TrafficStars Adult Ad Network: Video Ads, Minimum Deposit & Alternatives

What is TrafficStars?

TrafficStars is a self-serve ad network and RTB exchange specializing in adult traffic. Founded in 2014 in Cyprus by a team of experts with over 15 years of experience in the online advertising industry. The company operates with over 50 staff members based in offices across Cyprus and Spain. 

The platform delivers 5-10 billion daily impressions across more than 240 countries. It functions as both a direct ad network and an RTB exchange supporting the OpenRTB protocol. The dual model gives advertisers access to both exclusive direct deals and programmatic inventory. 

TrafficStars’ key differentiator is its exclusive partnership with xHamster, plus access to premium inventory from Pornhub, Spankbang, and YouPorn. This gives access to 6 of the top 20 adult sites globally. 

How Does TrafficStars Work?

TrafficStars operates as a self-serve advertising platform combining direct inventory from premium adult sites with RTB partnerships across other networks and exchanges. 

The campaign workflow adopts a six-tab structure covering settings, targeting, scheduling, audience, pricing, and ads. It is consolidated into a single-page campaign creation process, praised by most media buyers for its simplicity. 

After account verification, a personal manager gets assigned. The campaign moderation typically completes within 10 minutes or less during business days for rapid testing. 

TrafficStars Features

The platform includes various handy tools designed to streamline campaign management and optimization, such as: 

Optimizer 

Optimizer is a rule-based optimization feature that allows you to target groups of campaigns, blacklist underperforming traffic sources, and adjust bids with ease. 

Marketplace 

The marketplace highlights prime spots for your ads to reach the desired audience and identifies high-value placements before bidding. It includes spot ID, domain, type, ad spot description, ad format, daily impressions, and action. 

Dynamic CPM Bidding 

The bidding model automatically adjusts your CPM based on real-time competition and performance data. You can adjust bids for better prices or reduce risk and overspending.

Real-time Bidding 

The RTB allows for granular targeting (GEO, device, OS) and dynamic budget optimization to maximize ROI on their traffic. The full RTB capabilities, utilizing the OpenRTB protocol, enable programmatic buying.

15+ Tracker Integrations 

TrafficStars comes integrated directly with 15+ tracking platforms, including Voluum and RedTrack, that eliminate manual data entry errors. It reduces the ‘tracking discrepancy’ and remains vital for scaling campaigns across 5+ billion daily impressions. 

Frequency Capping 

It prevents ad fatigue, which optimizes your budget by controlling how often a specific user sees your ad. It features customizable intervals, granular control, and cookie-based tracking to strike a balance between reach and engagement. 

Scheduling/ Dayparting 

Time-based campaign controls to run ads only during profitable hours or days. It comes with an intuitive 24/7 grid where advertisers can select specific hours and days of the week for their ads to run. 

API Access 

TrafficStars API provides a powerful programmatic interface for advertisers to scale their operations beyond the manual constraints of the dashboard. It’s designed for high-volume media buyers who require automation, customer reporting, and real-time synchronization between internal tools and the TrafficStars exchange. 

TrafficStars Targeting Options 

TrafficStars provides standard targeting controls for refining your target audience reach:

• Geographic: Country and region-level targeting across 240+ countries
• Language: Target users based on browser language settings. 
• Device Type: Distinguish between desktop, mobile, tablet, Smart TV, and consoles
• Operating System: Target by OS (iOS, Windows, Android, etc.) and even drill down to specific OS versions. 
• Browser: Filter by browser type (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and other major browsers) and browser language. 
• Mobile Carrier: Essential for 3G/4G/5G, with specific offers that allow you to target or exclude specific mobile carriers or Wi-Fi traffic. 
• Keywords: Use keyword-based targeting to appear on pages with specific terminology. 
• IP Ranges: Direct targeting of specific IP blocks, often used for hyper-niche B2B or localized campaigns. 
• Proxy Traffic Filtering: Option to filter out users on proxies or VPNs to ensure higher lead quality.  
• Categories: Choose from specific target content niches (e.g., mainstream, adult, games) to ensure contextual relevance. 
• Audience options: Target users based on their interests or previous behaviors within the network.

TrafficStars Retargeting

 TrafficStars offers three retargeting approaches for remarketing to engaged users: 

• Simple Retargeting— It’s based on ad clicks. Target users who previously clicked your ads across the network. This works for immediate remarketing without additional setup. 
• Advanced Retargeting— It’s based on collected landing page data. Install the TrafficStars pixel on your landing pages to track form submissions, survey completions, or other data collection points. Afterwards, you can target users engaged with specific funnel steps. 
• Event-Based Retargeting—Tracks specific user interactions like page views, checkout starts, add-to-cart actions, or custom events you define. This requires pixel implementation but provides the most granular audience segmentation. 

The platform also offers lookalike targeting, utilizing AI to identify placements similar to your top-performing sources. This feature analyzes traffic characteristics from your winning campaigns and finds comparable inventory for scaling. 

TrafficStars Optimizer 

The optimizer is TraffickStars’ rule-based automation tool for fine-tuning campaigns for optimal results. It represents a key differentiator for the platform that handles the repetitive work of monitoring source performance and making bid adjustments. 

