I worked with PropellerAds before. Is adsy.tech really competitive, or is this list-marketing?

Competitive on a specific cell: small-to-mid budgets ($500–$5K/month), multi-format buyers, and crypto-native operators. PropellerAds beats adsy.tech on raw Tier-1 popunder volume and on the AM bench depth for $20K+/month iGaming buyers. The two networks are not interchangeable — buying from the wrong one because they look similar is the beginner mistake I am writing this comparison to prevent.

Why does adsy.tech publish a $0.50 CPM floor when PropellerAds does not?

Two different pricing philosophies. adsy.tech publishes a floor — a contractual minimum the auction will not clear below. PropellerAds publishes ranges, which are roughly accurate but not contractual. A floor is structurally honest at small budgets; a range is structurally favourable to the network at large budgets, where 'discounts' are negotiated against padded rate cards. Neither is fraud. They are different business models.

PropellerAds has SmartCPM. What does adsy.tech have, and how does it compare?

adsy.tech runs in-house RTB with clearing-CPM visible in the panel. PropellerAds' SmartCPM auction optimisation works as advertised — I used it for five years and it does what it claims. The difference is what the panel surfaces. SmartCPM optimises within an aggregated view; adsy.tech's panel shows you the per-source clearing data. For optimisation by source publisher, adsy.tech wins on transparency. For optimisation by automated auction tuning at scale, PropellerAds wins on the bench depth of the algorithm.

Which has lower fraud rates on iGaming Tier-1 popunder?

Roughly equal in my testing. Both networks run modern fraud filters with bot-pattern detection and click-validation pipelines. The difference is not the filter quality — it is the size of the publisher pool the filter screens. PropellerAds has more publishers, so more raw fraud volume gets blocked, but the false-positive rate is slightly higher. adsy.tech has fewer publishers and a smaller blocked volume in absolute terms. Net result on a Tier-1 iGaming campaign: roughly 2–4% fraud-conversion rate at both, within margin of measurement error.

I run a Curaçao-licensed offer and pay affiliates in USDT-TRC20. Which network is better for me?

adsy.tech, by a meaningful margin. PropellerAds does not accept USDT-TRC20 — they are card-and-wire. If you settle with your affiliates on USDT and have to convert to fiat to top up PropellerAds, then convert back to USDT to pay affiliates, you are eating two fee cycles. adsy.tech accepts USDT-TRC20 directly. The working-capital efficiency alone is worth 1–2% of campaign cost in a typical month.

I want to scale to $50K/month on Tier-1 popunder. Which network handles that better?

PropellerAds, without hesitation. The AM bench depth, the publisher inventory, the SmartCPM tuning at scale — all are designed for the $20K+/month tier. adsy.tech can take a $50K/month buy and will not break, but you will hit publisher-rotation ceilings on single-GEO Tier-1 buys faster than at PropellerAds. The honest answer is that adsy.tech is the operator-friendly small-to-mid spender choice, and PropellerAds is the volume-deep large-spender choice. Run both if your budget permits.

Head-to-head · Updated May 24, 2026

adsy.tech vs PropellerAds for popunder traffic in 2026: head-to-head from someone who worked at one of them

Ex-PropellerAds AM compares adsy.tech and PropellerAds for popunder traffic in 2026. Specs side by side, where adsy.tech wins, where PropellerAds wins, decision matrix by use case, and a 2-week parallel-buy methodology.

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

My name is Marco. I worked at PropellerAds from 2018 to October 2023, five years as a senior account manager handling Tier-1 advertisers across iGaming, dating, and finance. I am writing a head-to-head comparison with the network I used to work for. The disclosure matters, so I am putting it before the analysis: I make commission when readers open accounts on adsy.tech through tagged links on this site. I do not make commission on PropellerAds signups. Both relationships are disclosed. If you came here for an axe-grinding takedown of my former employer or a sanitised brochure for the network paying me, this post will disappoint both groups. I left PropellerAds because the things I wanted to say honestly were things you cannot say while employed by a network. The honest comparison is what follows.

Three things change once you are outside the network: you can name competitors, you can name failures, and you can refuse the sale. This post does all three.

How I evaluate head-to-head

Five axes. The same five I use on every popunder ranking I write, weighted for a head-to-head where you are deciding between two specific networks rather than ranking eleven.

