Exoclick – review, pricing, cases

An ad network as a traffic source must meet not only current needs of affiliate marketers, but future ones as well. The AN you’re starting out with can currently be showing decent results but will suddenly fall off in 6 months – not a very pleasant scenario. Especially if you spent a lot of time studying it, building an ad campaign strategy based on the peculiarities of traffic, platforms and tools of this specific network. Therefore, you need to choose a source that will only grow in relevance, not the opposite. We too are constantly looking for such projects. And Exoclick is a great example of one.

This network can boast not only excellent current performance indicators but also stable growth during its entire existence. A simple example: in 2019, it hit 5 billion daily impressions. Currently – 8.5 billion. The number of sites has grown during this time from 17 thousand to 65. And like we said, this growth was present ever since the platform’s launch. Without even brief stagnation periods.

Let’s take a look at this up-and-coming AN that may well become your new primary source. Especially if you mainly work with adult offers.

Exoclick at a glance in numbers

Traditionally, before getting into details, let’s go over the network’s numbers and traits.

General information about Exoclick

That’s all for the summary. Now let’s really dig into this ad network.

The main differences between Exoclick and similar networks

As you know, conditionally ANs are often divided into general and niche ones. The former are suitable for almost all verticals or their extensive groups, while the latter specialize exclusively on a single one. So, which one is Exoclick? Well, neither. It’s something in between. Officially, it’s not a niche network. It has at least two focus areas, entertainment and adult. Plus, it “peeks into” several adjacent niches. But in reality, the ad network is predominantly focused on adult offers. Which is why we can call it an adult niche project.

Moreover, despite a good half of the adult offers being frankly gray-hat, Exoclick is an example of a website that’s used to working exclusively with white-hat offers. Naturally, the adult sector can’t be crystal clear white-hat by definition. In many countries, the very topic itself is banned at the state level. So, camouflage methods are a must. Still, the AN steers clear of openly gray-hat offers. As well as carefully moderates its publishers. Any taboo content is a one-way ticket to a ban. The same goes for affiliates. In certain complicated cases, it allows affiliates to resort to cloaking. The moderation here isn’t as hardcore as on Facebook. But it’s still a temporary measure. Break any rules and end up permabanned.

Our pros have already told you about setting up advertising in FB, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with its subtleties.

By the way, why are there so many online reviews that Exoclick doesn’t refund money? The moderation here is harsh, but some publishers often try to have their cake and eat it too: resorting to bots, clickbait, adding taboo content after passing moderation. And if this is brought to light (after all, traffic can be traced back to its driver), the website gets banned. And the partner doesn’t get their deposit back, the motivation being that the finances will be used as compensation to the affiliates for damages from low-quality traffic.

Currently, Exoclick works with streaming services and gaming verticals. But the “tastiest” sector are adult websites with millions of visitors. The adult vertical is a pretty complicated system. There’s often not that many large websites, with the content spreading over millions of smaller projects. And rarely does an AN work with the niche’s top players. But Exoclick is an exception. Here, you’ll be able to drive traffic to adult offers from the largest and most popular resources. As well as use more accurate interest targeting settings. And narrow targeting is a guarantee of a high CTR. Not to mention that with Exoclick you drive traffic from the sector’s standard-bearer – Pornhub. Which for some offers is just a godsend.

Traffic in Exoclick

Most of the traffic comes from large sites. And from the most expensive regions. Nevertheless, this network is the largest in terms of adult content, which means it easily takes away clicks from competitors from the most expensive countries in the world. Therefore, TIER 1 traffic is the absolute majority here. Yes, there’s plenty of traffic coming from Asia, Africa and South America. But the bulk of it comes from first world countries.

What’s interesting is that, with a relevant rate, thanks to RTB, there’s a stable flow of suitable traffic. By which we mean a super warmed-up client that best suits the target request.

