Cointraffic vs Bitmedia: a €3,000 desk or a $300 dashboard, and what each contract keeps

Cointraffic and Bitmedia are the two crypto ad networks that sit one tier below Coinzilla and that an advertiser usually compares after the first Coinzilla invoice arrives. Both started in 2014, both run from the European side of the industry, one from Tallinn and one from London, and both will tell you they reach the crypto reader where they research. The resemblance ends at the door. Cointraffic sells a managed desk from EUR 3,000, with a public marketplace underneath it from EUR 500; Bitmedia sells a self-serve dashboard from $300 with bids from $0.25 a click. We reviewed both, Cointraffic at 7.5/10 and Bitmedia at 6.5/10, we hold no stake in either, and every figure below was read on 4 October 2026 from the two networks’ own websites, help centres, terms and Trustpilot profiles.

The short answer

If the budget is EUR 3,000 or more and someone on your side would rather send a brief than build a campaign, Cointraffic is the better buy: a named account manager, a public rate card by format, a marketplace that shows Cointelegraph at EUR 500 before you have paid anything, and a refund clause that, unusually for this industry, exists. If the budget is a few hundred dollars, if you want to pay in bitcoin and start within the hour, or if the campaign depends on reaching people by what is in their wallet rather than by which site they read, Bitmedia is the only one of the two that will take the order, and you should treat the $300 as spent the moment it lands.

For publishers the choice is made for you by size and currency. A crypto site with 5,000 monthly uniques that can take euros three times a week earns more predictably at Cointraffic. A smaller site, a non-crypto site with a lively audience, or a publisher who wants bitcoin and nothing else, goes to Bitmedia and waits seven days for each week’s earnings to clear.

What each network actually sells

Cointraffic is a managed network with a self-serve layer bolted on in 2026. Its About page says it was founded in 2014, is operated by Cointraffic OÜ (Estonian registry code 14112292) and reaches “700+ vetted crypto websites” delivering “1B+ monthly impressions”. The homepage promises that “every advertiser gets a dedicated account manager” and, a few lines later, that “our self-serve platform lets you pick publishers, set daily budgets, and push campaigns live after moderator approval”. The products are display banners, native, pop-unders and press releases, and the marketplace page lists individual publishers with a monthly audience, a pricing model and a price: Cointelegraph.com at EUR 500, Solscan.io at EUR 1,875, BeInCrypto.com at EUR 1,500, CoinMarketCap at EUR 20,000, all visible without a login.

Bitmedia is a self-serve dashboard first and an agency second. Bitmedia Ltd is an English company (number 09469636, Covent Garden address), its homepage claims “1.5B+” monthly impressions, “1.5M+” monthly clicks, “550+” active publishers and “200+” top advertisers, and it now sells finance, fintech, SaaS and AI traffic alongside crypto. The campaign builder bids CPC or CPM in US dollars, pegged there since a February 2021 update that moved stats and bids off the bitcoin price. The feature that sets it apart is wallet-level targeting: a “Web3 audiences” guide describes segments built from users’ wallet balances, their holdings (“Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, Memecoins, or even DeFi”) and interests such as gaming, gambling, trading and NFTs. How that detection works, and what it cannot see, is a question we have examined separately; Cointraffic offers nothing like it, only geography, device and “audience & context”, meaning the crypto verticals of the sites it runs on.

Getting in: EUR 3,000 with a manager, or $300 with a dashboard

Cointraffic publishes three entry prices and one recommendation. The advertiser FAQ reads: “€3,000 – minimum per managed advertising campaign (banner, native, pop-under)”, “€5,000+ – recommended for a meaningful test that delivers statistically useful results” and “€1,500 – minimum for press-release-only campaigns”. Campaigns of EUR 5,000 or more get “a complimentary set of animated HTML5 banners”. Under that headline sits the marketplace, whose own FAQ says “the minimum budget to start advertising is €500 for CPM campaigns” and “fixed placements start from €670”; the same answer adds that “most advertisers start with €2,000-€5,000 campaigns”. The CPM guide gives ranges by format: display “from ~€6 CPM, typically €8–€9, up to ~€11 on premium Tier-1 placements”, native “from ~€6 CPM, typically €6–€8”, pop-under “from €1 CPM, typically €1–€3”; the product pages quote lower and wider bands, as we note below. Above EUR 50,000 a month there are volume discounts of 10–25%.

