A-ADS vs Bitmedia: a $100 door with no name or a $300 dashboard with wallet targeting

A-ADS and Bitmedia are the two crypto ad networks that will take a small budget today, and the two that a publisher with a new site applies to first. One has run since 2011 on a promise of no registration, no identity check and a payout in bitcoin every day; the other has run since 2014 on a self-serve dashboard with bids in dollars, a human review on both sides and audiences built from what is in a visitor’s wallet. We reviewed both, A-ADS at 7/10 and Bitmedia at 6.5/10, we hold no stake in either, and every figure below was read on 6 October 2026 from the two networks’ own websites, help centres, terms and Trustpilot profiles, then set side by side.

The short answer

If the brief is reach at the lowest price per thousand, paid in whatever coin you hold, live within the hour and with nobody on your side uploading a passport, A-ADS is the answer, and the first $100 should be treated as a test of inventory that lives on the long tail of crypto sites rather than on the front page of anything. If the campaign has to find people by what they hold rather than by what they read, or needs cost-per-click bidding, device targeting and frequency caps, Bitmedia is the only one of the two that sells any of it, and the $300 should be treated as spent the moment it lands, because the contract says so.

For publishers the choice is made by the age of the site and the size of the wait. A site that is three months old and has no traffic to speak of can be earning on A-ADS this afternoon, in bitcoin, at a rate its own statistics page prices at about $55 a month for the average publisher. A site with a real audience that can give a name and address, and can wait seven days for earnings to clear and up to seven more for the payment to arrive, earns from $20 at Bitmedia. Both pay in bitcoin and nothing else, so a publisher who wants a stablecoin is in the wrong article.

What each network actually sells

A-ADS sells days. Its help centre states that “AADS is neither a pay-per-click (PPC) nor a pay-per-impression (CPM) advertising network”: you set a daily budget and the network distributes impressions according to each advertiser’s share of total spend across the traffic you selected. The worked example in the same article is a $10 daily budget against 10,000 impressions, which it converts to “$1 CPM”; the advertise page quotes “$0.04 Average CPM” across the network. A Max CPM setting refuses traffic above a price, and the FAQ adds CPA and revenue-share models. The ads carry no JavaScript and set no cookie until someone clicks. The operator is Alpha Communication Services Limited of Hong Kong; the network launched as Anonymous Ads in 2011 and dropped the hyphen from its name in August 2025.

Bitmedia sells impressions and clicks at a bid. Bitmedia Ltd is an English company (number 09469636, Covent Garden address) that has run since 2014, and its campaign builder offers three ways to pay: a fixed CPC or CPM bid, a Smart Bid that chases a target CPM (“for example $1.51”) across cheap and premium publishers, and an Exact Bid that buys “a predefined package of websites” at set rates. The feature A-ADS cannot match is the Web3 audience: segments built, in the guide’s words, “by balances (the amount of funds in the relevant cryptocurrency in their wallets), by types of investments (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, Memecoins, or even DeFi), or by interests (Gaming, Gambling, Trading, NFT)”. How that detection works, and what it cannot see, is a question we have examined separately; the only mention of on-chain targeting on A-ADS’s homepage is a customer testimonial.

They also measure themselves differently. A-ADS publishes a live statistics page, which showed 2,078 active publishers, 5,415 active ad units, 494 active campaigns and $113,579 of publishers’ earnings for the month when we looked, with 137 active advertisers on the About page. Bitmedia publishes claims: “1.5B+” monthly impressions, “1.5M+” monthly clicks, “550+” active publishers and “200+” top advertisers on the homepage. One is a counter and the other is a brochure, and the difference matters when you divide the earnings by the publishers.