But the best part is that there’s genuinely plenty of traffic. It comes from practically all parts of the globe. Yes, RTB pumps up the prices and many offers have GEO-related restrictions but that’s not a serious obstacle. The States alone get over a billion daily impressions. And I believe it goes without saying that a good half of adult offers will happily accept American clients, going so far as to pay more for them than for average European traffic.

Platforms in Exoclick

Remember, we clarified that traffic from PornHub is coming through Exoclick. How, you ask, don’t the top adult grids, including this one, use their own channels to drive traffic? Simple ― the network buys traffic from TrafficJunky and other intermediaries that work with heavyweight adult websites. ,

Yes, in the end you will have to overpay slightly, because it’s technically a resale. But in similar networks you won’t find such a source at all. Plus that overpayment isn’t big enough to matter. Therefore, offers specifically for traffic from video sites are an excellent choice for this network.

The second no less important point is strict moderation. The entry threshold is quite low – 50 unique daily visitors, paid hosting and your own domain. But when it comes to the integrity test – that’s where Exoclick gets out the big guns. So, bots, fraud and other unwanted surprises are very rare. And publishers are banned upon first request.

In addition to them, there are plenty of large resources. And not something like PornHub, that work with special “tamed” traffic sources, but rather “free” websites with millions of visitors, with adequate cost per click numbers.

GEOs in Exoclick

As we have already specified, the bulk of the traffic comes from TIER 1. But some TIER 2 countries, less often TIER 3, have crept onto that list as well. According to indicators for 2021, America firmly occupies the top positions. The US is at the very peak of the mountain, practically unopposed. Followed by Germany, Britain, India, Brazil and France.

And usually the traffic flow from India is usually larger than that from a dozen European countries all together. Yet here it’s losing to little Germany. Accordingly, it is not surprising that TIER 1 countries have significant quantitative advantages here.

Here’s the hierarchical pattern the countries follow:

• USA;
• Germany;
• Britain;
• India;
• Brazil;
• France;
• Canada;
• Italy;
• Mexico;
• Japan;
• Spain;
• Russia;
• Indonesia;
• Thailand;
• Poland;
• Australia;
• China;
• the rest.

Yes, even China made it into the top 20. It’s no secret that the Chinese don’t have much interest in “foreign” Internet. They prefer to shop and receive information from their own resources. But China’s government has a tough stance on 18+ content. That’s what (most of the time) forces people to venture out into the “other” Internet. That’s why China’s average indicators reach 80+ million. Which isn’t much for a country with 1.4 billion people, but other ANs can’t boast even such results. So, Exoclick managed to stand out here as well.

Targeting in Exoclick

Onto technical moments. You now have an understanding of where the traffic comes from. Now let’s get down to how you can set it up to fit your needs. The larger the choice of targeting settings, the more “target” an audience you can drive to your offer. And even if you have to pay at a competitive rate to narrow the flow, a warmed-up and more relevant audience will always pay off in the form of conversions.

Let’s take a look at what Exoclick has to offer:

• Categories. You can both include and exclude them from targeting. Moreover, in different cases different options will be most effective. When enabling categories, choose a general topic. Streaming, gaming, adult, etc. Only adult has a lot of sub-categories. Which is understandable. But remember, if your offer fits only a specific adult subcategory, you should definitely not enable the general adult group. Otherwise, your budget will first be directed towards the latter. And the clients you get won’t be as relevant;
• GEO. Almost any country. The depth of GEO targeting is not very impressive. Major regions and cities are taken into account, but smaller towns often “count” as the nearby megapolises. So, you won’t be able to geographically pinpoint your audience. You can add and block out zones. Here’s also a little lifehack, if you exclude the US from the list, the overall traffic volume will sag considerably;
• Dayparting. In other words, the possibility to target users by time – the ad campaign will launch at the designated time. It’s usually worth splitting the audience by the time factor into 4 classes. Morning users, that visit websites on their way to work. Daytime – during work hours. Evening – after work, when they relax at home. And night – those that don’t really sleep. Naturally, when it comes to adult content, the morning category is made up of people over 30-35 as well as married people. The evening one – young single people. Night – young people without a job (or a remote one). The daytime category is the most extensive and fits almost any parameter;
• Languages. 8 main languages. More than enough for almost any offer;
• Devices. Desktop, smartphone, tablet. A wide variety of smartphone models;
• Browsers. All existing systems are represented. Excluding those that have been completely discontinued. But usually only people from TIER 3 countries come from such browsers;
• Network zone. Is traditionally divided into the regular and premium segments. A way to correlate price and quality. But technically, you can find an expensive TA even without this setting. This is rather a simplification for those who don’t want to spend all their time fiddling around with targeting settings;
• Impression cap. The usual setting is 3 impressions a day for a specific user. You can lower that number if your strategy is untested or if you’re just a beginner affiliate.But remember that if your cpa is 1 impression a day, you should have just 1 creative. If you got more – raise the cap;
• Website targeting. Exoclick lets you manually select the websites you want to get traffic from. But remember that the list often includes only the largest resources. Then again, targeting 100 unique sites manually is obviously a ridiculous idea.

Ad formats in Exoclick

Exoclick doesn’t just have a lot of formats, the number of formats is freakishly large for an AN of this type. Its competitors usually focus on 3-4 formats, less often 6-8. But 20+ is utter nonsense. Then again, many formats are actually sub-formats of the main ones. Which is why we’ll cover only the latter and that way drastically lower the overall number of formats.

Full screen ads, Popups

The format is a full-screen ad. It pops up while the user studies the page. According to Google’s rules, the ad features an X that allows the client to close the ad if they have no interest in it. The advantages are obvious, no way for banner blindness to kick in. The user will see the entire creative, which lets you focus on the image’s quality.

Push-notifications

I don’t think there’s any need to explain the benefits of push notifications. True, they’re a bit intrusive, they’ll reach the user even if they’re offline. And it’s displayed both when the browser is opened and when it’s minimized or even closed. Moreover, locking your smartphone won’t stop them either. Push notifications are not a balanced format. They have a negative effect on non-warmed up users, which is why some ANs don’t use them at all. But Exoclick is not one of them. Many offers also don’t allow push notifications. They aren’t as annoying as Popups or Popunders, but still have a negative effect. Still, there’s no denying their excellent performance statistics. And if the creative hits the 100% target with the user, the latter’s transition is guaranteed.

Outstream videos

The ad is launched when the page is opened. But the video fragment is played only when the user sees at least 50% of the ad. If they scroll up/down, the video stops. And resumes when the user scrolls back to where it is. An effective model, but with one drawback – by default, the video has no sound. Until the user clicks on it. Therefore, the video sequence must be made in such a way that it attracts attention even without sound.

In-stream videos

This format implies the launch of ads while the user is watching the video. After a certain time, the user can skip the ad. That’s why you should focus on the first few seconds of your ad. Skip the introduction, hands down. Start off by playing your strong suits.

Interstitial, regular and native

The regular version is a Popup ad that remains invisible to the user until they leave the landing page. It’s basically a Popunder. Whereas the native version implies displaying the ad right on the main page. It appears very smoothly, which isn’t as irritating. Plus, the native aspect helps display the ad only to relevant and interested users.

Native widgets

Regular native widgets are located in the center of the page among the text or in the sidebar. Basically, their main difference from regular teasers is in their native nature. They integrate smoothly into the site’s design and don’t look like a foreign stain. That’s why the user often takes them as a part of the website or a recommendation from the publisher. And if the latter is an authority for users, their recommendations will be trusted.

Exoclick’s widgets aren’t constantly on the webpage – they appear when the user hovers the mouse off the screen. Exoclick did a great job thinking this technique through. Moving the mouse over the page boundaries acts as a signal that the user is about to leave it. In other words, they gathered all the info they came for and is ready to move on. And that’s when you with the help of widgets offer them a great choice of websites to check out next.