Optimizer comes with an auto-bidding optimization feature that allows you to adjust the bid automatically. You can set up a rule by which the spot bid will adjust (either higher or lower). 

The automation matters when running multiple campaigns across dozens or hundreds of sources. Manual optimization becomes impractical at such a scale. The optimizer handles it continuously without requiring constant attention. 

It’s possible to create rules around different metrics such as clicks, conversions, conversion rate, CTR, cost per action, or ROI. The system applies these rules in real-time as data accumulates. Most buyers set conservative thresholds initially to avoid blacklisting potentially profitable sources too quickly. 

However, it lacks the sophisticated logic that experienced buyers might want. You can’t create complex conditional rules or implement advanced bid strategies. 

TrafficStars Ad Formats

TrafficStars supports multiple ad formats designed for mainstream and adult verticals. All these formats support desktop, mobile, and tablet. 

Banner Ads

Classic display banner sizes are 300x250, 315x300, 900x250, 728x90, 250x150, and 3000x1000. You’ll find ready scripts for special banner formats such as the Instant Message and the Interstitial Banner. 

TrafficStars Video Ads

Video formats include pre-roll, mid-roll, and in-stream IM slider placements, supporting VAST-compliant creatives. Video ads command higher engagement rates and work particularly well for iGaming and dating offers. 

The video inventory is more limited than other formats, but it can deliver strong performance when targeting the right audiences on premium adult sites. 

Popunder Ads

It’s one of the platform’s highest-volume formats, with popunders open behind the current browser window. This format generates volume quickly and is commonly used for direct offers. 

However, multiple buyers report bot traffic issues with pop-under inventory. This makes third-party tracking and aggressive filtering essential. 

Native Ads

Native ads blend with publisher content using TrafficStars’ custom widget. You can choose between CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPMV (Cost Per Mille View) pricing. Native ads cost more but typically deliver higher engagement rates and are more effective for brand-sensitive offers. 

Push Notifications 

You’ll find both classic push and in-page push formats. Push ads bypass ad blockers and deliver messages to opted-in users. It performs well for time-sensitive offers, remarketing, and sweepstakes. 

Interstitial Ads

Full-page ads that appear between content pages, offering maximum visibility. It works well with mobile campaigns.

What Verticals does TrafficStars Support?

TrafficStars supports both adult and mainstream verticals. It shows particularly strong performance in categories that align with its premium dating site inventory. 

• Adult Vertical 

The platform categorizes adult traffic into subcategories, including Adult General, Dating Adult, Webcams, Cartoons/Manga/Anime, and pornstar-specific content. 

• Dating 

Both mainstream and adult dating perform well. Dating adults (casual encounters, hookup sites) convert particularly strongly on premium adult placements. Mainstream dating (relationship-focused) works better on non-adult inventory or with less aggressive creatives. 

• iGaming & Gambling 

It covers casino, poker, sports betting, and cryptocurrency gambling offers. The platform’s European traffic and premium placements deliver engaged users for gaming offers. 

TrafficStars Minimum Deposit & Pricing

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TrafficStars Traffic Quality 

TrafficStars traffic quality presents a mixed picture that varies significantly by format and source. 

The primary strength behind the platform lies in its premium inventory partnerships. It has an exclusive xHamster relationship, direct access to Pornhub, SpankBang, and YouPorn, and delivers genuine engaged traffic. 

Additionally, TrafficStars runs an in-house fraud detection system and advertises up to 5x refunds for verified fraudulent traffic. 

Unfortunately, experienced advertisers noted some discrepancies with the traffic quality, and inconsistency plagued: 

• Bot Traffic Concerns 

Multiple advertisers report bot traffic issues. This is particularly true with pop-under and push notification formats.

• Refund Policy

Some advertisers noted difficulties in obtaining refunds for remaining balances. Complaints were noted regarding long waiting times for responses and minimal actual refunds, despite having documented evidence. 

Experienced adult advertisers unanimously recommend using third-party tracking tools for independent bot analysis. The platform’s internal reporting doesn’t always flag problematic sources quickly enough to prevent budget waste. 

Is TrafficStars Legit?

TrafficStars began operations in 2014 and operates as a legitimate ad network with 50+ employees and offices located in Limassol, Cyprus, and Barcelona, Spain. They reliably process payments and partner with many large adult sites.

The question "Is TrafficStars a scam?" is often asked due to:

• Many advertisers across Trustpilot, Reddit, and other industry forums are reporting a huge number of bots
• The difficulty in claiming 5x refunds for proven bot traffic stems from the challenge of proving this.
• Some advertisers are reporting sudden account terminations without warning or explanation.

TrafficStars is a legitimate service, but it requires management by someone knowledgeable about its operations and procedures. They provide access to premium inventory, which is highly valuable, but there are significant concerns regarding the quality of the traffic.

The key under these circumstances will be the ability to track and filter traffic correctly and to have realistic expectations of the support and refund program.

TrafficStars Pros and Cons 

Here’s our honest assessment about verified feedback from adult advertisers and affiliate marketers:

TrafficStars vs Blockchain-Ads

Here’s how TrafficStars compares to Blockchain-Ads for affiliate and performance marketing campaigns: