Network changelog.

Our public /stats page now refreshes automatically, so the numbers you see stay current.

• Improvement: A scheduled job now pulls our first-party and edge analytics on a regular cadence and updates /stats automatically — no more manual refreshes.

• Notice: Heads up on the numbers: compliancehub.wiki — normally one of our highest-traffic properties — was offline for a few days in early June (a brief domain lapse, now resolved), which temporarily lowered network-wide pageviews for that week. Traffic is recovering toward its normal baseline.

Two issues affected the network over the past few weeks. Both are now fixed, and ad fill plus click reporting are back to normal.

• Incident: Lower ad fill (mid-May–Jun 6): a bot-protection change we rolled out in mid-May turned out to be over-aggressively filtering legitimate ad requests, so many slots showed our house “ad space available” card instead of live ads. We identified the cause and fixed the validation — fill has recovered to normal levels. Bot protection is being re-introduced more carefully.

• Fix: Click reporting restored: a tracking bug was under-reporting ad clicks network-wide. It's fixed, so click and CTR figures are now accurate again.

• Notice: compliancehub.wiki downtime (Jun 2–5): the domain briefly lapsed and was promptly renewed. Traffic and ad serving on the property are back to normal.

Following the launch we expanded the formats advertisers can run across the network.

• Improvement: New ad formats: a sticky anchor unit, a billboard placement, coupon/promo cards, and a network-wide hard-bottom sponsor package for always-on premium reach.

• Improvement: Launched native in-article “tool promo” cards across the blog network — non-intrusive text placements that surface free security tools (microsec.tools, RateMySOC, PhishingRisk, AI Risk Assess and more) to readers mid-article.

• Improvement: Separated placement (where an ad appears) from format (what it looks like), so new creative types roll out without disrupting existing campaigns.

• Improvement: Added cisoinsights.show to the carousel network.

Network-wide upgrades to ad placements and serving consistency across all properties.

• Improvement: New sticky anchor ad unit (mobile + desktop, dismissible) rolled out across all 13 properties.

• Improvement: Fixed several properties where ad slots weren't firing on non-article pages, improving overall fill rate.

• Improvement: Added a self-promo fallback so empty slots never sit blank when a passback ad isn't available.

After months of rebuilding, CyberAdX launched its own privacy-first, first-party ad network — monetization we fully own and control.

• Improvement: First-party pixel deployed across 13 properties — cookieless, no third-party trackers, DNT/GPC honored.

• Improvement: 6-position carousel ad system with priority-based rotation and server-side, tamper-proof click tracking.

• Improvement: Public transparency stats published at /stats — real first-party numbers, refreshed weekly.

Consolidated the network's hosting onto Cloudflare Pages.

• Improvement: Migrated from Netlify to Cloudflare Pages — bringing serving, edge analytics, and bot protection together at the network edge.

• Improvement: This is the foundation the first-party ad pixel and bot mitigation now run on.

CyberAdX was accepted into the Cloudflare for Startups program.

• Improvement: Gained access to edge-grade bot mitigation, analytics, and serving infrastructure to rebuild the network on — directly addressing the bot-traffic problem that started this journey.

We rebuilt our properties from the ground up for speed and resilience.

• Improvement: Migrated off the Ghost CMS onto static Astro sites — lighter, faster, and far more resistant to the kind of automated abuse that took us down.

• Improvement: Initial hosting on Netlify while the network was being rebuilt.

Where this all started. A large automated bot network flooded our sites with fake traffic, which led to our removal from Ezoic — the third-party ad platform we relied on at the time. Rather than depend on a platform we didn't control, we chose to rebuild monetization on infrastructure we own.

• Incident: A botnet generated large volumes of fake, non-human traffic across our properties.

• Notice: The inflated traffic led to our removal from Ezoic. We treated it as a turning point, not a dead end.

• Improvement: Decision: build a first-party, privacy-respecting ad network we fully control — the beginning of CyberAdX.