Gaming and iGaming advertising has kept growing year over year, and the crowd of platforms and content creators chasing player attention has grown right along with it. Global iGaming revenue was already tracked near $97 billion back in 2024, and the number has only climbed since, which means the cost of standing out in a saturated market keeps climbing too. When every competitor is bidding on the same banner placements, the ads that actually get noticed are the ones players can’t simply scroll past.
That’s where pop ads come in.
Pop advertising has stayed a mainstay of gaming and iGaming marketing precisely because it forces a moment of attention that a banner ad never gets. Pop ads routinely post higher click-through rates than standard display placements, and for advertisers running tight margins on user acquisition, that difference matters. This guide walks through ten of the pop ad networks gaming advertisers actually use in 2026, what each one does differently, and how to think about picking between them.
What Are Pop Ads?
Pop ads are a form of online advertising that opens in a new browser window or tab when a visitor interacts with a page. There are two flavors: pop-ups, which display on top of the page a user is already viewing, and pop-unders, which open behind the active window and only become visible once the user closes or minimizes their current tab.
Both formats share the same core advantage, they’re hard to miss. A banner ad sitting in a sidebar competes with everything else on the page for a fraction of a second of attention. A pop ad gets its own moment, full screen, no competing content. That’s why gaming advertisers lean on pop formats for promotions with a hard deadline, a limited-time bonus, a new game launch, a tournament with a closing entry window, situations where “the user saw it eventually” isn’t good enough.
Pop ads also tend to carry a lower cost per conversion than display formats, support richer creative (video previews, animated gameplay clips, countdown timers), and give advertisers granular targeting by device, geography, time of day, and increasingly by inferred player behavior. The tradeoff is that pop ads have a reputation problem, some networks in this space have historically been associated with low-quality traffic or aggressive redirect chains, which is exactly why network selection matters more here than in most other ad categories.
1. Adsterra
Adsterra has built a reputation as one of the more established pop ad networks serving gaming and iGaming advertisers specifically. Their self-service dashboard makes it straightforward to launch campaigns targeted at particular player segments by geography, device, and interest category without waiting on a account manager to set things up manually.
What sets Adsterra apart from smaller competitors is the combination of a dedicated fraud-prevention layer and genuinely deep targeting controls. The platform screens traffic sources on an ongoing basis rather than treating fraud detection as a one-time onboarding check, which matters in a vertical where bot traffic and click farms are a persistent problem. The dashboard itself is built for people who are actively managing several campaigns at once, not just glancing at a weekly report.
2. AdMaven
AdMaven runs a large-scale performance network built around a two-sided marketplace, advertisers on one side, publishers monetizing their traffic on the other. The platform supports real-time bidding, detailed analytics dashboards, and audience targeting that goes beyond basic demographics.
Advertisers who’ve used the platform tend to point to two things: a fraud detection system that actively filters low-quality traffic, and account managers who understand gaming-specific marketing rather than treating every vertical the same. Traffic quality is the thing that ultimately determines whether a pop ad network is worth the spend, and AdMaven’s numbers, north of a billion daily impressions by their own reporting, put it firmly in the established tier rather than a newcomer still building trust.
3. RichAds
RichAds has built its standing on traffic quality specifically for tier-1 markets, meaning countries where players have higher disposable income and a track record of converting on gaming offers. The network runs across roughly 220 countries and supports eight distinct ad formats beyond just pop-unders, including push notifications, pre-roll video, native ads, and even Telegram ads for advertisers reaching gaming communities that have moved to messaging platforms.
The platform supports sophisticated creative formats including playable ad previews, letting a prospective player try a snippet of gameplay before clicking through. RichAds also runs a tiered loyalty structure, with higher minimum deposits unlocking a dedicated account manager and faster campaign moderation, worth factoring in if you’re planning to scale spend rather than run a single test campaign.
4. PropellerAds
PropellerAds is one of the larger pop ad networks operating today, with a substantial footprint specifically in gaming verticals. What separates it from competitors is the depth of its automation tooling, campaign optimization that adjusts bids and targeting in response to live performance data rather than requiring constant manual tuning.
Targeting options include filters built specifically for gaming advertisers, game genre, and inferred in-game purchasing behavior, which is a level of specificity most general-purpose ad networks don’t offer. PropellerAds supports a wide range of budget tiers, which makes it accessible to a solo indie developer testing a small campaign as well as a large publisher running national launches.
