One of the world’s most popular Affiliate networks AdCash.com has been exposed for shaving their own publishers earnings. Whose responsible for the exposure? None other than yours truly, ScrollDog.com. We received a tip that the company had been shaving clients for some time and decided that it would only be appropriate to try out the service ourselves. What we discovered was that AdCash uses skimming techniques for all new clients that fall within pre-catonic exposure. We enrolled through the service and established an account for testing purposes to determine if the allegations were true.

Upon registration the company reached out and discussed with us over the phone it’s various plans and campaigns that were the most successful (ie; most profitable). AdCash recommended that we utilize the site-under, commonly known as pop-under programs that they had to offer. AdCash stated that advertisers could earn up to $8.50 per eCPM (eCPM is cost per 1,000 impressions). We decided to take them up on the offer and placed pop-unders on ScrollDog for 24 hours. During this period, we delivered over 10,000 impressions of which our average eCPM was $0.25 EUR. Meaning that we only earned $2.55 for 10,000+ impressions

AdCash has been around for nearly a decade, formerly known as CashTrafic and is currently used by millions of people around the globe. They are an extremely popular choice by advertisers & publishers. The company allows you to launch campaigns in mere minutes & begin receiving traffic immediately. They claim to allow you to maximize your investment & increase your audience value while offering CPM in the form of standard formatting sizes, mini bans, site ads, site unders, slide-ins & interstitials while “exploding” your turnover! We discovered quite the contrary.

The earnings are nowhere near what AdCash states can be achieved. To be honest we expected to generate around $6-$8.50 per eCPM due to the demographics of the traffic that we receive being predominantly from the United States and Europe. However, this clearly wasn’t the case.

The company uses massive manipulation tactics to draw you in as an advertiser, promising high eCPM only in turn to set you at the lowest pay rate possible. It was only until we contacted an AdCash.com representative that we realized just how the skimming system was structured. Each account it would appear is automatically placed on a tier level. Initial startup accounts are placed at the bottom of the barrel, let’s just call it “bronze”. Meaning all of the impressions that you send them are virtually going to be adding to their bank account while you are getting pennies on the dollar, literally.

graphOnly when you complain about the bizarre numbers not matching up on your reported earnings will they actually upgrade your account (if you’re fortunate enough). This upgrade occurs behind the scenes and isn’t even visible from within your control panel on the site. There is nowhere on your account that states if you are a certain level or tier. In fact the entire website fails to mention any of this. Obviously by them failing to mention this the odds are many publishers will be oblivious to what is occurring. What this boils down to is that essentially AdCash is taking advantage of you & your potential earnings.

After speaking with an AdCash.com representative we were immediately promoted to Gold status. We complained that our earnings weren’t adding up to what we believed they should be. This is where we came up with the evidence & proof as it came straight from the companies own mouth.

What I can offer, it´s to give you a Gold account which means higher rev share for you and I can do some optimizations to your account if you can give us another chance. Rev share percentages, you will get 20 % more and i will ask my team to optimize the zone for better campaigns. - AdCash.com

Once promoted to Gold status we automatically received over 20% additional income on our pop-unders (and any other similar campaigns), which would push our eCPM from around $2.55 into the $3.00+ range. Furthermore, there were additional account “special customizations” made that resulted in additional increases in revenue being generated and ultimately catapulted our earnings into the $5.50 & $6.00 per eCPM range. Which is much more acceptable and realistic. Keep in mind that the company AdCash is earning double (if not more) than that and the change in our account only occurred after we reached out to them.
When it’s all said and done, we still fell far short of the probable “fairness” of what our traffic is worth. Beware when using AdCash, they will skim you from get go.

Choosing an advertising network can be already hard as it is, and it doesn’t appear to get any easier even when choosing one of the biggest names in the industry. As a website owner, you want to make sure that you are getting the most out of your creation. I suppose it’s only wishful thinking to assume that a company will give you what you are owed without taking what is rightfully yours. In the case of AdCash they consider it “business as usual”, you’ve been warned…