AdBlueMedia Review (2026)

I've been a CPABuild publisher since 2017. I reviewed it here that April, about a month after I started posting on Wealthy Hustler. My last locker on it ran in 2019. CPABuild is called AdBlueMedia now, and it still paid me in 2025.

A lot happened to CPABuild while my account sat quiet. In August 2023, Wired reported a researcher's findings tying it to a scam built on fake PDFs. Later that year it became AdBlueMedia. And on October 14, 2026, AdBlueMedia's support team told me a UK company took over the platform in 2024.

The short answer: AdBlueMedia pays me, weekly, through Tipalti, and every dollar of it since 2019 has been referral commission. A new locker there is something I haven't tried, and the public record is split, a 1.6 on Trustpilot against four Affpaying scores near 4.9. So this review has two jobs: what my account shows, and what you agree to if you sign up today.

If you read the old version: the 5% template commission and the $5 signup bonus it promised are gone: not on AdBlueMedia's site, in its terms or in my dashboard, where my bonus line reads $10.20, lifetime, from the CPABuild era.

One caveat: all I can show you from my own account is a payment history, a balance and a referral list. The rest is the terms and what other publishers say, as of October 2026.

At a glance

Every line below names its source, because the homepage, the terms and my dashboard don't always agree.

• What it is: A CPA network for content lockers, called CPABuild until late 2023
• Running since: 2016, as CPABuild, per Wired's 2023 story
• Company: AdBlueMedia Ltd, UK company number 15074968, 124 City Road, London, per its contact page
• Took over the platform: 2024, per AdBlueMedia support
• Offers: Thousands, across CPA, CPL, CPI and CPE, per its homepage
• Payment schedule: Weekly, through Tipalti, per my Payments page
• Minimum payout: $50, or $500 for wire. Smaller balances roll over
• Payout methods: ACH, eCheck, wire, PayPal and Payoneer, per my Payments page. No Bitcoin
• Referral commission: 5% of your referrals' payable leads, per its terms
• Approval: Aims for 12 hours after verification, per its homepage
• Who decides what counts: AdBlueMedia. Leads that miss its requirements don't count, per its terms
• Trustpilot: 1.6 from 51 reviews, profile unclaimed
• Affpaying: Four sub-scores from 4.88 to 4.95, across 351 reviews. Its join button is a referral link
• My account: Publisher since 2017, last locker in 2019, 174 invoices through September 2026

Apply to AdBlueMedia

Who AdBlueMedia is for

Quick test: if you had a CPABuild account, sign in at AdBlueMedia before you read on. My 2017 account still works, and what's in yours tells you which half of this review you need.

AdBlueMedia fits if:

• You already have an account with referrals on it.
• You lock content you own, and you deliver what the locker promises. The terms require the second part.
• You can name every traffic source on the application. The form requires it.
• You keep your own log of leads and payments.

Skip it if:

• You need a tax form from your network. Support told me they don't send them.
• One withheld payment would hurt your rent. The terms let AdBlueMedia withhold or recall payments for any reason it considers just.
• Your audience is under 18. The terms bar collecting information from minors.
• You're brand new to CPA and have nothing worth locking yet. Start with my post on CPA networks for beginners, then come back.

What changed after the Wired story and the rebrand

Three things happened after my old review's last update in January 2023: a Wired story, a new name, and a takeover that support dates to 2024.

What Wired reported

On August 14, 2023, Wired reported on Zach Edwards' research into fake PDFs. Wired described Edwards as a senior manager of threat insights at Human Security. He found the PDFs on compromised websites, .gov, .org and .edu domains among them, promising free Fortnite skins and Roblox currency, with links that ended at locker pages.

Edwards told Wired the compromised sites were "calling to command-and-control servers owned by CPABuild."

Wired also printed CPABuild's side as its website stated it at the time: terms that banned fraud, and a claim of daily fraud checks. CPABuild didn't answer Wired's emails or its contact form. The story doesn't mention AdBlueMedia. That name came later in the year.

The rename, then the takeover

In order:

• August 14, 2023: Wired's story runs.
• August 15, 2023: AdBlueMedia Ltd is incorporated in the UK, per Companies House.
• October 16, 2023: publishers on BlackHatWorld report cpabuild.com down and post the publishers.adbluemedia.com login.
• October 26, 2023: a BlackHatWorld thread asks why CPABuild closed registrations.
• March 4, 2024: OGAds' blog says "CPABuild has rebranded as AdBlueMedia," in a guide to moving your lockers to OGAds.
• 2024 (no month given): a UK company takes over the platform, per AdBlueMedia support.
• October 20, 2026: AdBlueMedia's registration form is open.