Banners

Exoclick uses various forms of banners. Large, regular display, sticky. Perhaps, only the latter need to be explained. This is an ad that slides behind the user’s viewport as the page scrolls. It is located above the main site, so it covers some text or something else. It closes easily and without any complications, which won’t annoy the user if they don’t like the intrusiveness of the ad. Exoclick knows how to not go overboard, how to get the message across without going too far.

Instant messages

A small popup with an ad. It looks like a notification from a website or a chat window in some messenger or social network. Thanks to this, it blends in perfectly in some verticals. And in adult dating, above all others. And don’t forget that for Exoclick this is one of the key niches.

Email ads

The last ad format on our list are email ads. All the affiliate has to do is provide a link to the landing page. A great choice if you work through such a model. After all, for many affiliates, email ads are but a supplementary traffic source. While most don’t use it at all. Plus, offers sometimes specifically prohibit its use, deeming it ineffective. But if they do indeed allow it, why not make use of it?

Tools

Exoclick has a very extensive set of tools to assist affiliate marketers. Decent tracking, alternative targeting settings. Interesting multi-level black and white lists. You can specify which countries to avoid and which to target when the traffic flow is sagging. This all allows you to set up your ad campaigns quite intricately. A whole other matter is whether the affiliate possesses enough experience to properly use all this. After all, you can’t just say when a low-performance zone will start being profitable and when its traffic flow was decent to begin with off the top of your head. You need to scrupulously calculate and analyze everything, focus only on numbers, and not on intuition or whatever.

Still, Exoclick’s basic tools are always useful and quite beginner-friendly.

Automatic bidder. The best part is that it’s AI-based but can also follow preset scripts. The first option is great for beginners. The bidder will adjust the bid, increase and decrease it depending on the level of competition and the set objectives. It can also independently add poor-performing countries to the black list.

Orders, on the other hand, allow you to define the behavior of the bidder. In which cases the bid must be increased, in which the country gets blacklisted. All it takes for your AC to become passive is to take the time to write out such orders (while putting thought into them, of course).

Another great tool is traffic optimization between landing pages. It drives traffic to your landing pages according to the preset rules. You decide what percentage goes to the main page and what percentage goes to the rest. You can also connect an AI so that it can calculate that percentage based on landing page conversion rates. But even if you do not choose anything, then the traffic will be evenly distributed among all the landings.

Exoclick also allows you to optimize impressions for creatives. By that we mean it will either drive traffic to the creatives that convert the best or distribute it equally. You can also introduce manual orders, edit the AI’s behavioral patterns. For example, tell it to drive traffic to the best-performing creative but no more than 50% of the entire flow.

RTB system in Exoclick

A system that selects the highest bid in real time is a great way to drive traffic. Nowadays, many ANs use it, but Exoclick takes it to another level. After all, what do you need for the RTB system to not just make you compete for every impression, but to exclude traffic transmission? That’s right, an insanely large traffic flow. Because if your traffic flow isn’t powerful enough, your competitors will just increase their maximum budget tenfold and weed you out.

And the number of impressions on Exoclick reaches 8.5 billion every day. Which means, RTB really performs well here.

Verticals in Exoclick

As we said, this AN is basically a niche one. That makes it conditionally possible to divide all the verticals into adult and non-adult.

Adult

Adult is not really a separate vertical, it’s more like a sub-category that applies to many verticals. That is why it is so wide and immense. Pure adult, like a vertical, is perhaps video storage resources with a paid subscription or direct purchase of goods. But these are actually not the majority.

So, which adult categories is Exoclick a good choice for?