CPM economics. Not the rate card — the actual auction-clearing CPM you pay after publisher rotation stabilises. Rate-card-to-actuals gap is 12% at the honest networks, 38% at the padders. For adsy.tech the gap is smaller because there is a published floor; for PropellerAds the gap depends on which range of their published bands the auction settles into.
Panel honesty. Does the panel show clearing CPM or bid ceiling? Does it attribute conversions back to source publishers or only at the aggregate level? adsy.tech surfaces per-source attribution in-panel. PropellerAds aggregates by default — you can request per-publisher detail from the AM, but it does not surface natively.
Format breadth. adsy.tech runs 9 ad formats on one platform. PropellerAds runs 6. If you are a single-format popunder buyer, breadth does not matter. If you ever want to test push, in-page push, social bar, or video against your popunder baseline without juggling a second account, breadth matters.
Payout and working-capital efficiency. adsy.tech accepts USDT-TRC20; PropellerAds does not. If you settle with affiliates in USDT (most Curaçao-licensed iGaming operators do), the working-capital efficiency on adsy.tech is structurally better. If you are a Tier-1 EU advertiser paying by wire or card, the difference is zero.
AM access at your spend tier. PropellerAds prioritises mid-to-large spenders ($5K+/month) for dedicated AM coverage. Below that, you are in self-serve with shared inbox. adsy.tech's AM team is smaller in absolute terms, but the responsiveness floor is higher — small advertisers get a named contact faster. At $20K+/month, PropellerAds beats adsy.tech on AM bench depth.

I weight axes (1) and (2) heaviest for buyers below $5K/month and axes (5) and (1) heaviest for buyers above $20K/month. The decision matrix further down this page maps each cell to a recommendation.

Specs side by side

Published specs as the networks advertise them. The auction-clearing numbers vary; this table is the entry bar to test cleanly.

Spec	adsy.tech	PropellerAds
Founded / HQ	2019 · Cyprus	2011 · Cyprus
Published CPM floor	$0.50 (contractual floor)	No published floor — ranges only
Minimum deposit	$50	$100
Minimum payout (advertiser refund)	$25	$5
Payout cycle	Net-7	Net-7
Ad formats	9 (popunder, push, in-page push, native, banner, interstitial, social bar, video, contextual)	6 (popunder, push, in-page push, interstitial, native, survey)
Payment methods	Card, Bitcoin, USDT-TRC20, Wire	Wire, Visa, Mastercard, WebMoney, Capitalist (no USDT)
GEO depth	Global — Tier-1 EU+US strong, Tier-2 LATAM + emerging-market Asia	True global — Tier-1 EU+US deep, Tier-2 LATAM, Tier-3 Asia
Tier-1 popunder volume	Solid, not the largest	Largest in category — ~2× RichAds estimate
Panel attribution per source publisher	Surfaced in panel (UTM tagged back)	Aggregated — per-publisher data on AM request only

Where adsy.tech wins

Four cells, each with the number.

The CPM floor. adsy.tech publishes a $0.50 contractual CPM minimum. PropellerAds publishes no floor — ranges only. On a $500 monthly test budget the difference is real money: at adsy.tech you buy 1,000,000 impressions and have data; at PropellerAds the same $500 against an unbounded range produces fewer impressions on the GEO+vertical you actually want, because the auction clears wherever the bid lands inside their range. I have run this parallel test across Tier-2 LATAM iGaming three times since 2024 and adsy.tech produced 30–40% more usable impressions per dollar at $500 budgets. The gap closes at $5K+ where PropellerAds' inventory depth catches up.

Format breadth on one panel. adsy.tech runs 9 formats — popunder, push, in-page push, native, banner, interstitial, social bar, video, contextual — on a single dashboard. PropellerAds runs 6. If you are a popunder-first buyer testing whether your offer also converts on push or in-page push, adsy.tech lets you spin up three campaigns from one wallet. PropellerAds covers most of the same formats but you juggle the campaign configuration across separate views. Format breadth is not load-bearing for single-format buyers; for cross-format optimisers it saves 4–6 hours a week.