Support's 2024 date and the Companies House record sit side by side. AdBlueMedia Ltd formed on August 15, 2023, with the same sole director and person with significant control ever since. Its 2024 filings: a shortened accounting period, a confirmation statement, accounts, and the November 28 move of its registered office to 124 City Road. Both are on the record. I'm not drawing a line between them.

Wired called CPABuild US-registered in 2023, with a legal registry in Nevada on its website. AdBlueMedia's terms today name AdBlueMedia Ltd and UK law.

Getting approved

Approval is a form and a 12-hour target, and the form cares most about your traffic.

The homepage's target is 12 hours after you finish its account verification steps, with an email when the review is done.

The form asks for your name, a street address, your country, where you heard about AdBlueMedia and your traffic sources. Websites and current networks are optional.

What I'd put under traffic sources: the exact site or channel, and where its visitors come from. If you can't write that down, you're not ready to apply. Same advice as in my OGAds review.

Don't buy an account. The terms ban duplicate and shared accounts. A bought account carries someone else's details, and the form ties your payments to true ones.

The tools

In 2017 I wrote that my grandma could build a CPABuild landing page. I haven't asked her to try AdBlueMedia.

The home screen of my dashboard is a network chat of publisher posts, with a Support tab. The menu runs Offers to Inbox down the left, plus a dark theme in beta.

Support: no affiliate manager is named anywhere in my dashboard. Support is that chat tab and the Inbox, promised 24/7 on the homepage, and mine answered within a day in October 2026. No rewards, contests or Discord, so the perks section of my OGAds review has no twin here.

Templates and lockers

My old review was built on the template marketplace, and Affpaying's listing still describes template sharing.

The marketplace is gone, and with it the thousands of niches I browsed in 2017. What's left is a builder: three template bases (a file locker, a link locker and an offer wall) and seven locker bases, from blank to a visual editor. Whether that still gets you a hosted page with no site of your own, I didn't build one to find out.

Stats and tracking

Stat Reports group by year, month, day, hour, offer, country, browser, locker, template, smart link, two sub IDs and referral, over any date range, with filters and saved reports. I saw no CSV export, which OGAds has. Reversals show on the Balance page, not in Stats: mine read $8.80 for leads and $3.18 for referrals, lifetime. And Stats doesn't hold my CPABuild years: a report from January 1, 2017 to October 20, 2026 came back with zero clicks for 2017 and 2018.

Offers, geos and payouts

Fifty offers is what my list shows, not what the network has.

On October 20, 2026, my offer list showed 50 running offers, no total, and a See more button that added none. Of the 50: 31 are cost per engagement, 11 mobile pin submit, 4 CPR and 4 CPI. 39 are typed Locker and 11 Incent. 24 list the United States, capped ones included.

Three payouts for scale: Solitaire iOS CPI at $0.56, the lowest; Prograd iOS CPE at $8.80, for the UK; Brandbee Android CPE at $32.00, the highest. The median is $2.64.

The filters I'd use: traffic type (incentive, locker only, direct only or non-incent) and the sort by network EPC over 1, 2, 3 or 7 days. Network EPC is what an offer earns per click across every publisher, the number I read first at OGAds too.

Payment terms and fees

Weekly, through Tipalti, with a $50 minimum. OGAds uses the same processor on a Net-7 clock.

The terms don't fix a schedule, so the week below is from my Payments page, with OGAds' version where it has one:

• Schedule: Invoices are generated Monday at 00:00 server time, accounts are scanned for fraud and traffic violations, payments go to Tipalti on Wednesday, and Tipalti pays Thursday or Friday, a day later on a US or UK bank holiday. OGAds runs Net-7 or Net-30, set per account
• Eligible: Payable on Tipalti, at the minimum, payments enabled, and the same name on Tipalti and your invoices
• Minimum: $50 unless otherwise noted, per its terms. Wire is $500, per my Payments page. OGAds is $50 for most methods
• Under the minimum: Rolls over to the next payment period. OGAds creates no invoice until you've earned $50
• Taxes: Paid less any tax that has to be withheld by law. OGAds' processor, Tipalti, collects a W-9 or W-8
• Restricted countries: 12, Russia, Iran, Cuba and North Korea among them, due to UK law, per my Payments page
• Advertiser pays first: Payment can be held until the advertiser pays AdBlueMedia, and isn't guaranteed if the advertiser doesn't pay or revokes the commission
• Adjustments: Payments can be cut for advertiser offsets: invalid events, technical errors, tracking discrepancies
• Failed payments: A failed payment that isn't fully refunded can mean a permanent loss of balance

Payout methods: the site lists none, Affpaying lists Bitcoin, and my Payments page lists these five, some unavailable in certain countries.