5. PopAds
PopAds does one thing, pop advertising, and nothing else, which lets the platform optimize every part of its infrastructure around that single format rather than spreading engineering effort across a dozen ad types. For advertisers who’ve already decided pop is the right format for their campaign, that focus translates into more precise controls than a generalist network typically offers.
The analytics dashboard gives a clear read on campaign performance, and the platform is built for advertisers who want to set up and adjust campaigns quickly without a lengthy onboarding process. It’s a solid pick for smaller teams that don’t need the account-management layer that comes with the bigger networks.
6. AdCash
AdCash positions itself around a smooth, low-friction advertising experience, and the platform balances that ease of use against genuinely current optimization technology rather than sacrificing one for the other. Automated bid optimization and built-in fraud protection are standard features rather than premium add-ons.
The network maintains consistent traffic quality standards and backs that up with responsive support, which matters for gaming campaigns that often need fast adjustments around time-sensitive promotions like tournament windows or limited bonus periods.
7. PopCash
PopCash is built around affordability and efficiency, which makes it a natural fit for smaller game studios, indie developers, and newer gaming brands that don’t have enterprise ad budgets. The self-service platform keeps setup simple, with a low technical barrier to launching a first campaign.
Targeting options cover game category, player demographics, and the specific hours when a given audience segment is most active, useful for gaming campaigns where engagement tends to cluster around evenings and weekends. The platform also gives clear visibility into where traffic is actually coming from, which helps smaller advertisers avoid wasting limited budget on low-quality sources.
8. EvaDav
EvaDav runs a broader ad network than a pure pop specialist, supporting popunder, push notification, in-page, and native ad formats alongside search arbitrage and mobile app advertising tools. The platform reports a large daily reach, in the range of hundreds of millions of unique users, and carries third-party credentials including a G2 recognition and Trustpilot reviews, useful reference points for advertisers doing their own due diligence before committing budget.
For gaming advertisers specifically, the appeal is flexibility, running a pop campaign alongside a push notification retargeting sequence on the same platform, rather than managing separate relationships with separate networks for each format.
9. Unity Ads
Unity Ads is a different animal from the rest of this list, it’s built by Unity Technologies, the company behind the Unity game engine, which means its ads are woven directly into the mobile gaming experiences that already run on Unity’s engine rather than served through the open web. That native integration keeps interruption to a minimum while still capturing attention.
The platform supports playable ad formats, letting a prospective player try a slice of a new game before installing it, which consistently drives stronger install-to-retention numbers than a static image or video ever will. Targeting draws on player behavior, genre preference, and engagement level within the Unity ecosystem itself, giving it a data advantage that open ad networks can’t fully replicate.
10. ExoClick
ExoClick rounds out this list as a large, long-running ad exchange supporting programmatic buying and selling across a wide range of formats. It’s a broader platform than a pure pop-ad specialist, but it remains a common choice among performance advertisers in high-volume verticals, including gaming, thanks to its scale and its academy resources for advertisers still learning the platform.
Worth noting: an earlier version of this list included a smaller gaming-focused network called Kadam, whose domain has since gone dark and now sits on a domain marketplace listing, a reminder that this space moves fast and a network that was active last year isn’t guaranteed to still be running today. Always confirm a network is currently accepting new advertiser accounts before committing budget, rather than relying on an older list.
Enhance Your Advertising Game with Pop Ads
Choosing the right pop ad network can meaningfully change your gaming advertising outcomes, but there’s no single “best” answer, the right pick depends on your budget, your target markets, and whether you need a pure pop specialist or a broader platform that also runs push and native formats. Adsterra and AdMaven both bring strong fraud protection and established scale. RichAds and PropellerAds bring gaming-specific targeting depth. PopAds and PopCash suit smaller budgets that need simplicity over enterprise features.
Don’t commit an entire budget to one network on day one. Start with a modest test spread across two or three networks, and track conversion rate, traffic quality, and return on ad spend as your core metrics rather than raw impression counts. Impressions are cheap to buy and easy to inflate, conversions are the number that actually tells you whether a network is worth scaling.
Give each test campaign enough runway to gather meaningful data, a day or two of spend rarely tells you anything reliable, especially for gaming offers where purchase decisions often take a few sessions to mature. Most networks provide analytics dashboards detailed enough to spot which placements, geographies, and times of day are actually converting, use that data rather than gut instinct to decide where the next round of budget goes.
