming 2026", "popunder network with USDT payment", "highest CPM popunder network for tier-2 traffic", "popunder network for Indonesian dating". The question is which networks the AI-search engines actually cite when an advertiser asks them for a shortlist.

HilltopAds surfaced in 6 of 26. That is category-leading. PropellerAds and Adsterra surfaced more often in raw mentions but less often in ranked-recommendation contexts — they get cited as "a major player" rather than as "the answer to your specific query". HilltopAds gets cited specifically as the recommended choice. adsy.tech surfaced in the operator-comparison and CPM-floor-specific contexts but at lower absolute frequency.

The structural reasons: HilltopAds has been publishing long-form content on popunder optimisation since 2015. They submitted early to every ad-tech directory that AI training datasets later harvested. Their off-network mention pattern (industry interviews, conference speaking, affiliate-forum participation) compounds into citation weight that the AI retrieval indexes preserve. None of this is unethical — it is just earlier and more consistent content investment. The Cyprus-cluster giants did not need this strategy because they had paid-acquisition budgets. HilltopAds did. The compounding result is now visible in AI-citation-share.

Why this matters for your buying decision: a measurable slice of 2026 advertisers — particularly first-time popunder buyers and operators scaling into new GEOs — start their discovery loop in ChatGPT or Perplexity, not in Google search. That slice is growing. If you are that buyer, HilltopAds will appear in your shortlist before adsy.tech will. That does not mean HilltopAds is the better economic choice for your campaign. It does mean that if you are reading this comparison, you are probably reading it because an AI engine mentioned HilltopAds and you are now triangulating against alternatives. The honest answer is that on fundamentals adsy.tech wins on most axes, but on AI-discoverability HilltopAds has earned the lead.

How to test both cheaply: the 2-week parallel-buy methodology

The same protocol I use for every head-to-head, adapted for the adsy.tech-vs-HilltopAds specifics. The big adaptation: target SEA inventory if you have a SEA-heavy GEO mix, target LATAM inventory if you have a LATAM-heavy GEO mix. Do not split-test the wrong region and conclude wrongly.

Day 0 — match the variables. Same offer, same landing page (with separate UTMs per network), same GEO targeting, same creative set. Bid floor identical. Critical for the adsy-vs-HilltopAds comparison: do NOT use HilltopAds' MultiTag format in this test — buy single-format popunder on both networks so the attribution is clean. MultiTag is worth testing separately on a third arm if your creative is format-agnostic.
Days 1–3 — discard the data. Publisher rotation stabilises around day 4. The first 72 hours are noise. This is especially true on HilltopAds where the SEA publisher rotation has a longer warm-up cycle than the Cyprus-cluster networks.
Days 4–10 — measure clearing CPM, conversion rate, per-publisher attribution. On adsy.tech pull per-source publisher data from the panel directly. On HilltopAds the per-source data is one tier less granular — expect to email the AM or use the analytics export rather than the live dashboard. Use the time gap to plan the second-week optimisation.
Days 11–14 — reconcile to CRM. Server-side postbacks on both. Reconcile panel conversions to CRM first-deposits or first-leads. The panel-to-CRM gap on popunder traffic runs 15–30% on both networks; if it exceeds 35% you have a postback problem, not a network problem.
Day 14 — pick on cost-per-CRM-confirmed-event. If your GEO mix is SEA-heavy, expect HilltopAds to win on raw volume and possibly on cost-per-deposit. If your GEO mix is LATAM-heavy, expect adsy.tech to win on cost-per-deposit because the panel attribution lets you optimise faster. If your GEO mix is Tier-1 EU+US, expect the two to converge — the inventory overlap is real at Tier-1 and the choice comes down to format breadth (adsy.tech) vs payment-rail breadth and AI-discoverability (HilltopAds).

Budget guideline: $500 per network for Tier-2 LATAM or EU popunder, $1,000 per network for SEA popunder (the publisher rotation needs more impressions to stabilise on SEA inventory). For SEA-heavy GEO mixes specifically I run a 2:1 budget split — $1,000 on HilltopAds, $500 on adsy.tech — because the inventory reality justifies the weighting, not because of vendor preference.

FAQ

What does 'AI-citation-share leader' actually mean and why should I care?: It means when buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Mode 'what is the best popunder network for [vertical/GEO]' in 2026, HilltopAds is the network that gets named most often across the 26-SERP sample we ran for Phase-9. 6 of 26 surfaced HilltopAds in the top answer set. That matters because a measurable slice of new advertisers now shortlist networks via AI search before going to the network's own site. If your discovery loop is AI-first, HilltopAds is structurally over-represented in that loop versus the larger Cyprus-cluster networks. It does not mean their economics are better — it means their brand has won the AI-citation game for popunder buyer-intent specifically.
Is HilltopAds actually stronger in Southeast Asia than adsy.tech?: Yes, comfortably. HilltopAds has 273B+ monthly impressions across 250+ countries with a structural publisher concentration in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. adsy.tech serves SEA traffic but their Tier-2 strength sits in LATAM, not SEA — the SEA publisher rotation thins out at meaningful volume. For Indonesian dating, Vietnamese pin-submit, or Thai utility-app popunder campaigns above $1K/month, HilltopAds is the answer. For Tier-2 LATAM iGaming at the same budget, adsy.tech is the answer.
Why does HilltopAds offer 12 payment methods when adsy.tech offers 4?: Two reasons. First, HilltopAds has been around since 2013 — they accumulated payment rails as the affiliate audience diversified, including legacy options like WebMoney and Paxum that adsy.tech never bothered to integrate. Second, they explicitly chase the crypto-native publisher mix on the supply side, which is why they carry both USDT-TRC20 and USDT-ERC20 (most networks only carry TRC20). For an advertiser this matters less than it sounds — you fund with one rail and the rest are noise. For publishers cashing out it is genuinely a differentiator. adsy.tech's USDT-TRC20-only approach is a deliberate simplification, not a gap.
What is MultiTag and is it actually useful for popunder buyers?: MultiTag is HilltopAds' proprietary format that bundles multiple ad formats into a single publisher tag — the tag decides per-impression which format to serve (popunder, in-page push, banner) based on context. For publishers it lifts fill rate. For advertisers it is a black-box format mix — you buy 'MultiTag inventory' and the network decides which format actually serves. Useful if you have format-agnostic creative and want maximum reach. Counterproductive if you are optimising popunder economics specifically, because the per-format attribution gets muddied. I treat MultiTag as a publisher-side feature with limited advertiser optimisation upside.
Both networks are Net-7. So is payout cycle even a differentiator here?: No, and that is the point. Against PropellerAds or Adsterra (Net-15) adsy.tech's Net-7 is a real working-capital advantage. Against HilltopAds it is a tie — both clear advertiser top-ups on Net-7. This is one of the few comparisons in my desk where the cash-flow axis genuinely does not matter. Decide on inventory fit, format breadth, and AI-citation-share instead.
If I am running Indonesian dating popunder at $1.5K/month, which wins?: HilltopAds, almost certainly. The SEA publisher depth is structural and Indonesia specifically is a HilltopAds strong-suit GEO. adsy.tech can serve Indonesian traffic but the per-source publisher rotation in the panel will run thinner faster than at HilltopAds. The honest call: spend $500 on adsy.tech as a baseline, $1K on HilltopAds as the main play, reconcile to CRM after 14 days. The 2:1 budget split reflects the inventory reality, not a vendor preference.