Bitmedia’s door costs $300. Clause 6.1 of its advertiser terms: “The minimum deposit amount in other cryptocurrency is equivalent to 300 USD. Payments less than 300 USD are not processed and will not be credited to your balance”, and such payments “are non-refundable”. The FAQ repeats the $300 for card payments and then adds the line that matters: “The minimum deposit amount requirement shall not apply to BTC transactions.” Deposits are accepted in “BTC, USD, USDT, BNB, TRX and ETH”. Bids start at $0.25 per click and $0.30 per thousand impressions; the dashboard also sells its traffic through a marketplace of fixed placements and press-release slots, and a separate agency arm offers everything from PR to “website overhauls”.

Daily minimums are where the comparison flips. Cointraffic’s FAQ: “The minimum daily budget for an advertising campaign is €50”, and if you test two formats “your daily consumption would be at least €100 (Euros) per day”. Bitmedia has no hard floor on an ordinary campaign (its campaign guide asks for at least $50 a day only if you choose even pacing), but its Web3-audience guide sets a daily limit of which “$200 is the minimum requirement”, and its bidding guide says that “to activate this bidding strategy, a minimum daily budget of $300 is required” for Smart Bid. A $300 deposit on a wallet-targeted campaign therefore lasts a day and a half. Our survey of daily minimums puts both against twelve other networks.

Payment rails differ in a way that matters for treasuries. Cointraffic bills in euros and takes “bank wire, credit card, and crypto via CoinGate”; wires post in one to four business days, cards instantly, crypto within a day, and, as a registered EU company, it charges VAT to EU individuals unless a VAT number is supplied. Bitmedia bills in dollars and takes the coins directly. Neither publishes an identity requirement for advertisers; our KYC comparison has the detail for both and for the networks that do.

What the contracts do with money you do not spend

Cointraffic has a refund procedure, which is rare enough to quote. Its FAQ, citing section 6.3 of the advertiser terms, says “the funds in the amount of the Minimum Deposit, which were paid for the first time to the account, are considered non-refundable and subject to being spent in full on the Platform. Any remaining balance beyond this amount is eligible for a refund”, less “a 15% administrative fee”, returned to the original payment method after a signed Refund Request Form, “within 1-7 business days”. The terms themselves (effective 7 June 2019, Estonian law) narrow the cases: a wrong payment, proven publisher fraud with a report of the sources, or an unused balance of at least EUR 50 claimed within 30 days of ending the agreement, with transaction fees deducted and bonuses excluded. The same terms let Cointraffic “process your Account balance to zero” after 150 consecutive days of an unused balance.

Bitmedia’s clause 7.1 is one sentence in capitals: “ALL AMOUNTS PAID BY ADVERTISERS AND REFLECTED IN USERS’ ACCOUNTS ARE NON-REFUNDABLE.” Clause 6.4 adds that “all funded accounts that have been inactive for up to 6 months will lose access to their funds” and that a still-inactive account is deactivated and “the funds will be written off with no refunds”. Clause 7.5 offers the only way back: an account restored within a three-month grace period gets “sixty percent (60%) of the then-outstanding deposited amount” re-credited “exclusively for the placement of advertisements on the Platform (no withdrawals or cash redemptions)”, valued “in USD using the exchange rate applicable on the original funding date”. The FAQ’s answer to “Any refund for low conversion rates?” is that Bitmedia “is not responsible for the interest of an audience in the advertised product”. The whole landscape of these clauses is in our refund-policy comparison; here the practical reading is that Cointraffic returns 85% of a second deposit and Bitmedia returns nothing.

Targeting, formats and the speed of a “yes”

Cointraffic’s creative rules are old-fashioned and precise. Its banner FAQ accepts “GIF, JPG and PNG banners up to 300 KB” in six in-page sizes (300×250, 728×90 and 160×600 on desktop; 320×100, 300×250 and 320×50 on mobile), sticky banners at 800×75 or full width by 75, and 150×150 slide-ins; the marketplace FAQ separately allows HTML5 up to 500 KB. Native and pop-under campaigns run on the same CPM auction, and the press-release product promises a first draft “within 1 business day”, publication “within 1–3 days” and completion “within 3–5 business days” across “300+ verified outlets”; our PR comparison prices that desk against its rivals. Targeting is geography, device and the vertical of the site.