• Dating. A significant part of all adult content is dating. From just social media leaning in this direction to straight-up escort services. And they most often work either through the SOI model, that requires you to just get the user to enter their personal info (usually, their email), or the DOI model, where the email needs to be verified. The latter also includes models where the client needs to enter their credit card (or other payment tool) info. And as practice shows, getting such conversions is simple. And if your leads are TIER 1, the payment can reach a nice $30-50;
• Gaming. Not as extensive a segment but with decent rewards. Go through our offers, you’ll see that the average gaming offer pays around $25-30 (even SOI). And DOI or CPA models pay even more;
• Webcam. This sector is rapidly growing in popularity. After all, users themselves actively search for webcam resources. And the conversion rates here are typically higher than in similar sub-niches. But it’s best to pick offers that pay for each new registered user (not requiring them to purchase tokens);
• Websites with paid subscriptions. These are more complicated models, more suited for experienced affiliates. Your targeting settings must be nearly pinpoint accurate, otherwise you’ll miss your very narrow target audience;
• Nutra. A category with average performance indicators. Good for Exoclick, but just in general is a bit too complicated for beginners. We recommend you test out your nutra landing pages and if you don’t like the quality, add pre-landings in the form of a personal review for the product..

Other verticals

Besides adult, you can also try out:

• regular gaming. Finds a decent response, but loses in quality to In-app traffic. Obviously, you’ll cover your losses thanks to the payout. But it’s best to focus on desktop indie games, apps aren’t the best choice;
• regular dating. Again, best to focus on dating affiliate programs that want TIER 1 traffic. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of them. And it’s best to launch ACs for +18-ish websites, just without blatant pornography. This isn’t the best platform to promote completely mainstream dating offers;
• gambling. You can try, but don’t expect insane results;
• cinemas, video services. Given the variety of video ads, it’s easy to find a warmed-up user. A viable option.

But all the other verticals are promoted kicking and screaming. Nutra, eCommerce, finances, sweepstakes – the results are rather unimpressive.

Suitable offers for Exoclick

Choose more expensive offers. This is the main tip. If you work with adult offers but don’t know where to get high-quality TIER 1 traffic – people with enough money for paid subscriptions and purchases – Exoclick is the best choice.

Read more about the best sources of adult traffic.

Beginners, naturally, should look to simpler models – SOI, DOI. They are also a suitable choice here.

Therefore, look at offers with high payouts, serious requirements and aimed exclusively at TIER 1 countries. As for the vertical, in Exoclick, the best choice would be adult offers. Plus, here you can find unique traffic from the giants of the porn industry. And if a client comes to the resource from PornHub, he will not only be warmed up, but also very loyal. After all, PronHub is unlikely to lead him to some gray-hat project, where you probably shouldn’t leave your card details.

Tech support, moderation, rules

The resource is very demanding on its participants. This applies to both publishers and affiliates. First of all, you should think about your own creatives. Exoclick often has something to say about them. If they catch you downright cheating – reject, call or clickbait – you get rejected. And if you violate the rules, you’re likely to get served a permaban.

At the same time, ACs pass moderation quickly, granted they’re launched. If the AC is on hold, it can take weeks for mods to check the creative. Compare that to active campaigns – no longer than an hour.

The rules on the resource are standard, mainly related to adult content. Minors, deviation, abuse, racism and so on. That’s why, if such an oxymoron is possible, best to stick to mainstream adult content.

Tech support also takes around an hour to answer. You can contact it through the website form or by email – help@exoclick.com.

There’s also an extensive FAQ section.

Exoclick pros and cons

Pros:

• premium TIER 1 traffic in large volumes;
• lots of top-shelf platforms;
• great targeting;
• a wide variety of ad formats;
• one of the best adult ANs;
• useful advanced tools.

Cons:

• one-sided network, looks good only if you focus on the adult vertical;
• strict and vigilant moderation;
• not the cheapest competitive clicks;
• not all that suitable for TIER 3-focused offers.

Ad campaigns

Finally, down to practice. Let’s take a look at how to create, configure and, if necessary, modify an advertising campaign in Exoclick.

Creating and setting up an ad campaign in Exoclick

You start off by filling out the registration form and getting approved. It’s pretty standard so we won’t dwell on it.

