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Author: Andrew L.

A decade buying media across crypto and fintech. I read the terms of service so you don’t have to.

I’m Andrew, and I’ve spent the last decade on the buying side of ad tech — running performance campaigns for crypto, fintech, and consumer products, with years of budgets routed through the ad networks and platforms this site covers. I’ve been the person the sales deck is aimed at, the person who signs the insertion order, and the person who has to explain afterwards where the money actually went. That seat teaches you exactly which questions a network hopes you won’t ask.

adbench exists because clear, honest analysis of this industry is harder to find than it should be. A lot of what gets published about ad networks and ad-tech services is marketing wearing a journalist’s jacket. I wanted a place that simply tells you what is working, what is not, and why — network reviews, reads on the market, and insight from inside it — written by someone who has had to make these calls with real budgets on the line.

The method is simple and non-negotiable. Every damaging claim is verified at the primary source before it goes live: terms of service read end to end, company registries pulled, review scores and prices re-checked the day of writing — and when a number cannot be verified, we say so instead of repeating it. No network pays for placement here, no affiliate link sits behind a rating, and a review changes when the facts do. If that is useful to you, you are in the right place.

September 24, 2026
Affiliate Programs

Crypto exchange affiliate programs compared (2026): rates, cookies, payouts

We compare ten crypto exchange affiliate programs on fee shares, referral duration, payout schedules and the contract clauses that can cut earnings.

16 min
September 24, 2026
Industry

Refund policies at crypto ad networks compared: what happens to an unspent balance

Which crypto ad networks give unspent advertiser balances back, on what conditions, minus which fees, and how fast the inactivity clock eats what is left. Fourteen contracts, read at source.

18 min
September 23, 2026
PR & Agencies

MarketAcross review: the agency behind Chainwire, twelve years in, no price list

MarketAcross, the Tel Aviv agency that launched Chainwire, sells crypto PR by quote only. We checked its claims, Clutch record, case-study numbers, terms and twelve years of archived homepages. Score 7/10.

19 min
September 23, 2026
Programmatic

KYC at crypto ad networks compared: advertisers vs publishers

Coinzilla runs every account through iDenfy, A-ADS asks nothing unless you target Poocoin, Cointraffic can hold payouts for a passport. 14 contracts compared.

14 min
September 22, 2026
Industry

Best crypto ad networks for publishers in 2026, ranked

Seven crypto ad networks that actually pay publishers, ranked on payout floors, rails, cadence and identity checks, every term read at source in September 2026.

13 min
September 21, 2026
PR & Agencies

Coinbound review: what the terms, the Clutch record and the case studies actually say

Coinbound review, 7/10: the best-documented crypto marketing agency, at a price it does not print (from about $10,000 a month), on default terms that refund nothing and auto-renew on seven days' notice. We checked the terms, all 14 Clutch reviews, Trustpilot, the case studies and the Mintfunnel link.

16 min
September 21, 2026
Tooling

AdSense alternatives for crypto blogs, verified

Google's publisher policies say nothing about crypto; its ad policy bars most crypto advertisers from bidding on your pages. We read the publisher terms at eleven crypto ad networks and ranked the six that actually replace AdSense for a content site, and named five that only look like they do.

13 min
September 18, 2026
Programmatic

Publisher approval requirements at ten crypto ad networks, verified

We read the publisher terms, approval criteria and application pages at ten crypto ad networks: the traffic floors, the KYC, the payout minimums. Seven doors open on stated conditions. At the other three, the publisher program exists only in the marketing.

10 min
September 17, 2026
Industry

What a Cointelegraph or CoinMarketCap placement actually costs

Neither Cointelegraph nor CoinMarketCap publishes a rate card. The resellers do — and for the same site their prices differ by an order of magnitude.

7 min
September 16, 2026
PR & Agencies

Chainwire review: what the crypto newswire guarantees, and what it doesn’t

Chainwire sells four packages from $1,399 to $10,799, moves Cointelegraph and CoinDesk into unpriced add-ons, makes every link nofollow and names no refunds.

15 min