Adding more banners doesn’t always mean higher revenue. This case study shows how one comic publisher increased earnings while keeping the reading experience intact.
Publisher Overview
Website Type: Comic / manga content for adult audience (18+)
Monthly traffic: 1st website (CN only) – 1.1M, 2nd website (DE, US, MX, VN, FR) – 5.9M
Partnership start: February 2026
Monetization Format: MultiTag Banner
Revenue generated: $23,497.67 + (Feb–Jun 2026)
The Starting Point
Forget the story you usually hear where publishers just try to patch their performance and run from a problem. The main hero of this case study knew exactly what the end game had to be: not a quick revenue increase, but a solid one from the very first day.
By maintaining that proactive stance, the publisher, supported by the HilltopAds team, was able to make decisions that kept us moving in the right direction at all times. One of those was even the audacious idea of presenting the same content in a different way and seeing what reaction the audience had.
Since most of their audience was from China, and popunder formats are underused there, these websites had the challenge of how to monetize their traffic the most. In fact, popunder has been a standard monetization method in Tier 1 markets, whereas in China, content is mostly monetized through well-known displays like banners, native widgets or video. But it’s not the formats’ effectiveness that determines which formats are used, but the market.
Den
Senior Publisher Manager
It wouldn’t be fully correct to claim that Chinese publishers avoid popunders; they just don’t encounter them often. Historically, the market grew around banners and other types of display ads, including native and video formats, so most webmasters stick to what they already know.
This publisher was also pretty careful, focusing on user experience rather than just revenue. Once we showed how our Popunder keeps the scroll position and does not interrupt reading, their concerns faded away. The results of early stage of testing showed that, with the right setup, Popunder can be even more profitable without lowering engagement.
- monetize
- your website
- with
- Weekly payouts
- from $20
Before cooperating with HilltopAds, the sites were running standard banner monetization through a few local ad partners. That setup was pretty typical for the Chinese market, and used to bring in meaningful revenue, but over time, it had basically stopped growing. Banners can still be profitable, but some upgrade would never hurt.
By switching to MultiTag Banner, the publisher was able to earn the same revenue with just one ad placement instead of using 15 or more banners. This change lowered the number of ads on the page, kept earnings steady, and made both the site experience and monetization process simpler.
If you want to earn more from your site without filling it with banners, try using just one MultiTag Banner zone. From what I’ve seen, a single well-placed MultiTag can work better than 15 or more regular banners. MultiTag helps you get a higher RPM by automatically mixing different ad formats and sources. This means you can make more money and keep your site looking clean. You don’t have to cover your pages with ads.
The goal wasn’t to replace their existing monetization strategy – it was to layer in a new revenue stream without hurting user experience. That’s exactly why we proposed MultiTag: it automatically distributes impressions across formats and demand sources.
HilltopAds MultiTag Banner is an innovative ad format that allows you to display multiple ad formats on your website simultaneously. Depending on the setup, you can choose between MultiTag Banner, MultiTag In-Page, and MultiTag Video – the main point is to increase publishers’ revenue without ruining the user experience.
Watch our latest YouTube video to learn how to monetize your traffic:
Why MultiTag Was the Right Choice
We found out that popunders could be the key to monetization on comic pages if handled appropriately. A major problem that comic sites are trying to overcome is that the monetization of these pages is limited: one reader typically views dozens of pages during a single session but the extra display ads may reduce the number of visits.
Den
Senior Publisher Manager
Let me be clear: display formats slapped on top of your comics will ruin the reading flow. Popunders, on the other hand, let you boost your earnings without getting in your readers’ way.
Control Ad Frequency Without Hurting UX
Frequency capping lets you have control over how often a popunder appears to each visitor, such as limiting it to once every three days. This helps balance monetization with a positive user experience.
Other content sites have seen revenue increase by two to five times using this approach, compared to adding more display ads. You might have seen a lot of websites that are overloaded with banners, so interaction was almost impossible.
Rgus directly proves that many banners can harm the user experience, but popunders add little page weight and fit well with simple site layouts, so redesigns are not needed.
Technical Implementation Matters
The other point is how popunders are technically implemented. Some ad networks trigger popunders that scroll the page up to the top, which interrupts reading and significantly reduces engagement.
A flawlessly implemented popunder lets readers continue without disruption, supporting longer sessions and higher engagement. Integrating a multitag platform is straightforward. Instead of managing several different ad tags or manual tests, you can use a single tag.