• ACH, Payoneer included: $50 minimum, no fee
• Global ACH or eCheck: $50 minimum, $6.04 a payment. The page says these often run late
• PayPal: $50 minimum, no fee
• Wire, US resident: $500 minimum, $18.11 a payment
• Wire, outside the US: $500 minimum, $31.40 a payment, plus 2.5% FX if you don't receive funds in USD

Tax forms, if you're in the US: on October 14, 2026, I asked support for a 2025 statement or a 1099. They don't send tax forms, and no statement came. A 2023 request through the Inbox got a reply asking me to be more specific. I've owed the IRS $8,000 before. I don't recommend it.

What I'd do with this: read the Payment Information box and the fee table on your Payments page before your first invoice, and keep every support reply.

Does AdBlueMedia actually pay?

My side says yes. The public reviews say two different things.

My side: paid in 2025

My Payments page lists 174 invoices, from April 16, 2017 to September 7, 2026. 14 of them are dated 2025, from $52.95 to $109.00 and $884.95 in all, and 6 more are 2026. The early ones went by PayPal and ACH, the recent ones through Tipalti, the processor that pays my OGAds invoices too. Every row's status reads Submitted, not Paid, so I opened the log behind the newest: created September 7, 2026, marked paid and approved by Tipalti the next day. My bank shows the 2025 payments landing.

I've sent no locker traffic since 2019, so that money is referral commission. The split is under My results.

Their side: Trustpilot and BlackHatWorld

AdBlueMedia sits at 1.6 on Trustpilot from 51 reviews, and 92% of them are one star. The profile is unclaimed, the company has replied to none of them, and Trustpilot shows no history of asking for reviews. 11 of the 51 are from the past 12 months, with a cluster of one-star reviews on July 2 and 3, 2026. The themes repeat: bans near payout, leads not counted, no reply from support, and long-time users saying it got worse after the change.

On BlackHatWorld, a thread titled "CPABuild is a Scam Network" went up on August 23, 2023, nine days after Wired's story. On September 3, 2024, a second thread said AdBlueMedia banned the poster's account after two months of earnings. The first replies questioned the traffic behind it.

Affpaying shows the opposite picture: four sub-scores from 4.88 to 4.95, across 351 reviews, 340 of them rated Excellent, with the network listed as "formerly CPABuild." Its join button is an AdBlueMedia referral link, ref=20261.

I can't explain the gap between the two sites.

What I'd do with it: read the newest reviews on both sites and check the dates. On October 20, 2026, Trustpilot's newest was from July 8, Affpaying's from October 6.

The rules you're agreeing to

One page, under UK law, with no revision date, and most of the weight sits in the account and payment clauses.

AdBlueMedia's terms in plain words, with OGAds' version where it has one:

• Removal: accounts can be removed at any time, for any reason AdBlueMedia sees fit, with no duty to tell you, and disabled for any reason or none, without notice.
• Payments withheld or recalled: it can withhold or recall payments, and end your account, for any reason it considers just. You also agree not to press charges over a withheld payment. At OGAds, the publisher terms let it charge back conversions it already paid.
• Invalid leads: leads that miss its requirements don't count, from incomplete data to failed phone checks and invalid card submissions. At OGAds, it decides which actions count, at its sole discretion.
• Incentives: the reasons for termination include "use of any incentives to procure clicks or leads." A separate clause says any incentive you promise has to be delivered and match the promise. A locker is an incentive, so filter the offer list by traffic type first. At OGAds, each offer lists the traffic it allows.
• Fraud: checks are mostly manual and weekly. Suspected or proven fraud forfeits your future payments and your access. Disputes go by email to your affiliate manager. At OGAds, in writing within 30 days of the invoice date.
• Breach: breaking its terms, or an advertiser's, forfeits all payments. At OGAds, a breach lets it freeze unpaid commissions, whether or not they came from the breach.
• Referrals: 5% of a referral's payable leads, unless stated otherwise, reversible if the leads turn out invalid, and removable by hand for any reason. A referral has to be a first account, not yours or a relative's, with your link's cookie in the browser. My Referrals page adds the two-successful-payments rule from the disclosure, which the public terms don't carry. At OGAds, 5% of what referred publishers earn, for life.
• Also in there: no changes to its ad codes without consent, a permanent license on anything you upload, no data from anyone under 18, assignment without your consent, and your details to an offended party if it decides you broke the terms.

The rules box on the offer list, shown above every offer in my dashboard: deliver the incentive you offered; no fake or misleading rewards, cash incentives, adult images, carrier logos, royalty or celebrities; no copyrighted content, spam or uploads to other people's sites without consent; no SMS, email, push or pop traffic. Your traffic is your responsibility, and its one tip is to disable the CPE offers if your traffic isn't very engaging.

What I'd do with this: save a dated copy of the terms page before your first click. With no revision date on it, your copy is the only record of what you agreed to.