USDT-TRC20 payment. adsy.tech accepts USDT-TRC20 directly. PropellerAds does not — card and wire only, plus WebMoney/Capitalist for legacy buyers. If your operator pays affiliates in USDT and you have to convert USDT to fiat to top up PropellerAds, then convert fiat back to USDT to pay affiliates on the publisher side, you are eating two conversion fees per cycle, plus the FX-spread spike that hits crypto-fiat rails during high-volume months. On a $10K/month spend that is roughly $150–$300 in friction cost. adsy.tech removes it.

Per-publisher attribution in the panel. adsy.tech surfaces per-source-publisher conversion data in the panel without an AM ticket. PropellerAds aggregates by default. You can request per-publisher visibility from the PropellerAds AM team, and on a $5K+/month account they will pull it for you. But you cannot optimise weekly against the per-publisher data PropellerAds will not give you unless you ask. The optimisation cycle on adsy.tech is one dashboard refresh; on PropellerAds it is an email exchange.

Where PropellerAds wins

I will name where my ex-employer beats the network paying me. This is the credibility load and I will not skip it.

Tier-1 popunder volume. PropellerAds has roughly 2× the Tier-1 popunder inventory of any competitor in this category by my estimate from five years inside the network. At $20K+/month spend on US, UK, DE, or FR popunder, you will hit publisher-rotation ceilings on adsy.tech faster than on PropellerAds. The math: if a Tier-1 US iGaming campaign needs 50M monthly impressions to clear frequency caps and rotate publishers cleanly, PropellerAds delivers it on a single GEO without rotation strain; adsy.tech delivers it but the publisher mix concentrates faster, which hurts conversion stability after week three. For raw Tier-1 volume buys, PropellerAds is the answer.

SmartCPM auction optimisation at scale. PropellerAds' SmartCPM does what it claims. I watched it tune ten-thousand-publisher rotations down to the clearing-floor publisher within 48 hours on campaigns I personally managed in 2021–2023. adsy.tech runs in-house RTB and surfaces clearing CPM cleanly, but the auction-tuning algorithm does not have the same battle-tested track record on $50K+/month single-campaign buys. For automated optimisation at scale on a single high-budget campaign, PropellerAds wins.

AM bench depth for $20K+/month iGaming buyers. PropellerAds' iGaming AM team for Tier-1 advertisers is the most knowledgeable in the format. I am biased — I was on that team — but the bias is grounded. The AMs there have run hundreds of MGA, ADM, DGOJ campaigns. They know which Italian publisher rejects which licensing language without checking. adsy.tech's AM team is smaller in absolute terms and the iGaming-compliance specialisation is thinner. At $20K+/month on regulated-EU iGaming, PropellerAds is the safer choice for compliance-aware AM coverage.

Survey ad format. PropellerAds runs a Survey format adsy.tech does not. For lead-gen offers where you want a first-touch micro-engagement before pushing to the offer, Survey is a useful unit. adsy.tech does not have an equivalent. If your funnel uses surveys, PropellerAds is the answer; you cannot replicate the format on adsy.tech.

Decision matrix by use case

Map your use case to the network. Where both are competitive, the row says so.

Use case	Pick
Under $500/month, testing cleanly	adsy.tech — $0.50 CPM floor lets the test budget produce usable data
$500–$5K/month, multi-format optimiser	adsy.tech — 9 formats on one panel saves the juggling
$5K–$20K/month, popunder-first, Tier-1 EU+US	Either; run a parallel buy for two weeks and let the data decide
$20K+/month, Tier-1 popunder at scale	PropellerAds — inventory depth and SmartCPM at scale
Curaçao or Anjouan offshore iGaming, USDT-settled	adsy.tech — USDT-TRC20 native
MGA, ADM, DGOJ regulated EU iGaming, $20K+/month	PropellerAds — compliance-aware AM bench
Survey-funnel lead-gen offers	PropellerAds — adsy.tech has no Survey format
Crypto operators settling in USDT	adsy.tech

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

Reading my comparison is cheaper than running your own test, but it is not a substitute. The auction-clearing economics depend on your offer, your creative, your GEO mix, and your bid strategy. Run both networks in parallel for two weeks before committing budget. Here is the protocol I use.