Getting in: a hundred with no name, or three hundred with a dashboard

A-ADS does not have a registration form. The help centre lists “No registration required: Your personal account is automatically created after creating a campaign/ad unit” and “Ability to remain anonymous: No KYC required unless you target specific websites like poocoin.app”. The minimum deposit is “100 USD, or higher depending on the selected coin and network (e.g., 250 USD for USDT ERC20)”, a bank card works through Changelly with its own floor (“Don’t deposit less than 125 USD”), and the terms warn that a deposit below the minimum “will be used to cover fees incurred by AADS and will not be credited to the advertisers account nor returned to the advertiser”. Twenty coins are accepted, plus Lightning; everything that is not bitcoin is converted to bitcoin on arrival at a 3% conversion fee plus 0.5% to 1% for the processor, and a notice this month says the old altcoin deposit addresses no longer work after a change of payment provider. On top sits the network’s cut: “twenty percent of all monies paid for the advertising service, but not less than ten percent of the deposited funds”.

Bitmedia’s door costs $300 and comes with a form. The FAQ: “The min deposit for payments with card is 300$. The minimum deposit amount in cryptocurrency is equivalent to 300 USD”, followed by the sentence that makes bitcoin the cheap way in: “The minimum deposit amount requirement shall not apply to BTC transactions.” Clause 6.1 of the terms adds that “payments less than 300 USD are not processed and will not be credited to your balance” and are “non-refundable”. Deposits are taken in “BTC, USD, USDT, BNB, TRX and ETH”, or by bank transfer against an invoice, and bids start at $0.25 per click and $0.30 per thousand impressions. Neither network publishes an identity requirement for an ordinary advertiser; Bitmedia’s FAQ says only that “KYC may be required by a KOL or website”, typically “for the top crypto news outlets”. Our KYC comparison puts both beside the networks that do ask.

Daily minimums are where the two look alike on paper and differ in practice, because neither contract sets one. A-ADS’s homepage promises “flexible budgets starting from $100”, but its help article on budgets says “Minimum 200$ per day is recommended for all categories” and $300 for premium websites, since smaller budgets “may not be effectively spent due to rounding errors in our algorithm, which could result in your budget being spent without yielding any significant outcomes”. Bitmedia asks “at least $50” a day only for even pacing, says “$200 is the minimum requirement” for a Web3-audience campaign, and requires “a minimum daily budget of $300” for Smart Bid. A $100 deposit at A-ADS is therefore half of one recommended day, and $300 at Bitmedia on a wallet-targeted campaign is a day and a half. Our survey of daily minimums sets both against the rest of the field.

What the contracts do with money you do not spend

A-ADS leaves the decision to itself. The terms: “Any refunds are at the entire discretion of AADS. No refunds are possible once funds have been paid to Publishers.” If an advert is banned, “the remaining funds in the account may be refunded to the advertiser after deduction of any costs incurred by AADS”, and the ten-percent floor on fees means a refund of a $100 deposit can never exceed $90. The idle clause is the one to diarise: “Idle accounts, including the remaining balances, shall be automatically deleted after 6 months of inactivity. By using AADS you agree to waive any rights to claim these funds.” A locked account is recovered only on proof of identity and a 10% administrative fee, and a multi-account case may cost “a recovery fee of 50% or higher”. Hong Kong law governs, with arbitration under the HKIAC rules; the publisher terms are effective from 3 April 2026.

Bitmedia leaves no decision to make. Clause 7.1 is one sentence in capitals: “ALL AMOUNTS PAID BY ADVERTISERS AND REFLECTED IN USERS’ ACCOUNTS ARE NON-REFUNDABLE.” The one exception, clause 9.3, refunds unused prepayment if Bitmedia itself ends the agreement “for reasons not attributable to the User”; the FAQ confirms “there is no refund for low conversion rates”, and money clawed back from a fraudulent publisher returns to “your account” as balance, not cash. Inactivity runs on two clocks: clause 4.14 deems an account inactive after “six (6) consecutive months” without a sign-in, with fourteen days’ notice and a three-month grace period; clause 6.4 says a funded account inactive for six months “will lose access to their funds” and, if it stays inactive, “the funds will be written off with no refunds”; clause 7.5 gives an account restored in time “sixty percent (60%) of the then-outstanding deposited amount” back “exclusively for the placement of advertisements on the Platform (no withdrawals or cash redemptions)”. English law applies. Our refund-policy comparison covers the whole landscape; the practical reading here is that A-ADS might give some of it back and Bitmedia will not.