Bitmedia runs text, image, responsive, HTML5 and “playable” ads (interactive creatives in which only the final call to action opens the click URL), lets an advertiser hand-pick or exclude publishers, schedules everything in UTC, and layers the wallet audiences on top. Its anti-fraud FAQ claims the team “checks most of the clicks manually” as well as by system. On approval the two differ by an order of magnitude in what they promise. Bitmedia: “your banners will be approved within several hours. However, during weekends or holidays, it may take up to 24 hours.” Cointraffic says three different things on three pages, which we come to below; the kindest version, from its FAQ, is “a couple of minutes during the working hours”.

The publisher side, where the currencies part ways

Cointraffic is selective and says so: “Your website must have a minimum unique visitor per month rate of 5,000 and above”, and “we will reject any low-quality website”. The publishers page promises a review in 24–48 hours and that “most publishers are approved on the first try”; a sustained six months below the traffic floor “may trigger an account review”. The identity step is explicit: “Yes, a KYC check is indeed required”, meaning a full postal address so the system can issue automatic invoices. Everything is CPM (“Cointraffic works exclusively with CPM only”), earnings accrue in euros, and payment runs “three times per week – Monday, Wednesday, Friday” from EUR 25 to a bitcoin wallet or EUR 300 to a bank account. Two lines deserve a publisher’s attention. The publishers page now states that Cointraffic has been “paying €120,000+ to publishers every month”, a figure that had vanished from the site in September and is back. And the publisher terms (effective 26 November 2018) contain an inactivity fee: after 150 days without activity, EUR 50 a month is deducted from the balance, multiplied by 1.5 after each further three months, until the account is deactivated. The same terms give Cointraffic “up to 10 calendar days” to validate a payment request and “up to 5 calendar days” to pay it, with the publisher bearing “the transaction, payment and currency exchange fees”.

Bitmedia is open at the door and strict after it. You submit one site; if it is approved “you become a publisher” and may add others; a non-crypto site “with a good, lively audience” is “considered individually”; requests are “generally processed in 1-2 business days”. The approval criteria ban paid-to-click and incentive traffic and refuse sites that are little more than “two articles, written two days before the application”. Earnings land first 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”), on a weekly or monthly interval, with “maximum 7 days to receive your money after withdrawal is requested”. The FAQ says “there are no withdrawal fees”; clause 6.2 of the terms says Bitmedia “will not cover the fees and commissions related to any transaction (including conversion costs)”. The publisher terms (last updated 13 March 2023, English law) require “your real personal information (first and last name, email address, country of residence, and full address)” before any payment, and they mirror the advertiser side on inactivity: six months without a login and “Bitmedia will permanently delete the account”, with 60% of earned money withdrawable within a month if the account is revived in time. Our publisher ranking and the payout table place both against the rest of the market.

Where each network contradicts itself

Cointraffic gives three approval times. The FAQ: “It usually takes a couple of minutes during the working hours to approve a campaign.” The homepage: “approval usually takes up to 24 hours on weekdays.” The marketplace: “Most campaigns are approved within 24-48 hours.” It gives two impression counts, “1B+ monthly impressions” on the About page and homepage against “700 million impressions monthly” on the publishers page, two flagship names, CoinGecko on the homepage and Solscan on the marketplace, and two network sizes, “700+” on the homepage and About page against “400+ publishers” on the display and native product pages. Its CPM guide puts display at “from ~€6” and pop-unders at “€1–€3”; the display page says “€2-8 CPM” and the pop-under page “€1-5 CPM”. For publishers, the FAQ pays from EUR 25 three times a week, while the pop-under page advertises “Net-7 payment terms and a low €100 minimum withdrawal threshold”. Its payment FAQ lists bank wire, card and CoinGate; its marketplace FAQ lists “Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, and major altcoins”, Visa, Mastercard and American Express, “wire and SEPA”.

Bitmedia cannot settle its own size. The homepage counts “550+” active publishers, the marketplace page “more than 5,000 active crypto publishers and advertisers” in one paragraph and “more than 4,000 advertisers” with “more than 7,000 active publishers” in another, the About page “more than 7000 crypto related websites”, and a homepage case study “7,000+ publishers”. 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, and 0.001 BTC in a 2019 announcement that is still online. The About page says “founded in 2014” and marks its timeline at 2015. None of this is fraud; it is a sign of pages written in different years by different hands, and the contract, not the brochure, is the version that binds.