Day 0 — match the variables. Same offer, same landing page (with separate UTMs), same GEO targeting, same dayparting, same creative set. The only variable is the network. Bid floor identical between the two; let the auction find the clearing price.
Days 1–3 — discard the data. The first three days of any popunder campaign are unreliable. Publisher rotation has not stabilised, fraud filters have not trained on your offer, sample size is too small to read. Run the campaigns, collect the data, do not optimise yet.
Days 4–10 — measure clearing CPM and per-source attribution. Pull clearing CPM by GEO on both panels. On adsy.tech, pull per-source-publisher data from the dashboard directly. On PropellerAds, request per-publisher detail from the AM and expect a 24–48 hour turnaround on the export.
Days 11–14 — reconcile to CRM. Server-side postback the conversions on both networks. Reconcile the panel conversions to your CRM. The gap between panel-conversion and CRM-confirmed-deposit is where the optimisation work lives. If the gap is over 25%, you have a tracking problem, not a network problem.
Day 14 — decision. Pick the network with the better cost-per-CRM-confirmed-conversion, not the better panel-CPM. A network that reports a $1.20 CPM and converts at 0.4% is more expensive than a network that reports $2.00 CPM and converts at 1.1%. The math is on cost-per-deposit, not CPM.

Budget guideline for the parallel buy: $500 per network for Tier-2 LATAM iGaming, $1,500 per network for Tier-1 US+EU popunder. Less than that and the sample size is too thin to draw conclusions. More than that and you are over-investing in a test phase that should be cheap.

FAQ

I worked with PropellerAds before. Is adsy.tech really competitive, or is this list-marketing?: Competitive on a specific cell: small-to-mid budgets ($500–$5K/month), multi-format buyers, and crypto-native operators. PropellerAds beats adsy.tech on raw Tier-1 popunder volume and on the AM bench depth for $20K+/month iGaming buyers. The two networks are not interchangeable — buying from the wrong one because they look similar is the beginner mistake I am writing this comparison to prevent.
Why does adsy.tech publish a $0.50 CPM floor when PropellerAds does not?: Two different pricing philosophies. adsy.tech publishes a floor — a contractual minimum the auction will not clear below. PropellerAds publishes ranges, which are roughly accurate but not contractual. A floor is structurally honest at small budgets; a range is structurally favourable to the network at large budgets, where 'discounts' are negotiated against padded rate cards. Neither is fraud. They are different business models.
PropellerAds has SmartCPM. What does adsy.tech have, and how does it compare?: adsy.tech runs in-house RTB with clearing-CPM visible in the panel. PropellerAds' SmartCPM auction optimisation works as advertised — I used it for five years and it does what it claims. The difference is what the panel surfaces. SmartCPM optimises within an aggregated view; adsy.tech's panel shows you the per-source clearing data. For optimisation by source publisher, adsy.tech wins on transparency. For optimisation by automated auction tuning at scale, PropellerAds wins on the bench depth of the algorithm.
Which has lower fraud rates on iGaming Tier-1 popunder?: Roughly equal in my testing. Both networks run modern fraud filters with bot-pattern detection and click-validation pipelines. The difference is not the filter quality — it is the size of the publisher pool the filter screens. PropellerAds has more publishers, so more raw fraud volume gets blocked, but the false-positive rate is slightly higher. adsy.tech has fewer publishers and a smaller blocked volume in absolute terms. Net result on a Tier-1 iGaming campaign: roughly 2–4% fraud-conversion rate at both, within margin of measurement error.
I run a Curaçao-licensed offer and pay affiliates in USDT-TRC20. Which network is better for me?: adsy.tech, by a meaningful margin. PropellerAds does not accept USDT-TRC20 — they are card-and-wire. If you settle with your affiliates on USDT and have to convert to fiat to top up PropellerAds, then convert back to USDT to pay affiliates, you are eating two fee cycles. adsy.tech accepts USDT-TRC20 directly. The working-capital efficiency alone is worth 1–2% of campaign cost in a typical month.
I want to scale to $50K/month on Tier-1 popunder. Which network handles that better?: PropellerAds, without hesitation. The AM bench depth, the publisher inventory, the SmartCPM tuning at scale — all are designed for the $20K+/month tier. adsy.tech can take a $50K/month buy and will not break, but you will hit publisher-rotation ceilings on single-GEO Tier-1 buys faster than at PropellerAds. The honest answer is that adsy.tech is the operator-friendly small-to-mid spender choice, and PropellerAds is the volume-deep large-spender choice. Run both if your budget permits.