Make the Most of ExoClick Ads on an Adult Tube Website
ExoClick is the first ad network most adult webmasters join, and the biggest earner on our own network. Here is how to set it up so it pays what it should.
One site, its own zones
Create a separate site entry in ExoClick for every domain you own and create zones under it. Never paste one site’s zone codes on another domain. It mixes up your statistics, makes it impossible to judge each site, and can get a site flagged. We run a nightly check that each site only requests its own zone IDs.
Which zones to create
- Pop-under: one per site.
- In-video / VAST pre-roll for your player.
- Banners: 300×250 next to or under the player (works on mobile and desktop), 728×90 on desktop, a mobile 300×100 or 320×50.
- Native: a widget under the player that looks like related videos.
- Sticky bottom bar on mobile.
Pop-under settings that don’t hurt you
- Frequency: start with 1-2 per visitor per day on smaller sites. Raise slowly and watch returning-visitor numbers.
- Exclude your player from the trigger. On mobile, the pop-under can take over your own tab (a “tab-under”): if it fires when someone presses Play, they lose your page. We excluded clicks on the player; revenue dipped slightly and visitors stopped bouncing.
Pre-roll that actually fills
About nine in ten VAST ads we received were HLS streams only. If your player only plays MP4 creatives, most of your pre-roll requests return nothing you can show. Use a player with HLS support (hls.js in most HTML5 players), and never narrow the list of accepted creative types to “fix” a bug. Also make sure the impression and progress pixels fire; without the progress pixel our pre-roll showed thousands of hits and zero paid views for weeks.
The hidden-ad mistake
ExoClick pays for ads that are served; your layout decides whether anyone sees them. We found pre-rolls playing with sound under an opaque poster layer, sticky bars measuring an empty element, and banner zones that our own “is it filled?” check hid. Fixing these raised display impressions 3-100x per zone. After every theme or player change, look at each zone on a real phone.
Use the API to find dead zones
ExoClick’s publisher API returns impressions, clicks, CPM and revenue per zone for any date range. Pull it weekly and look for zones with impressions but no revenue, or a sudden drop. Note that pop-under and pre-roll zones often show 0% CTR while still earning: judge them on revenue, not CTR.
Anti-adblock
ExoClick offers an anti-adblock loader that proxies ad requests through a path on your own domain. If you use it, don’t let your caching, security rules or CDN interfere with that path.
When to add a second network
Keep ExoClick for formats where it’s strong (banners, native, pre-roll) and test another network for the pop-under on each site, one site at a time. Compare revenue per 1,000 real visitors over at least a week. On our sites the result differed per site, so there’s no universal winner.