How we score.

Six criteria, weighted twice — once for publishers, once for advertisers. Every number on this site is produced by the table below, and by nothing else.

What this page is

The weights below are read directly from the code that computes the scores. They are not a description of our process written by hand and left to rot — they are the process. Rubric v5.

The six criteria

Performance & delivery pub 25% · adv 20%

Fill rate, eCPM stability, latency, viewability. Measured across publisher accounts, not vendor decks.

Targeting capabilities pub 5% · adv 25%

Granularity, contextual and audience options, and whether the controls do what the docs claim.

Inventory quality pub 5% · adv 25%

Publisher vetting, invalid traffic controls, brand safety, MFA exposure.

Transparency & reporting pub 15% · adv 15%

Revenue share disclosure, log-level access, reporting API quality, placement visibility.

Pricing & payment terms pub 30% · adv 10%

Payment reliability, NET terms, minimum payout, minimum spend, hidden fees.

Support & reliability pub 20% · adv 5%

Response times, account management, uptime, how they behave when something breaks.

For publishers

Pricing & payment terms 30%
Performance & delivery 25%
Support & reliability 20%
Transparency & reporting 15%
Inventory quality 5%
Targeting capabilities 5%
total 100%

For advertisers

Inventory quality 25%
Targeting capabilities 25%
Performance & delivery 20%
Transparency & reporting 15%
Pricing & payment terms 10%
Support & reliability 5%
total 100%

What makes a post a review

A post enters the directory by being scored — by carrying values on all six criteria — not by sitting in a category. Categories drive the filters and nothing else, so renaming or reorganising them cannot add a network to the rankings or remove one.

Ties, and unscored posts

Two networks with the same weighted total are ordered alphabetically. That tiebreak is arbitrary, but it is fixed, published, and applied by code — so a sponsored network never floats above an identical one that pays us nothing. A post we have not scored has no rank and does not appear in the directory at all.

What does not move a score

Referral fees. Press releases — which are paid, stamped as paid inside their own text, and quarantined from the rankings. Advertising bought anywhere on this site. Reader reviews — which sit beside the score, not inside it, and which send us looking rather than doing the scoring themselves.

Vendor-stated numbers

Figures we have not independently confirmed carry a dagger and are labelled as claims. eCPM ranges usually stay vendor-stated until we have watched a full quarter across several publisher accounts.

When a score moves

Every change is dated, attributed to a criterion, and given a reason on the review page. The old prose stays readable in the post's revision history. Networks scoring under 6 are rescored quarterly; everything else annually, or whenever evidence arrives that says we should.