Targeting, formats and the speed of a “yes”

A-ADS targets by source, not by person. The advertise page offers “all available traffic, chosen publishers’ categories, or specific websites”, language and website-category targeting, and the help centre lists the geographies with volume (“the U.S., Brazil, Russia, Germany, India, and more”). We found no device or operating-system targeting on any page we read, and nothing that looks at a wallet. Creative rules are strict and short: “PNG, JPEG, GIF and WEBM formats”, “each file must be less than 700 kB”, sixteen banner sizes from 120×60 to 970×250, text ads and a responsive teaser, and a flat “we do not serve popunders or popups”. Moderation is “quick manual campaign moderation within 1 hour”, and the acceptance policy is published: unlicensed gambling is rejected, tokens with less than $500 of liquidity are rejected, tokens under $50,000 are marked risky, and the Poocoin placement adds its own KYC through Sumsub.

Bitmedia targets by almost everything. Beyond geography the campaign guide walks through device and operating system, hand-picked or excluded publishers, “Ad rerun, Display Time, Budget pacing, Frequency Capping, VPN&Data Centers, Ad unit format”, retargeting, and the wallet segments above; the FAQ adds an API and OpenRTB 2.5. Formats are “text ad, responsive ad, image ad, html5 banners and playable ads” across nineteen image sizes, and its publisher rules forbid placing the ads “in pop unders, popups, emails, any kind of software or chats”, so neither network will sell you a pop-under. On approval, Bitmedia promises that “your banners will be approved within several hours. However, during weekends or holidays, it may take up to 24 hours”, and its anti-fraud FAQ says the team “checks most of the clicks manually”. A-ADS wins the clock; Bitmedia wins every other column in this section.

The publisher side, where both pay in bitcoin and nothing else

A-ADS is the easiest network in crypto to join and says so: “No entry barriers: Even sites with low traffic can create an ad unit”, and “We don’t ask for your personal data”. The publisher terms set three gates: “Domain must be registered at least three (3) months prior to joining the Platform”, no “free domains or subdomains (e.g., Wix, Blogspot)”, and no sites “with excessive pop-ups, aggressive ads, redirects, or outdated content”; only the direct-deal marketplace has a traffic floor, “at least 5,000 unique visits per month”. Payouts are the network’s best feature: “All Bitcoin (satoshis) payouts are processed daily”, from 0.001 BTC on-chain and from zero over Lightning, credited within 24 hours, with a “three (3) business day waiting period” after any change to the withdrawal address. Then the arithmetic: $113,579 of monthly earnings across 2,078 active publishers is about $55 each, and the average is pulled up by the largest sites.

Bitmedia is open at the door and particular after it. Any site is considered, a non-crypto site is approved “if it has a good, lively audience and the topic of your project suits us”, mobile apps may apply, and “a request is generally processed in 1-2 business days”; paid-to-click and incentive traffic are banned, and so are sites that are, in the approval page’s example, “two articles, written two days before the application”. Earnings sit in a pending balance for “7 days (168 hours)” while traffic is checked, then become withdrawable from $20, in bitcoin only (“For now, only BTC is available”), weekly or monthly, and “usually, it takes maximum 7 days to receive your money after withdrawal is requested”. Before any payment the profile must carry “your real personal information (first and last name, email address, country of residence, and full address)”. The FAQ says “there are no withdrawal fees”; clause 6.2 of the publisher terms says Bitmedia “will not cover the fees and commissions related to any transaction (including conversion costs)”. A publisher asked on Trustpilot in February 2026 for USDT or USDC payouts; Bitmedia replied that it was “actively working on introducing stablecoin payouts”, and on 6 October 2026 the FAQ still says bitcoin only. Our publisher ranking, the payout table and the requirements table place both against the rest of the market.