Moreover, using a single ad tag simplifies code, maintenance, and time-to-revenue. The next step is to choose the right ad frequency for your audience. For example, if you increase popunder frequency to twice per day, you may need to offer more engaging content to keep readers interested.
In such cases, comparing the two alternatives would be very helpful in finding the best balance between revenue and user engagement. For example, you could compare one group that sees the ad once per session with another that sees it twice. This kind of test can show which approach keeps your audience engaged without reducing visits.
Den
Senior Publisher Manager
The main piece of advice I can’t stop saying: don’t risk your whole traffic base at once. Start by adding new sources of monetiztion gradually. In this case, we have added HilltopAds to just one site initially and then watched the results for a few weeks: tracking revenue, user behavior, and site stability. Once we were convinced that things are working, we rolled out the same setup to other sites. This phased approach lets you fine-tune everything before going all in.
Results
The MultiTag popunder format has generated $23,497.67 in new income for both websites from February 2026 to June 2026.
Below is a breakdown of the publisher’s revenue by GEO. As expected, China ( the site’s primary traffic source) accounted for the largest share of total earnings, confirming that the experiment paid off even in a market where Popunder is traditionally underused.
We asked our publisher if he could share anything on metric shifts (bounce rate, session duration, etc). Here is what he shared with us:
One of our key success criteria wasn’t just revenue. Primarily, we would like to preserve engagement metrics. After launch, we kept a close eye on user behavior. We didn’t see any meaningful change in bounce rate, pages per session, or average session duration.
That confirmed that a properly implemented Popunder has virtually no impact on the reading experience. For sequential-content sites like comics or manga, that matters a lot: the reader keeps consuming the page without visual distractions, while the extra revenue comes in almost unnoticed by the audience.
Den
Senior Publisher Manager
Most Chinese publishers are barely familiar with the popunder format, which is why there is an incredible opportunity at this moment. As a Chinese webmaster, you will get the most benefits from it.
Popunder ads will surely help you to monetize your website, and you will be offering your visitors a great experience. I see Popunder as a real game-changer in China’s digital ad space, and I expect its popularity to skyrocket in the near future.
Have a comic website?
Don’t leave money on the table, start monetizing with HilltopAds today!
If you manage content-heavy sites where the main focus is sequential reading (e.g. comics, manga, serialized stories, or similar formats) and your users flip through dozens of pages per visit, the main takeaway from this example is simple: format selection and technical execution are, in fact, more important than format quantity.
A single, well-optimized Popunder with proper frequency capping can bring higher user engagement and more revenue without ruining user experience. Whereas a similar website overwhelmed with banners would probably not have such a happy ending.
Testing formats that are underused in your core GEO can also help you stand out from competitors relying on the same one or two ad types, though it requires closer attention to setup and enthusiasm for checking results carefully in the first few weeks.
The effectiveness of Popunder depends entirely on the technical details: how it triggers, whether it disrupts scroll position, and how frequency is capped. For this publisher, preserving scroll position during the Popunder trigger was one of the biggest factors in keeping engagement stable. Running real tests on your own traffic – not just relying on industry assumptions – is the only reliable way to find what works for your specific audience.
Read also the cases of our other publishers:
Quick Start Checklist: Getting Started with HilltopAds
Sign up as a publisher
Register a free account at hilltopads.com and confirm your email address. You’ll need to provide basic payment details for further payouts.
Add and verify your comic website
Once approved, add your site inside the dashboard and verify ownership. Ownership verification usually doesn’t take much time. HilltopAds offers three verification methods. Not sure which one to choose? Check out our detailed guide here.
Create ad zones
After verification, you’ll see a new button ‘Add zone’ appered right next to your traffic source. Hit the button to create a special ad code for each placement you would like to monetize. If you’re following a similar strategy to this case study, start with a MultiTag Banner. It combines Banner and Popunder formats into a single tag and lets the system auto-optimize the mix based on your traffic, without the need to manage separate tags manually.
If you require custom settings, do not hesitate to contact your personal manager for further assistance.
Install the ad tag
Copy the generated code and place it in your site’s code.
Don’t have a website? HilltopAds isn’t limited to traditional sites. You can also monetize traffic from social media pages, communities, mobile apps, blogs, X (Twitter), and other platforms. If you’re driving an audience through any of these channels, you can still register as a publisher and start generating revenue with HilltopAds Direct Link. Recommended traffic sources for Direct Links.
Optimize with your Publisher Manager
Once live, work with your assigned HilltopAds Publisher Manager to fine-tune deep settings. As this case shows, the right configuration is rarely the default one, and ongoing optimization is where most of the incremental revenue comes from.