Trustpilot, read properly

Cointraffic’s claimed profile (listed under cointraffic.io, displayed as Cointraffic.com) shows 4.1/5 from 23 reviews: 17 five-star, 4 one-star, one two-star and one three-star, with three reviews in the last twelve months and the newest dated 28 December 2025. The company replies, but only to say thank you. Twenty-three opinions over four years is a sample, not a verdict, and the score should be read as “no pattern of complaint” rather than as praise.

Bitmedia’s claimed profile shows 3.7/5 from 146 reviews, 83 of them five-star and 51 one-star, with 23 new reviews in the last twelve months and the newest on 29 September 2026. In a reply of 20 May 2026 to a publisher complaining of payouts after 13–15 days, the company conceded that “some recent withdrawals have taken a bit longer than usual to fully process”. The one-star share, 35%, is the number to carry. Two company replies are more informative than the reviews they answer. To an advertiser who said a campaign was rejected and a refund refused, Bitmedia wrote that “no refund was refused”: the advertiser’s server had been blocking certain countries, its moderation check from one of them received an error and flagged the link as broken, the creatives were then approved by hand and “your full balance remains untouched”. To a publisher of seven years, it wrote that “all of your earnings were paid out in full” but that it had “paused active traffic to align with current advertiser demand” and invited a resubmission “after 3 months”. A third exchange shows the contract at its hardest: a one-star review of 26 March 2026 describes a $3,000 deposit of which about $1,000 was spent and a request for the remaining $2,000 refused under clause 7.1, and it carries no company reply. Taken together, the replies are consistent with the terms: money is not refunded, but it is not taken either, and a publisher can be switched off without being short-paid.

Side by side

	Cointraffic	Bitmedia
Company	Cointraffic OÜ, registry code 14112292, Tallinn; Estonian law, arbitration in Tallinn	Bitmedia Ltd, company no. 09469636, London; English law
Running since	2014	2014
Advertiser minimum	EUR 3,000 managed; EUR 1,500 PR-only; EUR 500 marketplace CPM, fixed placements from EUR 670	$300 by card or crypto; no minimum for bitcoin; sub-$300 payments kept
Daily minimum	EUR 50 per format per campaign	None in general; $200 for Web3 audiences, $300 for Smart Bid
Buying model and rates	CPM auction; display from about EUR 6, native from about EUR 6, pop-under EUR 1–3; marketplace fixed prices	CPC from $0.25, CPM from $0.30, in USD; marketplace fixed placements
Advertiser payment	Bank wire, card, crypto via CoinGate; billed in EUR; VAT for EU individuals	BTC, USD, USDT, BNB, TRX, ETH; billed in USD
Refunds	First minimum deposit non-refundable; balance above it refundable less 15%, 1–7 business days; unused balance of at least EUR 50 within 30 days of ending	All amounts non-refundable (7.1); 60% ad credit if revived within the grace period (7.5)
Idle balances	Balance may be set to zero after 150 days unused	Access lost at 6 months, written off after a further 3
Targeting	Geography, device, site vertical	Geography, device, chosen publishers, wallet balance, holdings and interests
Creative approval	“A couple of minutes” (FAQ) / up to 24 h (homepage) / 24–48 h (marketplace)	“Several hours”, up to 24 h at weekends
Publisher entry	5,000+ monthly unique visitors, manual review in 24–48 h, address check for invoices	Any site considered, 1–2 business days, real name and full address before payment
Publisher payout	EUR; Mon/Wed/Fri; EUR 25 to bitcoin, EUR 300 to bank; CPM only	BTC only; $20 minimum; weekly or monthly after a 7-day pending period; up to 7 days to arrive
Publisher inactivity	EUR 50 monthly fee after 150 days, times 1.5 every 3 months	Deleted after 6 months without a login; 60% withdrawable if revived within a month
Trustpilot (4 Oct 2026)	4.1/5, 23 reviews, 3 in the last year	3.7/5, 146 reviews, 51 one-star, 23 in the last year
Our score	7.5/10	6.5/10

Which door for which campaign

A token launch or exchange with EUR 5,000 or more and a two-week window. Cointraffic. The marketplace shows the placement and the price before the deposit, the managed desk writes and distributes the press release, and the second EUR 5,000 comes back at 85% if the campaign is cut short. Compare it with the network above it in Cointraffic vs Coinzilla before deciding which premium desk gets the money.