Where each network contradicts itself

A-ADS cannot agree with itself on the small print. The minimum deposit is $100 in the help centre and “not less than 125 USD” by card. The FAQ answers “Is there a Minimum Daily Budget?” with the deposit minimum, while the budget guide recommends $200 a day. The lock after a withdrawal-address change is “a 3-day security lock” in one help article, two days in the Lightning guide, “72 hours” in a third and “a three (3) business day waiting period” in the terms. The advertise page promises “no KYC requirements”, while the company’s own Trustpilot reply to a frozen-funds complaint says it does “require KYC to verify identity”. The homepage counts “300+” active campaigns, “300M+” daily reach and “15+” years; the statistics page says 494 campaigns, and the About page says 211 million impressions a day and fourteen years. The terms, not the homepage, are the version that binds.

Bitmedia cannot settle its size or its payout floor. The homepage counts “550+” active publishers; the marketplace page says “more than 7,000 active publishers” in one paragraph and “more than 5,000 active crypto publishers and advertisers” in another; the About page says “more than 7000 crypto related websites”. The minimum withdrawal is $20 in the publisher FAQ and clause 6.1 of the terms, “0,01 BTC” on the become-a-publisher page, which also promises “instant payouts” against two seven-day clocks, and $100 for a payout after termination. The bitcoin exemption from the $300 minimum lives in the FAQ and not in the terms. The inactivity clauses return 60% in one paragraph and write the funds off “with no refunds” in another, and the publisher terms say they were “last updated on March 13, 2023” while containing grace-period clauses that did not exist then. Again, the contract is the document to rely on, and our guide to reading these contracts explains which clauses to read first.

Trustpilot, read properly

A-ADS’s claimed profile shows 3.9/5 from 186 reviews: 135 five-star, 35 one-star (19%), six reviews in the last twelve months and, by Trustpilot’s own tally, a reply to every negative one. The newest, a four-star from 8 September 2026, is the most useful review on the page: an advertiser “accidentally sent a crypto deposit below the minimum amount”, support “manually credited the funds”, and the one suggestion was “to lower the minimum crypto deposit”. So the forfeiture clause exists and, at least once, was not enforced. The one-star reviews cluster on funds frozen pending a KYC the advertiser says was never mentioned (“They will not tell you they need KYC before making deposit”, March 2025, to which the company replied that it does “require KYC to verify identity”) and on campaigns or support that went quiet. Long-term users write the five-star reviews: seven and eight years as a publisher, “instant daily payment”, “no KYC”. The accusation that kills an ad network, a pattern of publishers never paid, is absent.

Bitmedia’s claimed profile shows 3.7/5 from 146 reviews: 83 five-star, 51 one-star (35%), 23 reviews in the last twelve months and replies to 87% of the negative ones; the newest, from 29 September 2026, is a five-star. The replies say more than the reviews. To a publisher paid after 13 to 15 days instead of the advertised ten (20 May 2026), Bitmedia called the seven-day pending period “the baseline we work from” and conceded that “some recent withdrawals have taken a bit longer than usual to fully process”. To an advertiser who said a $300 campaign was rejected and a refund refused (26 May 2026), it wrote that “no refund was refused” and that “your full balance remains untouched”. A one-star from 26 March 2026 describes a $3,000 deposit, about $1,000 spent and a refund of the remaining $2,000 refused under clause 7.1; it carries no reply, and it is the contract working exactly as written. The one-star share, 35% against A-ADS’s 19%, is the number to carry; the absence of unpaid-publisher stories is what keeps both networks in business.