How Pop Ad Pricing Actually Works
Most pop ad networks price on a cost-per-mille (CPM) basis, meaning you pay per thousand impressions rather than per click, though some networks also support cost-per-click or cost-per-action bidding for advertisers who want to pay only when a user takes a specific step. CPM rates for pop traffic in gaming verticals typically range from under a dollar in lower-tier geographies to several dollars in competitive tier-1 markets like the US, UK, and Germany.
Minimum deposits vary widely by network, some let you start testing with as little as $50 to $100, while others set higher entry thresholds tied to their account-manager tiers. If you’re new to a network, start at the lowest tier that still gives you access to real targeting controls, and only move up once you’ve confirmed the traffic quality actually matches what you need.
Choosing Between Pop-Up and Pop-Under Formats
Not every network treats pop-ups and pop-unders the same way, and the distinction affects both user experience and performance. Pop-ups open on top of the current page, which grabs immediate attention but also feels more intrusive, some players close them within a second without reading past the headline. Pop-unders open behind the active window and stay hidden until the player finishes what they were doing, which tends to produce a calmer reception and, in a lot of testing across the industry, a higher completion rate for whatever action the ad is asking for.
For time-sensitive gaming promotions, a bonus expiring in an hour, a tournament closing soon, the immediacy of a pop-up can be worth the slightly higher annoyance factor. For a softer offer, a new game announcement, a loyalty program invite, a pop-under generally performs better because the player encounters it on their own terms rather than mid-task. Most of the networks above support both formats, so this is a creative and targeting decision more than a network-selection one.
What Makes a Pop Ad Creative Actually Work
The format does a lot of the attention-grabbing work on its own, but a weak creative still underperforms regardless of which network delivers it. A few patterns show up consistently across gaming campaigns that convert well:
- Show the actual game, not a generic stock image. A short gameplay clip or an in-game screenshot outperforms a stylized banner because it sets accurate expectations before the click.
- Lead with the specific offer, not the brand name. “50 free spins, no deposit” converts better than a logo and a slogan, players clicking a pop ad are making a fast decision and want to know what they’re getting.
- Keep the landing page load time under two seconds. A pop ad already interrupts the user once, a slow-loading landing page after the click is a second interruption, and most players won’t tolerate both.
- Match the creative to the geography. Currency, language, and even color preferences vary by market, and networks with strong geo-targeting make it easy to run localized creative variants rather than one generic version everywhere.
- Rotate creative every one to two weeks. Pop ad audiences, especially in gaming, see a lot of volume, and creative fatigue sets in faster here than in email or social campaigns.
Common Mistakes Gaming Advertisers Make with Pop Ads
A handful of avoidable mistakes show up again and again in gaming pop-ad campaigns that underperform:
Running one network exclusively without a comparison baseline. Without a second network to compare against, it’s hard to know whether your conversion rate is actually good or just the number you’ve gotten used to. Even a small test budget on a second network gives you a benchmark.
Ignoring frequency capping. Showing the same player the same pop ad five times in a session doesn’t improve conversion, it just increases the odds they’ll block ads entirely or associate your brand with an annoying experience. Most networks let you cap how often a single user sees your creative, use that control.
Treating all traffic sources as equal. Within a single network, different publisher sites send very different quality traffic. Dig into the placement-level reporting rather than just the campaign-level summary, and cut the sources that aren’t converting rather than assuming the whole campaign needs to be paused.
Skipping mobile-specific creative. A huge share of gaming traffic is mobile, and a pop ad designed for a desktop screen doesn’t always render the same way, or convert the same way, on a phone. Confirm your creative and landing page both work cleanly on mobile before scaling spend.
Compliance Matters More in Gaming Than Most Verticals
Gaming and especially iGaming advertising sits under tighter regulatory scrutiny than most consumer verticals, age-gating requirements, region-specific gambling advertising restrictions, and platform-level policies all apply on top of whatever the ad network itself enforces. Before launching a campaign, confirm that your creative and landing pages meet the advertising rules for every country you’re targeting, not just your home market, since pop networks by design push your ad in front of a geographically broad audience.
A reputable network will have its own compliance review process and will reject creatives that violate local gambling advertising law, but that review is a backstop, not a substitute for knowing the rules yourself. Getting this wrong doesn’t just risk an account suspension, in some jurisdictions it carries real regulatory consequences for the advertiser, not just the network.
Prepared to put pop ads to work for your gaming product? Pick a network that matches your budget and target markets from the list above, start small, measure honestly, and scale only what the data actually supports.