A $500 test, paid in bitcoin, live today. Bitmedia, and only Bitmedia of the two: Cointraffic’s cheapest route is EUR 500 of CPM through the marketplace, and the managed desk will not open a conversation under EUR 3,000. Keep the daily limit off the wallet audiences unless you can fund $200 a day.

A wallet, a DeFi protocol or a product that only makes sense to someone who already holds a coin. Bitmedia’s Web3 audiences are the only tool here that selects on holdings rather than on reading habits; HypeLab vs Bitmedia sets that feature against the other network that sells it.

A casino or betting brand. Both take the business, and Cointraffic names “crypto casinos and betting brands” in its own description of the network; its pop-under format at EUR 1–3 CPM is the volume play, and our iGaming guide covers the rest of the field.

A publisher deciding where to put the first slot. If the site clears 5,000 uniques and can give a postal address, Cointraffic pays in euros three times a week with no seven-day hold. If it does not, or if bitcoin is the point, Bitmedia pays from $20 and will consider a site outside crypto. Running both is allowed by both; Cointraffic even explains how to place its units so they do not collide with AdSense. Our requirements table covers what every network asks of a site.

The bottom line

Cointraffic earns its 7.5/10 by publishing what most networks hide: a rate card by format, a marketplace with real prices on real sites, a refund procedure with a number in it, and a company registration you can look up. The price of that transparency is a EUR 3,000 door, a EUR 50 daily floor per format and three different stories about how long approval takes. Bitmedia earns its 6.5/10 on access and features: $300 or any amount in bitcoin, bids from a quarter, wallet-level audiences that nobody at Cointraffic can sell you, and approval in hours. The price is a contract that keeps every dollar you do not spend and a review profile in which one customer in three gave the lowest mark. Both are alive, both pay publishers, both answer their contracts’ questions somewhere on their sites, and that already puts them ahead of most of the field we rank. Choose by the size of the deposit you can afford to lose: at Cointraffic that is the first EUR 3,000, at Bitmedia it is all of it. How Bitmedia’s $300 door compares with the $100 anonymous one at A-ADS is in our A-ADS vs Bitmedia head-to-head.

Cointraffic vs Bitmedia FAQ

Is Cointraffic or Bitmedia better for crypto advertising?

Cointraffic for managed campaigns of EUR 3,000 or more, with a public rate card, a marketplace that shows placement prices before you pay, and a partial refund on balances above the first deposit. Bitmedia for self-serve campaigns from $300 (no minimum in bitcoin), bids from $0.25 CPC and $0.30 CPM, and wallet-level targeting, with all deposits non-refundable. We rate Cointraffic 7.5/10 and Bitmedia 6.5/10.

What is the minimum deposit at Cointraffic vs Bitmedia?

Cointraffic: EUR 3,000 per managed campaign, EUR 1,500 for a press-release-only campaign, and EUR 500 for a CPM campaign through its marketplace, where fixed placements start at EUR 670. Bitmedia: $300 by card or in crypto, with the requirement waived for bitcoin; payments under $300 are not credited and are not refunded.

Do Cointraffic and Bitmedia refund unused balances?

Cointraffic keeps the first minimum deposit and refunds any balance above it less a 15% administrative fee, within one to seven business days, to the original payment method; its terms also let it zero a balance left unused for 150 days. Bitmedia’s terms state that all amounts paid are non-refundable; 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.

Which network has a daily minimum budget?

Cointraffic requires EUR 50 a day per campaign, charged per format, so two formats mean at least EUR 100 a day. Bitmedia has no general daily minimum, but its Web3-audience targeting requires a daily limit of at least $200 and its Smart Bid strategy a daily budget of at least $300.

How do Cointraffic and Bitmedia pay publishers?

Cointraffic accrues earnings in euros, on CPM only, and pays on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from EUR 25 to a bitcoin wallet or EUR 300 to a bank account, after a postal-address check used for automatic invoices; sites need 5,000 or more monthly unique visitors. Bitmedia holds earnings in a pending balance for seven days, then pays in bitcoin only from $20 on a weekly or monthly interval, usually within seven days of the request, after the publisher has supplied a real name and full address.

Reviewed in full

• Cointraffic 7.5/10

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

• Bitmedia 6.5/10

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

• Coinzilla 9/10

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

• A-ADS 7/10

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

• HypeLab 7/10

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