My results

Two numbers: what my lockers made before 2019, and what my referrals have made since.

• Publisher since: 2017.
• Lockers: 2017 to 2019. Stats shows zero clicks for those years now, so the only record is the Leads line on my Balance page: $454.16, lifetime.
• Referrals: 10 publishers, signed up between 2017 and 2021, each at 5%. Lifetime referral earnings: $12,179.59. Every balance change in the past 30 days was a referral credit of a few cents.

My 2017 video walkthrough is off this page because it shows the 2017 dashboard.

So here's what I can vouch for: AdBlueMedia has kept paying an account that stopped sending it locker traffic in 2019. What I can't vouch for is how a new locker does there today, because I haven't built one.

AdBlueMedia vs OGAds vs CPAGrip vs CPAlead

Two of these four columns are backed by my own invoices.

AdBlueMedia vs OGAds: I'm a publisher on both, and both pay me through Tipalti. OGAds has sent me 187 invoices since 2016, every one marked Paid, on Net-7. AdBlueMedia's registered office at 124 City Road, London, is the registered address of 17,356 companies. OGAds lists an office in Chicago. The full story is in my OGAds review.

AdBlueMedia vs CPAGrip and CPAlead: those two columns are what the networks say about themselves. CPAGrip's homepage lists a video locker, offer walls and a virtual currency tool, so it's the one for a game or app with its own currency. CPAlead has the biggest Trustpilot sample of the four, and I haven't used it, so it gets a listing, not a rating.

Which network I'd pick: for a new locker, OGAds, because I can back it up with my own invoices. For an AdBlueMedia account you already have, with referrals on it, keep it and keep collecting.

AdBlueMedia FAQ

Short answers. The sections above carry the sources.

Is AdBlueMedia legit?

It still pays me: my 2017 account was paid in 2025, and it's run by AdBlueMedia Ltd, a UK company with a London address on its contact page. Legit doesn't mean every lead gets paid: its terms let it withhold or recall payments, and remove an account for any reason.

Is AdBlueMedia the same as CPABuild?

Yes. My CPABuild account carried over. The public rename dates to late 2023, and AdBlueMedia support told me a UK company took over the platform in 2024.

Does my old CPABuild login still work?

Mine does, with the same username and password. cpabuild.com itself no longer loads.

Does AdBlueMedia pay?

It paid me 14 times in 2025. Invoices are generated on Mondays and paid through Tipalti on Thursday or Friday. Its one-star reviews on Trustpilot keep coming back to bans at payout time and leads that didn't count.

What is the AdBlueMedia minimum payout?

$50, unless otherwise noted, per its terms, and $500 for wire. Anything under that rolls over to the next payment period.

What payment methods does AdBlueMedia offer?

Its site doesn't say. My Payments page lists ACH, Global ACH or eCheck, wire, PayPal and Payoneer, and no Bitcoin, which Affpaying lists.

Does AdBlueMedia send a 1099?

No. Support told me in October 2026 that they don't send tax forms. If you're in the US, keep your own record: bank statements plus your Payments page.

Is AdBlueMedia free to join?

Yes. The registration form asks for no payment, its site mentions no fee, and nothing in my dashboard charges one.

What did Wired report about CPABuild?

Wired reported in 2023 that Human Security researcher Zach Edwards linked the fake PDFs to CPABuild and members of its network, and that the compromised sites hosting them were calling to servers CPABuild owned. The story doesn't mention AdBlueMedia, a name that came later that year.

AdBlueMedia vs OGAds vs CPAGrip: which is better?

For phone traffic you own, I'd start with OGAds, since it's the network I can back up with ten years of paid invoices. CPAGrip makes more sense for a game or app with its own currency, though its standard terms are Net-30. CPABuild now operates as AdBlueMedia and sits at 1.6 on Trustpilot. In 2023, Wired reported Human Security researcher Zach Edwards' finding that the sites hosting the fake PDFs were calling to servers owned by CPABuild. My verdict on AdBlueMedia: fine for referral income, unproven for new lockers.

Final thoughts

In 2017 I called CPABuild the best CPA network. Nine years later it's AdBlueMedia, run by a UK company since 2024 according to its support team.

My verdict: fine for referral income, unproven for new lockers. AdBlueMedia still paid me in 2025, but I haven't run a locker on it since 2019.

What would change that: a new locker of my own on AdBlueMedia, with paid invoices behind it. If I run one, I'll update this section.

Your first step: if you had a CPABuild account, sign in at AdBlueMedia and check your balance and your referrals. If you're new, read the rules section before you apply.

In 2017 I signed off by telling you to "be part of the CPA revolution." This time I'll settle for asking you to keep your own records.

Apply to AdBlueMedia