Side by side

	A-ADS	Bitmedia
Company	Alpha Communication Services Limited, Hong Kong; Hong Kong law, HKIAC arbitration	Bitmedia Ltd, company no. 09469636, London; English law
Running since	2011 (as Anonymous Ads; AADS since August 2025)	2014
Advertiser minimum	$100; higher by coin ($250 USDT ERC-20); at least $125 by card; sub-minimum deposits kept as fees	$300 by card or crypto; no minimum for bitcoin; sub-$300 payments not credited and not refunded
Daily minimum	None in the terms; $200 a day recommended, $300 on premium sites	None in general; $50 for even pacing, $200 for Web3 audiences, $300 for Smart Bid
Buying model and rates	Cost per day with optional Max CPM cap; CPA and revenue share; $0.04 average CPM published	CPC from $0.25, CPM from $0.30, in USD; Fixed, Smart and Exact Bid strategies; marketplace packages
Advertiser payment	20 coins and Lightning, card via Changelly; altcoins converted to BTC at 3% plus 0.5–1%	BTC, USD, USDT, BNB, TRX, ETH; bank transfer by invoice
Network fee on spend	20% of spend, never less than 10% of the deposit	Not stated; bids are the price
Identity	None for ordinary use; KYC (Sumsub) for specific placements such as Poocoin and to recover a locked account	None stated for advertisers; KYC “may be required by a KOL or website”; publishers give real name and full address before payment
Refunds	“At the entire discretion of AADS”; none once paid to publishers; banned ads refunded less costs	All amounts non-refundable (7.1); refund only if Bitmedia terminates for reasons not attributable to the user (9.3)
Idle balances	Deleted with the account after 6 months, rights waived	Access lost at 6 months; 60% as ad credit if revived within a further 3; otherwise written off
Targeting	Traffic source, publisher category, specific sites, language, country	Country, device, OS, chosen publishers, display time, frequency cap, VPN filter, retargeting, wallet balance, holdings and interests
Creative approval	“Within 1 hour”, manual	“Several hours”, up to 24 h at weekends
Publisher entry	No traffic minimum, no personal data; domain at least 3 months old, no free subdomains; marketplace offers need 5,000 monthly uniques	Any site considered, manual review in 1–2 business days; no PTC or incentive traffic
Publisher payout	BTC only, daily; 0.001 BTC on-chain, no minimum over Lightning; 3-business-day lock after an address change	BTC only; $20 minimum; weekly or monthly after a 7-day pending period; up to 7 days to arrive
Publisher inactivity	Account and balance deleted after 6 months	Deleted after 6 months without a login; 60% withdrawable if revived within a month
Trustpilot (6 Oct 2026)	3.9/5, 186 reviews, 35 one-star, 6 in the last year	3.7/5, 146 reviews, 51 one-star, 23 in the last year
Our score	7/10	6.5/10

Which door for which campaign

A $100 test of crypto traffic, paid in whatever you hold, live within the hour. A-ADS, and only A-ADS of the two: Bitmedia will not credit $100 unless it arrives as bitcoin. Set a Max CPM so the cost-per-day model cannot overpay, measure actions rather than clicks, and remember that the help centre thinks $100 is half a day’s budget. If anonymity is the point, avoid the placements that carry a KYC requirement and keep the withdrawal address unchanged. The same test against the premium network is in A-ADS vs Coinzilla.

A wallet, a DeFi protocol or a token whose buyers already hold something. Bitmedia’s Web3 audiences are the only tool here that selects on holdings rather than on the site being read, at $200 a day; HypeLab vs Bitmedia sets that product against the other network that sells it.

A performance campaign that needs cost-per-click bids, device targeting, frequency caps and an API. Bitmedia. A-ADS sells a share of a day’s traffic and nothing finer than a category or a site, and its approval is faster precisely because there is less to approve. The same dashboard against a managed desk is in Cointraffic vs Bitmedia.

A licensed casino or betting brand. A-ADS writes the rule into its acceptance policy: licensed gambling is accepted, “unlicensed gambling” is on the rejection list, and the cost-per-day model suits a volume buy. Our iGaming guide covers Bitmedia’s terms for the vertical and the networks that specialise in it.

