Pop ads

Pop ads open a whole advertiser page in a new browser window or tab when a visitor clicks anywhere on a publisher site. A popunder opens behind the active window, so the user sees it when they close or switch tabs; a popup opens on top. PropellerAds, which sells the format as "Onclick", describes it as an ad that "appears under the user's active tab in a new browser window" (PropellerAds help, Oct 16, 2025).

There is no creative in the usual sense: no headline, no image, no click. The landing page itself is the ad, and the "view" is the moment it loads. That makes pop the cheapest and most raw form of display traffic. You pay for a page load, not for intent, so the visitor arrives without having chosen to.

The supply comes largely from free streaming, file sharing, download and other sites that monetize with aggressive formats. Volume is huge and cheap, quality is uneven, and a share of it is bots. Pop is therefore a testing and scaling channel for offers with a simple, fast conversion step (a sign-up, a short form, a first deposit flow, a sweepstakes entry), not for products that need a long story.

In affiliate marketing pop is used in both of the niches covered here: iGaming (casino, betting, sweepstakes, where licensed and allowed) and nutra, alongside push and native. It sits under the general affiliate marketing method and is almost always bought through an ad network.

Pop is sold by ad networks, either directly from publishers or through exchanges. Most of it is self-serve: you open an account, add a deposit, build a campaign and bid.

Pricing models. The default is CPM, a price per thousand pop impressions. Several networks also offer a CPA goal, where you set a target cost per conversion and the algorithm chooses what to buy. You are usually still billed per impression or click: PropellerAds says its CPA Goal is "actually built on the CPM/CPC bidding" (PropellerAds help).

• PropellerAds offers CPA Goal, SmartCPM and CPM for Onclick, and shows recommended and maximum bids in the campaign form rather than a published minimum (PropellerAds help, Oct 16, 2025).
• RichAds sells popunder on CPM and says prices start from $0.5 CPM in Tier 3 and $1 CPM in Tier 1 (RichAds FAQ, page dated Mar 03, 2025).
• Adsterra sells popunder on CPM or CPA through its self-serve platform (Adsterra advertisers, as of October 2026).

Deposits. Minimum first deposits on the vendors' own pages: PropellerAds "starts from $100" (terms, as of October 2026); RichAds $150 (FAQ, Mar 03, 2025); Adsterra $100 by card, PayPal or Paxum and $1,000 by wire, with KYC required after the first $100 by card (Adsterra blog, May 22, 2026).

Targeting and controls. You choose country, device, OS, browser, connection type and sometimes carrier, then a frequency cap. PropellerAds' default cap for SmartCPM and CPM is that "one visitor will see the ad 3 times per 24 hours" (PropellerAds help). The real work happens after launch: you collect data per zone (placement), cut zones that do not convert, and build a whitelist of zones that do. That loop only works with a tracker that receives the zone ID in the URL and the cost per visit.

Moderation. Every campaign and landing page is reviewed against the network's rules before it runs. In gambling, approval may depend on proof of a licence for the target country (see compliance below).

Formats. The main ones are popunder (behind the active window), popup (on top) and, at some networks, redirect or interstitial variants that send a whole page view to the advertiser. Anstrex, a spy tool for this traffic, lists "Popup, Pop-under, Interstitial & Redirect" and says it covers "32+ Pop Ad Networks" including PopAds, AdCash, PropellerAds and AdMaven (Anstrex Pops, as of October 2026).

Traffic types. PropellerAds splits Onclick supply into Websites, Direct click and Social Traffic (PropellerAds help, Oct 16, 2025). Treat each as a different source and test them in separate campaigns.

Targeting levers that matter most on pop:

• Geo and tier. Prices and quality differ by an order of magnitude between Tier 1 and Tier 3 countries.
• Device and OS. Mobile and desktop convert differently; a lander built for one rarely works on the other.
• Zone lists. Whitelists and blacklists of publisher zones are the main optimization tool.
• Frequency cap. Lower caps cost reach but cut repeated, annoyed impressions.

Which verticals networks report. RichAds lists Gambling and Betting among its top popunder verticals, with country examples such as the USA, India, Indonesia and Brazil for gambling (RichAds FAQ, Mar 03, 2025). Adsterra names iGaming and sports betting among its verticals (Adsterra). A network listing a vertical says nothing about whether gambling advertising is legal in a given country; that is your check, not theirs.

Pop sits between two sets of rules: the ad network's creative and landing page rules, and the law and advertising codes of the target country.

Network rules (PropellerAds Onclick as an example, updated May 13, 2026). The Onclick rules ban automatic downloads, imitation of system updates and messages, imitation of browser icons and interfaces and of any system interface; users must be able to close landing pages easily; pretender and subscriber-collection landers are not accepted. For nutra, only dietary supplements are allowed and the landing page must say it is a dietary supplement. For iGaming, "Ad campaigns for Sweepstake Casino targeting the US can only be launched once the license is provided, and only in approved states." Separately, PropellerAds' landing page rules (Sep 4, 2025) do not allow real-money games or betting offers in the UAE. Other networks have their own lists; read them before building a lander.

Gambling law and codes. Gambling is licensed country by country, and in the US state by state. In Great Britain the UKGC holds licensees "primarily responsible" for direct marketing that affiliates do on their behalf (UKGC, Aug 8, 2025), and the CAP Code gambling rules apply to "marketing by third parties (for example, affiliate marketers)": no strong appeal to under-18s, no targeting under-18s through choice of media, nobody who is or seems under 25 shown gambling (CAP Code section 16, as of October 2026). Pop's thin targeting makes the "selection of media" test hard to pass for some placements, which is a reason to keep zone lists tight.

Industry standards. The Coalition for Better Ads lists pop-up ads among formats that fall below its desktop and mobile standards (Better Ads Standards, as of October 2026). Pop-unders are not named there.

Never serve reviewers one page and users another: that is cloaking and it is banned by networks and platforms alike.

Each network sets its own rules on gambling licences per country, so ask support for the current written policy before launching.

Pop is the cheapest paid traffic per visit you can buy, which is both its appeal and its trap.

Published price points. Adsterra's popunder guide gives CPM ranges of "$0.45 to $1+" for Tier 1 and "$0.08 to $0.50" for Tier 3 (Adsterra blog, Aug 18, 2026). RichAds says its popunder starts at $0.5 CPM in Tier 3 and $1 in Tier 1 (RichAds FAQ, Mar 03, 2025). These are vendor floors and ranges, not what a converting zone will cost you.

Illustrative arithmetic, not a benchmark. At $1 CPM, $100 buys about 100,000 page loads. If 0.05% of them reach a $50 CPA event, that is 50 conversions and $2,500 in payout; at 0.005% it is 5 conversions and $250. The whole business case sits in that conversion rate, and the rate is driven by zone quality, bots and lander speed more than by the bid.

Test budgets. Adsterra suggests CPA test budgets of $10 to $100 depending on geo (Adsterra blog, May 22, 2026). Our editorial advice is to budget for enough conversions per zone to make a cut decision, not a fixed amount.

Expect part of the first test budget to go on zones you later blacklist; that is the cost of finding the ones that convert. Decide in advance how much spend a zone gets before you cut it, and build the whitelist from your tracker data rather than from network averages.

Pop without a tracker is guessing. The network reports impressions and spend; only your tracker can tie a zone to a deposit or an order.

What to pass in the URL. At minimum the network's click ID, the zone ID and the cost. Voluum's template for PropellerAds passes a click ID macro plus {zoneid}, {bannerid}, {browser}, {os}, {device}, {region}, {isp} and {cost} (Voluum docs, as of October 2026).

Postback. Send conversions back to the network by server-to-server postback so its CPA or SmartCPM algorithm can optimize. RedTrack documents S2S postbacks for PopAds, which it calls "an advertising network specializing in popunders" (RedTrack help, as of October 2026).

Automation. Some trackers pause zones through the network's API. RedTrack's PropellerAds integration can pause campaigns, placements and creatives (RedTrack help). Keitaro's own blog recommends a tracker on pop to "track conversions, and create whitelists/blacklists" (Keitaro blog, Jan 29, 2025), and Binom publishes a popunder setup walkthrough with Binom as the control panel (Binom blog, Oct 16, 2025, in Russian).

For iGaming the conversion you care about is usually the first deposit, reported by the operator's affiliate programme, which can lag the click by days. Read more in tracking and attribution.

Good fit:

• Offers with one short, low-friction step: a registration, a sweepstakes entry, a short form, a first deposit in a geo where the operator is licensed and the network accepts the vertical.
• Fast, cheap tests of a geo or an angle before moving budget to a more expensive source.
• Affiliates who already run a tracker and are disciplined about zone lists.

Poor fit:

• Products that need trust and a long explanation. Adsterra's own guide says popunder underperforms for products needing deep trust (Adsterra blog, Aug 18, 2026). Long-form nutra advertorials usually belong on native.
• Brands that care about how they are perceived: an unrequested window is not a neutral first impression.
• Anyone without a tracker or without budget to absorb fraud while learning.

Bots and fraud. Cheap page loads attract fake ones. Keitaro's blog warns that "some networks may have fraudulent traffic, so choosing a reputable ad network is crucial" (Keitaro blog, Jan 29, 2025). Adsterra says it runs "in-house anti-fraud and anti-bot solutions" (Adsterra); treat that as a vendor claim and verify with your own conversion data.

Banned landers. Fake system alerts, imitation browser interfaces and automatic downloads are banned by network rules (see compliance). An account that runs them gets closed, and the deposit may go with it.

Lander speed. The page loads behind the active tab; a slow lander loses the visitor before it renders.

Reading the wrong metric. Click-through rate does not exist here. Judge zones on cost per conversion only.

Regulation is per country. A network accepting a gambling campaign does not make the offer legal in the target geo. See iGaming.