Next, we immediately proceed to creating a click-through campaign in your personal account. And first of all, we choose the name and the vertical.

Moving on to targeting. To start, you need to fill in:

• the zone;
• the price model;
• the ad format type.

Make a creative in the field of the selected format and now we can initiate the launch. This is necessary for the moderation to start. In the meantime, fill in:

• narrow zones, specific cities;
• period of the day for activating ads;
• the users’ device, browser;
• personal settings;
• caps;
• budget limits;
• keywords (up to 3).

It is also better to write out orders right away if you use Smart bid, traffic distribution to landing pages, systems or restrictions on displaying ads with poor performance.

Monitoring and editing the AC in Exoclick

A 2-3 day period is quite enough to draw up intermediate results and edit the campaign based on them. Got to give credit where credit is due – Exoclick’s tracking isn’t bad. But if you have a favorite tracker, it’s still best to use that. In the AC settings you can get a Post-back link.

Make sure to check the “included zones” in the “targeting zones”. It is possible that some websites are blocking the ad.

In this case, the website doesn’t allow automatic sound playback. Yet they’re part of the creative. Which is why the entire ad is blocked.

Also check how your budget is doing if you’re using an autobidder. The latter often gets hellbent to “win” a bid and is willing to drain your entire budget to get it. In which case you either block out the zones where the bidder’s “going to war” or do edit your orders.

Pro tips for working with Exoclick

And now a few hands-on recommendations from the Leadbit team members who are familiar with Exoclick firsthand.

1. Constantly make sure publishers have the ad block. Some of them skip ads at the initial stage and then sometimes close the block due to a loading alert, for example, or if the landing contains unsuitable content. We are talking about large sites, of course;
2. Use Exoclick’s report system. Even if you have your own tracker, don’t forget that Exoclick provides detailed reports by countries, sites, devices. And at times it’s even more extensive than with standard monitoring tools. Draw up your black-white lists on its basis;
3. At Exoclick, traffic flows don’t depend on your balance. In other words, $100,000 and $1,000 deposits will get the same traffic flow. The AN doesn’t hand out VIP statuses based on how much money they spend. Therefore, you can upload test campaigns with a minimal budget. But for regular campaigns (with decent results), you’ll need around $2,000-4,000. Don’t forget that this network specializes in TIER 1 countries with the click costs being pretty expensive.

Video Overview of Exoclick and the Rules of Working With it

European adult gaming case at Exoclick

Adult gaming has been performing well lately. As our test-offer we chose a porn parody of a modern popular game.

Payout model – CCS. The user turned into a lead when they entered their credit card info. The payout depended on the GEO. While TIER 3 countries gave an unimpressive $8, premium TIER 1 users were $56 each.

Our geo-targeting focused on major European countries – France, the UK and Germany. Especially since Exoclick gets most of its traffic from these countries. We ignored the USA to not have to deal with the competition. After all, the American adult gaming is incredibly developed, we’d have to fight over literally every lead. Plus, the payment for American players was less than for European ones (which is surprising) – $40 vs $56.

Settings:

• GEO – France, UK, Germany;
• daily period – day + evening;
• budget – $150 a day;
• model – SmartCPC with manually assigned maximum bid limit;
• format – regular display banner and native exit banner.

All creatives were taken directly from the game. Both the rules of the offer and of Exoclick itself forbade editing game footage. Plus, we didn’t want to deal with certain websites that wouldn’t have liked it if there was a discrepancy in the content.

We drove traffic for 20 days. During this time we made only a single edit to the campaign. On day 8, we decided to cut off Germany because of the click-cost/performance ratio, for some reason it was dragging the campaign into the red. We also had to delete a couple of creatives, as multiple key platforms were blocking them.

Results:

• budget – $3,000;
• revenue – $4,928. Originally, the leads we collected were worth $5,488, but during the hold (and for this offer it’s a long one, 28 days) 10 applications were rejected;
• profit – $1,928;
• ROI – 64.2%.

FAQ