A publisher deciding where to put the first slot. If the site is new, small or private, A-ADS pays from day one and asks for nothing but a domain older than three months. If the site has a real audience, can supply a name and address and can wait two weeks for the first payment, Bitmedia pays from $20 and will consider a site outside crypto.

The bottom line

A-ADS earns its 7/10 on honesty and access: no form, no documents, a public statistics page, a fee schedule written in full, and a payout that has run every day for fifteen years from a floor of zero. The price is thin targeting, a contract that keeps a tenth of the deposit whatever happens and forgets the balance after six months, and an average publisher income of about $55 a month that the network publishes itself. Bitmedia earns its 6.5/10 on features: three bidding strategies, cost-per-click, device and frequency controls, wallet audiences nobody at A-ADS can sell you, and a human review on both sides. The price is a contract that refunds nothing, a payout that takes two seven-day clocks, and a review profile in which one customer in three gave the lowest mark. Both are alive, both pay in bitcoin only, and that already puts them ahead of most of the field we rank. Choose by what you can afford to lose and what you need to know: at A-ADS the loss is capped at a tenth and the knowledge is a category; at Bitmedia the loss is the whole deposit and the knowledge is a wallet.

A-ADS vs Bitmedia FAQ

Is A-ADS or Bitmedia better for crypto advertising?

A-ADS for cheap reach with no identity check: $100 in, cost-per-day pricing at a published $0.04 average CPM, manual approval within an hour, and no targeting finer than a site or category. Bitmedia for performance campaigns: $300 in (no minimum in bitcoin), bids from $0.25 CPC and $0.30 CPM, device and frequency controls, and wallet-based Web3 audiences from $200 a day, with every deposit non-refundable. We rate A-ADS 7/10 and Bitmedia 6.5/10.

What is the minimum deposit at A-ADS vs Bitmedia?

A-ADS: $100, or more depending on the coin and network ($250 for USDT on Ethereum), and at least $125 by bank card through Changelly; a deposit below the minimum is kept to cover fees. Bitmedia: $300 by card or in crypto, with the requirement waived for bitcoin; payments under $300 are not credited and are not refunded.

Do A-ADS and Bitmedia refund unused balances?

A-ADS says refunds are “at the entire discretion of AADS”, keeps 20% of spend and never less than 10% of the deposit, and deletes idle accounts with their balances after six months. Bitmedia’s terms state that all amounts paid are non-refundable, except where Bitmedia itself ends the agreement for reasons not attributable to the advertiser; an account inactive for six months loses access to its funds, and only a revival within the three-month grace period returns 60% as advertising credit.

Does A-ADS or Bitmedia require KYC?

A-ADS creates the account without a form and asks for KYC only on specific placements such as Poocoin, handled through Sumsub, and to recover a locked account; its own Trustpilot replies say it does require identity verification in those cases. Bitmedia publishes no identity requirement for advertisers beyond “KYC may be required by a KOL or website” for top news outlets, but publishers must give their real name, country and full address before any payment.

How do A-ADS and Bitmedia pay publishers?

A-ADS pays in bitcoin only, every day, from 0.001 BTC to an on-chain address or from any amount over the Lightning Network, with no traffic minimum to join and a three-business-day hold after a withdrawal-address change; its statistics page shows about $55 a month for the average publisher. Bitmedia pays in bitcoin only from $20, weekly or monthly, after earnings have cleared a seven-day pending period, usually within seven days of the request, and only after the publisher has supplied a real name and full address.

Reviewed in full

• Bitmedia 6.5/10

  The Web3 ad veteran with deep targeting — and a thinning footprint on premium crypto media.

• A-ADS 7/10

  The 2011 original — still anonymous, still cookie-less, still paying in BTC every day.

• Coinzilla 9/10

  The default choice in crypto advertising — quietly displacing older rivals.

• Cointraffic 7.5/10

  Premium crypto inventory and the friendliest payouts in the niche — three doors in, from €500 marketplace to €3,000 managed.

• HypeLab 7/10

  Ads where the wallets already are — the most engineering-dense young network in the niche.